Jake Dionne, assistant professor of communication at the University of Arkansas, has received two national publication awards from the National Communication Association. He earned the 2025 Article of the Year Award from the Argumentation & Forensics Division for his essay analyzing 19th-century congressional debates about passing a conservation law in the bison's name, published in Communication and Democracy. He also received the 2025 Distinguished Book Chapter Award from the Philosophy of Communication, Theory, and Critique Division for his essay on how emotions shape bison conservation work, published in Ecological Feelings: A Rhetorical Compendium (University of Michigan Press).

Both essays focus on what Dionne calls the "Bison Restoration Movement," a long-term initiative to recover the North American bison across 22 habitat types on public, private and tribal lands.

The Communication and Democracy article looks to the past, studying how conservationists, ranchers, Indigenous leaders and government officials remember the near-extinction of the species. Dionne highlights an often-overlooked moment in environmental history: an early congressional attempt to protect the bison that ultimately failed when President Ulysses S. Grant let the bill expire through a "pocket veto." By revisiting this episode, the article offers a fuller perspective on how the bison almost disappeared, who worked to save it and why.

The Ecological Feelings chapter turns to the present, showing how organizations such as the Wildlife Conservation Society, National Bison Association and InterTribal Buffalo Council have drawn on a shared sense of responsibility for the bison's plight to strengthen restoration efforts. Dionne explains how emotions, often seen as barriers, can also serve as communicative resources for building effective coalitions.

These projects build on Dionne's broader scholarship on environmental and legal communication pertaining to the Bison Restoration Movement, which includes essays in Communication Monographs, Critical Studies in Media Communication and Communication Teacher. 

Dionne will receive his awards at the 111th annual meeting of the National Communication Association in Denver.