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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: October 2007

Buffalo Field Campaign director enters 2007-2008 bison migration season on probation

 

BOZEMAN--Buffalo Field Campaign director Daniel Brister, 37, was fined $585 and put on six months of probation on October 10, 2007, after a six-member jury convicted him of obstructing a peace officer, in an incident which ended in Brister receiving three staples at the Bozeman Deaconess Hospital to close a scalp wound.

Brister was arrested near West Yellowstone, Montana, on May 9, 2007, while videotaping law enforcement officers who were hazing about 300 bison back into Yellowstone National Park.

A Buffalo Field Campaign press release issued soon afterward said the incident began when volunteer Peter David Bogusko urged Montana Highway Patrol officer Shane Cox to close Highway 191 before the herd stampeded across it. Bogusko was apparently unaware that the U.S. Forest Service had already closed the highway. Cox ordered Bogusko to leave the area. When Bogusko allegedly tried to go a different direction, Cox arrested him. Bogusko then allegedly kicked out a side window of Cox's patrol car, and was charged with felony criminal mischief.

"I heard Peter screaming," Brister told Bozeman Chronicle staff writer Scott McMillion. Brister went to investigate, and when Cox ordered him away, stood behind the patrol car. "The next thing I knew," Brister told McMillion, "my face was in the ground. He tackled me from behind."

According to Montana Highway Patrol captain Tom Butler, Brister "was assisted to the ground, handcuffed, and placed in the patrol car."

Evidence about Brister's arrest and injury was excluded from his trial. Brister appealed the verdict, and said he is also considering filing a lawsuit against the Montana Highway Patrol.

Cox, a 2001 graduate of the Montana Highway Patrol Recruit Training Academy, has left the highway patrol.

The Yellowstone bison and elk herds have long been afflicted with endemic brucellosis, a disease which causes miscarriages and stillbirths. Bison entering Montana from Yellowstone are killed to avoid the possibility--which has never actually occurred--that they might transmit brucellosis to domestic cattle. Bison and cattle are both bovines; elk are not, and therefore the risk of transmission from elk to cattle is believed to be less.

If brucellosis appears in cattle, federal law requires that all cattle transported out of the state where it occurs must be tested at the ranchers' expense until the disease is eradicated.

At the end of July 2007, the Montana Department of Fish, Parks, & Wildlife reportedly reached an agreement in principle with the Church Universal & Triumphant to allow bison to cross the church-owned Royal Teton Ranch to reach 2,000 acres in the Gallatin National Forest, where they would be safely on federal land. The deal would require the federal government to lease the Royal Teton grazing rights.

Brucellosis occurred in May 2007 in seven cows on a ranch in Emigrant, just north of the Royal Teton Ranch. The source was believed to have been cattle imported from out of state. About 600 cattle from the Emigrant herd were killed to keep Montana officially brucellosis-free.

A record 1,003 bison were killed after entering Montana during the winter of 2005-2006, but only two were killed in 2006-2007, beyond the 31 who were reported shot by hunters. About 7,000 hunters applied for the 140 licenses issued to hunt bison in Montana during the 2006-2007 season. Only 44 licenses have been offered for the winter of 2007-2008, but as many as 100 more may be offered if larger numbers of bison than usual leave Yellowstone.

Bison are also hunted on the National Elk Refuge, south of Yellowstone, near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The recent annual toll has been around 140-150, but a new regional elk and bison management plan calls for reducing the bison population to about 500, from the present 1,200, by increasing the hunting quota to 300.

The Yellowstone bison herd has recovered to about 4,700, Yellowstone chief of natural resources Glenn Plumb announced on October 14, 2007. This is 30% more bison than Yellowstone had a year ago and just 200 below the highest count ever, recorded in October 2005.