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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2008

Another bloody winter for the hungry Yellowstone National Park bison herd

 


WEST YELLOWSTONE--Bison defenders fear that the winter of 2007/2008 will become one of the bloodiest in decades of trying to protect Yellowstone National Park bison who stray into Montana, seeking forage.

"With heavy snow falling, and the end of winter weather possibly months away, the death toll this year is fast approaching the 1,016 bison killed during the winter of 2004/2005," Associated Press writer Matthew Brown observed on February 26, 2008.

Nathan James Drake, 26, briefly delayed the massacre by camping on a platform above the Horse Butte bison trap. Arrested late on February 26, he was released on $5,000 bail, "reportedly the highest yet for bison-related direct action," said the Buffalo Field Campaign.

Personnel from Yellowstone and the Montana Department of Livestock had sent 575 bison to slaughter, as of March 3, with another 100 reportedly awaiting transport.

"None of the bison have been tested or will be tested for exposure to brucellosis, the supposed reason" for the captures and killing, objected the Buffalo Field Campaign. "More than 2,500 bison have been killed or otherwise removed from the wild population since 2000," the Buffalo Field Campaign added, "under actions carried out under the Interagency Bison Management Plan, as well as by state and treaty hunts.

While the official reason for the slaughter is to prevent the spread of brucellosis from wild bison to cattle, no such transmission has ever been documented."

Montana has been federally listed as a brucellosis-free state since 1985, meaning that ranchers avoid the cost of having to test cattle for the disease before selling them to other states or to slaughter. Brucellosis is endemic among Yellowstone-region bison and elk--but seven cattle found to have brucellosis in May 2007, on a ranch near Bridger, apparently were infected by other cattle.

"Because there are no cattle on any part of the Horse Butte Peninsula," where the bison are captured, "at any time of the year," said the Buffalo Field Campaign, "transmission [from bison to cattle] is impossible, and Montana's intolerance for bison in the area is unjustifiable."

Cattle were formerly pastured on the Horse Butte Peninsula, but "a change of land ownership means there now will be no cattle there year-round," explained Bozeman Daily Chronicle staff writer Scott McMillion.

Montana Department of Livestock executive officer Christian Mackay said bison entering Montana would be killed anyway, lest some cross the frozen surface of Hebgen Lake to enter areas where cattle are pastured. "We want to avoid the situation we were in last year," Mackay told McMillion, "having large numbers calving on private property."

Bison who leave Yellowstone are not being tested, McMillion wrote, because "The lease on a brucellosis quarantine facility at Corwin Springs has expired. The expired lease was signed by the former property owner, Welch Brogan, who has since died."

The 400-acre former elk ranch is now owned by one Hunter Brink. "Over the past two winters, calves with no signs of exposure to brucellosis have been held there and tested repeatedly for antibodies to the disease," McMillion recounted. "After they reached breeding age, they were taken to a separate leased property a few miles north for the second phase of the program," which involved checking for evidence of maternal transmission.

"Adult animals aren't tested for the disease this early in the winter," McMillion continued. "They're shipped quickly to slaughter because Yellowstone officials say they have no place to keep them until spring." The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks is looking for ways to expand the number of state-licensed bison hunters in the future when large numbers of bison are outside yellowstone," McMillion noted.

Montana hunters shot 63 bison in early 2008. Members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes killed 39. Members of the Nez Perce tribe shot 54, and claimed an 1855 treaty right to kill up to 110. Wyoming hunters shot 266 bison south of Yellowstone in fall 2007, 222 of them within the National Elk Refuge, which lies between Yellowstone and Jackson. Most of the rest were killed in the Bridger-Teton National Forest and on private property.

The joint management plan calls for maintaining the Yellowstone bison herd at not fewer than 3,000--but at the beginning of this winter the herd numbered more than 4,700.