Animal Health

From: Animal People March 1997

Brucellosis, bison, wardens and the horses they ride in on

Photo courtesy of the Sequoia Bison Society	YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK––The guns fell silent on January 31, at least temporarily, after shootings and shipments to slaughter killed 25% of the bison in America's most famous herd. News video of bison falling dead and a Fund for Animals call of a boycott of tourism to Montana brought a change of plans from National Park Service director Roger G. Kennedy, Forest Service chief Michael Dombeck, and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service administrator Terry L. Medley.
Fed up with taking flak for policies pursued to placate Montana ranchers, the three department heads ordered park rangers to mount horses, set up 24-hour patrols––no mean feat over the rough terrain in winter blizzards––and drive any bison leaving the park back in. The bison might still go to slaughter after testing for brucellosis, but at least they wouldn't be shot on TV by Montana wardens. Montana governor Marc Racicot quickly straddled the fence. "We have absolutely no interest in killing bison," he insisted, called for President Bill Clinton, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to take unspecified "decisive and meaningful" federal action, and meanwhile told state officials to hold the line and keep shooting all bison who cross out of Yellowstone into private property ––in particular the extensive holdings of the Church Universal and Triumphant, an apocalyptic sect founded by Elizabeth Claire Prophet which formerly sold rights to shoot stray Yellowstone bison and now complains that they menace the church cattle.
There was, to be sure, no guarantee that the horseback roundup would work, as Racicot pointed out. A reminder of the contagiousness of brucellosis and the risk involved came January 17, when Wyoming and Montana state veterinarians Bob Hillman and Clarence Sirosky confirmed discovery of the disease in a Wyoming game warden's horse, who apparently contracted it while working at state-run elk-feeding stations near Jackson and the federally managed National Elk Refuge, just south of Yellowstone.
Bison may have been the source of the infection, having joined elk at the feeding stations since 1980. However, the elk may also have transmitted brucellosis to both the horse and the bison, since the elk herd carries the disease too––as the Fund pointed out in a November statement opposing a bison hunt on the refuge, purportedly scheduled to reduce the brucellosis threat to Wyoming cattle. Humans can get brucellosis too, in the form of undulant fever, but only slaughterhouse workers who ignore safety precautions are believed to be at risk from the bison. Brucellosis and bad weather combined to bring a 20th century record level of bison killing to Yellowstone and surrounding public lands. Brucellosis, a disease causing spontaneous abortion and often death in domestic cattle, has been endemic in the Yellowstone bison herd for decades––probably since the first half of this century, when often grazing alongside cattle, bison easily acquired cattle diseases. Like cattle As Scott McMillion of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle explained on January 31, "Until the early 1950s, most of the park's bison were treated like cattle: turned loose in the summer, rounded up and fed hay in the winter. Bull calves were castrated," to control population growth, and when further control seemed necessary, "rangers ran them into corrals much like the ones drawing so much controversy on the park borders today. Then they were killed and processed in the Park Service's own slaughterhouse in the Lamar Valley," which ceased operating in 1953, along with Buffalo Ranch, where bison were bred and calves protected from predators. "In later years, bison were shot in the field in the park interior, or herded into traps with helicopters. Then they were trucked to a packing plant in Livingston, Montana, one of the same slaughterhouses used today." The elk herd was similarly managed. Predators were killed; wolves were entirely extripated from Yellowstone in 1926. Brucellosis hasn't visibly slowed bison reproduction, as bison numbers have steadily increased since 1889, when the Yellowstone herd of 21 were all the wild bison left in the world. Brucellosis has, however, devastated beef and dairy herds wherever it has afflicted domestic stock––not least because the only known means of keeping it from spreading is slaughtering all the animals in a herd known to have even one affected member. Normally the Gallatin Range and Gallatin River form a barrier between the Yellowstone bison and Montana livestock, but in particularly harsh winters when fodder in the park is scarce, many bison try to migrate north, out of the park, into the lush high plains that for millions of years belonged to their normal range. Ranchers once shot potentially infected bison who approached their herds on sight. Later, Montana sold permits to shoot the bison to trophy hunters. When the Fund threatened a tourism boycott over that practice in 1988-1989, when a then-record 569 bison left the park and were killed, the job was turned over to Montana game wardens and the Montana Board of Livestock. That, for a while, brought the killing a lower profile. Meanwhile the USDA proceeded toward fulfilling a 60-year goal of making the U.S. free from brucellosis, state by state. One Montana rancher, Jim Hagenbarth, has reportedly spent $250,000 on testing and vaccination in the effort, even though his own herd has never had the disease. Ranchers in states certified brucellosis-free may sell or swap stock without quarantine, a significant advantage when striving to move cattle in a hurry so as to get the best slaughter prices. Montana enjoys brucellosis-free status––and with only 32 cattle and bison herds in the U.S. still quarantined for brucellosis, the Yellowstone bison herd is among the last major reservoirs of the disease. "In the past, much like today," McMillion remembered, "some animals were tested for brucellosis, and those who tested negative were sometimes released," relocated to other parts of the park where eventually other culls would occur. The bison were vaccinated against brucellosis before release. But that practice failed to eliminate brucellosis, which was still readily reacquired from cattle even if extirpated temporarily from a particular bison herd, and no follow-up research was ever done to find out if the vaccine was even working. 1966 Continued McMillion, "Bison reductions, along with much bigger and more widely known elk reductions, came to a halt in 1966, when under intense pressure from hunting groups and others who didn't like the practice, the park began managing in ways that left the bison mostly to their own devices. At that time there were an estimated 366 bison in the park, down from a high of 1,450 reached in 1954."
Hunters opposed the elk and bison culls because they wanted the trophy species to spread into the Grand Tetons, the Gallatins, and the Jim Bridger National Forest, where they could be shot for sport.
The old brucellosis screening plan was dusted off, updated, and proposed for implementation starting November 1, 1996. To satisfy Montana, all bison exposed to brucellosis and all pregnant bison caught in the West Yellowstone area would be killed. The plan was expected to cull from the Yellowstone herd about as many bison as would normally die in a harsh winter––and was believed likely to avert winter kills, both on the range of the elements and at the Montana border, if begun in time. Although capturing bison near West Yellowstone began on November 17, disposing of any was held up by a lawsuit filed on September 18 by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Gallatin Wildlife Association, Jackson Hole Alliance for Responsible Planning, and the American Buffalo Foundation. "This sets a terrible precedent for other wildlife species who move outside the park at some times of year and can be inconvenient," explained SCLDF attorney Jim Angell. "What's next? Bear? Elk?" U.S. District Judge Charles C. Lovell, of Helena, Montana, tossed the suit on December 19, but the plaintiffs appealed on January 17. Meanwhile, faced with a lawsuit from the State of Montana if the bison killing didn't proceed, the Park Service on January 11 sent to slaughter the first 146 of 266 bison captured near Gardiner, Montana. Nobody expected snow more than twice as deep as normal and the greatest bison migration since 1975. As of January 31, the Park Service had tested and sent 401 bison to slaughter under the brucellosis eradication plan, shooting six others who proved unhandleable. Montana rangers had shot or sent to slaughter another 358 bison, including 32 just on January 30. The combined total was more than double the average winter bison loss. The surviving herd of 2,100 was expected to dwindle further, between the second half of winter and the ongoing test-and-truck program. "From the beginning, we have argued that this policy of rounding up and slaughtering bison is brutal and completely unnecessary," said National Parks and Conservation Association president Paul C. Pritchard. "But if this heavy snow drives more bison from the park, we could have a bigger disaster than anyone imagined. There is no limit to the number of bison who can be destroyed." Snowmobiles The bison issue stoked the ongoing conflict among park users, neighbors, and conservationists as to just what Yellowstone is and should be. The Fund blamed the bison migration on accelerated herd growth, and blamed the herd growth on snowmobiles. "The groomed trails that permit snowmobile access into Yellowstone are used by bison as energy-efficient winter travel routes that, directly or indirectly, facilitate bison emigration," explained a Fund action alert. "Bison winter kill is reduced while productivity and survival are increased. The result, according to Mary Maugher," a Park Service biologist who has studied the Yellowstone herd for 38 years, "is a bison population which is nearly double the size it would be if trails were not groomed to facilitate snowmobile use and snowmobiles were not permitted in the park. In addition to facilitating bison movements," the release continued, "bison use of groomed trails has disrupted their distribution and habitat use, causing ecosystem-wide impact to park vegetation and rangelands." The Fund asked members to remind Yellowstone supervisor Mike Finley that it is, "A National Park, not a National Playground." The Fund and the Biodiversity Legal Foundation also warned on January 27 that they will sue the Park Service if it fails to publish an Environmental Assessment of snowmobiling within the park by the end of February. Should the Park Service ban snowmobiling, it would run directly afoul of one of the most influential wise-use factions, off-road vehicle users, whose pressure groups are heavily funded by makers of snowmobiles and other off-road equipment. The National Wildlife Federation and InterTribal Bison Cooperative harked back to 1966 with a January 23 demand that bison who leave the park be sent to tribal lands for quarantine followed by reintroduction to range where they might become meat herds and/or be hunted. The Montana Board of Livestock immediately opposed the idea because some infected bison might escape. Their fears were underscored by the January 15 escape of 1,500 bison from brucellosis quarantine on the 60,000-acre Triple U Ranch near Fort Pierre, South Dakota, home of the herd used in the 1990 Kevin Costner film Dances With Wolves. The bison walked up compacted 20-to-25-foot-deep snowdrifts and over the top of eight-foot fences. Volunteers on snowmobiles rounded up all but 200 to 500 bison within 24 hours, but the bison had already spread over an area 20 miles long by 15 wide. Taking yet another approach, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department applied on December 2, 1996 for a permit to capture 36 Yellowstone bison calves over the next two years and experiment with vaccination again, this time using RB51, a new vaccine that they believe will be more effective than Strain 19, the one used 30-40 years ago. Predators The immediate effect of the bison killing will be to compound the inevitable loss of elk, deer, and moose to deep snow and scarce fodder. Fewer ungulates and bison mean a hungry spring for Yellowstone predators, including coyotes, pumas, grizzly bears, and the wolf packs reintroduced during the past two years.
Of 66 wolves released in Idaho and Yellowstone since January 1995, at least 13 are deceased, four of them illegally shot and one killed by Animal Damage Control personnel for eating sheep. However, an estimated 53 to 63 pups have been born, bringing the population to the reintroduction target of approximately 100 wolves. Yellowstone has been the most hospitable locale for the wolves, who swiftly extirpated coyotes from the Lamar Valley and now are the dominant predator at the Montana end of the park--precisely the area of the bison culling and shooting.
	Plans to reintroduce grizzlies to the Selway-Bitteroot Wilderness and perhaps the Frank Church River of No Return Wildnerness north of Yellowstone, along the Montana/ Idaho border, were indefinitely postponed in December, apparently due to lack of political support. Representative Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) has called the idea "as crazy as bringing sharks to the beach."
The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund last July argued that Defenders of Wildlife gave away too much to the timber industry in negotiating a reintroduction protocol that won endorsements from several major timber firms plus the biggest logging industry unions, the Teamsters and Brotherhood of Operating Engineers. The grizzlies were to be taken from Canada--and that drew flak from a coalition of 43 Canadian environmental and animal protection groups. But the coup-d'grace was probably public alarm over a June 5 grizzly attack on a hiker in Glacier National Park, Montana--which the hiker survived --and the August killing of grizzlies 209 and 233 in Grand Teton National Park and the Abasarokee Wilderness, near Yellowstone, for preying on cattle and raiding cabins. --M.C.