By Greg Lawson -
ParkStRanger@aol.com
For the last twenty years I have been proud to be a
ranger with the National Park Service, proud and yet at the same time,
ashamed that the Service has been unable to protect the very animal
which is it's symbol: the American Buffalo, the bison of Yellowstone. In
the two decades that I have been a ranger close to 4000 bison have been
killed by Montana state officials and the Park Service.
I am deeply saddened by this week's news from
Yellowstone. On Monday, March 3rd, over a hundred bison were captured by
Yellowstone rangers at the Stephens Creek bison capture facility at the
north end of the Park. On March 4th, 47 of those bison were sent to slaughterhouses in Montana. As of Friday, March 7, two hundred and
thirty-one had been captured and most had been trucked to slaughter.
Park officials say the operation will continue and a hundred more may be
captured in the days ahead.
This is the first time since the winter of 1996-1997
that the National Park Service has taken a leadership role in the
capture and slaughter of the Yellowstone bison. The Stephens Creek trap
in north Yellowstone had not been used since that winter when 1084 bison
were killed. For the last five years, the NPS has taken a support role,
assisting the Montana Department of Livestock to capture bison.
On March 4th, I talked on the phone with Jonas Ehudin,
spokesman for the Buffalo Field Campaign, an activist group that has
been working to protect the bison since 1997. Jonas told me that the BFC
believes the Park Service is acting under pressure from the state of
Montana to "manage" (read Kill) the bison. Under the agreement, reached
in the year 2000 by the state of Montana and the federal government,
known as the Interagency Bison Management Plan, there is an arbitrary
cap placed on the herd size at 3000 bison. A study to determine the
actual carrying capacity of the park has never been done. According to a
count in November, the bison herd is approximately 3800 animals.
Hundreds of bison could be killed this spring before cattle are brought
back into the area to graze on allotments in the Gallatin National
Forest just outside Yellowstone Park.
The excuse used for years has been that the bison might
spread the disease brucellosis to the cattle, but there has never been a
case of bison passing brucellosis to cattle in the wild. The bison sent
to slaughter this last week were not even tested for brucellosis since
the herd size is above 3000. The elk of Yellowstone, which greatly
outnumber the bison, also carry brucellosis, and elk have passed
brucellosis to cattle. Montana allows the elk to freely leave the park
and doesn't thin the elk population because elk hunting brings in
millions of dollars to the state's economy each year.
Last Tuesday, I spoke on the phone with Marsha Karle,
Public Affairs Officer for Yellowstone National Park. “APHIS (the U.S.
Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service)
wants to eradicate brucellosis,” she said. “Unless you destroy all the
wildlife, that’s not going to happen.” Actually, APHIS has stated in the
past that Montana was too aggressive in it’s actions against the bison,
and that killing male bison and calves was senseless because they can
not possibly pass the disease to cattle. Only an infected pregnant
female bison presents a risk of transmission, and a low risk at that. It
is truly senseless to slaughter male bison while ignoring the elk and
other wildlife that carry the bacteria that cause brucellosis.
“We truly hate to see this happen,” Marsha Karle said of
the slaughter. Then why is it happening? Our mandate is to protect park
resources for future generations, not to destroy them to appease a
special interest group, the cattle ranchers who graze their cattle on
federal lands in the national forests surrounding the park.
A couple of weeks ago, the state senate of Montana
violated the terms of the Interagency Bison Management Plan which
forbids hunting as a method of bison management. The Montana senate
passed a bill allowing bison hunting by permit. If this bill becomes
law, Montana will be in violation of the Interagency Bison Management
Plan and could loose millions of federal taxpayer dollars they receive
each year to kill bison. That is, if the federal government has any
courage to face the cattle ranchers of Montana. Somehow I doubt it after
the capture/slaughter of this last week.
If the state of Montana doesn’t respect the Interagency
Bison Management Plan, then neither should the National Park Service.
The Service shouldn’t allow itself to be trapped by a plan which
requires them to kill the bison. The Service should abandon the plan and
reopen their bison management policy to public comment.
To learn more about this situation, please visit the
homepage of the Buffalo Field Campaign, an activist group that works
year round to try to save the bison.
www.wildrockies.org/buffalo
Ralph Maughan operates a page which lists the latest
news stories about the Yellowstone bison at
www.forwolves.org/ralph/bisonrpt.html
To voice your opinion, contact Yellowstone National Park
Superintendent Suzanne Lewis at POB 168, Yellowstone National Park, WY
82190-0168; (307) 344-2002.
By email: Suzanne_Lewis@nps.gov
Please remember that polite letters and calls help more than letting our
anger show.
Go on to Week-Long
Benefit for Henry County Friends of Animals
Return to 9 March 2003 Issue
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