Most Americans know buffalo, or bison, as the animals that grace the backs of some nickels. Most Americans also know that bison once numbered in the tens of millions in herds that covered the plains before the coming of European settlers.
A little more than a century ago, the population of wild bison in North America was estimated to be only about 20 animals following an extermination campaign that very nearly succeeded. Only the existence of Yellowstone Park allowed them to survive, providing a last refuge.
In the past 100 years, the numbers have rebounded and fluctuate from about 2,500 to 4,500.
Since much of Yellowstone is blanketed under thick snow every winter, the buffalo migrate out of the park to lower, warmer elevations where they can paw through the snow for grasses to eat. They leave the park via two gaps in the surrounding mountains, one to the north, one to the west. The western exit leads out onto national forest land and an area called Horse Butte.
Horse Butte is a long peninsula surrounded on three sides by a lake. Most of the butte is within the Gallatin National Forest, the rest is in private hands. In the spring, the females give birth to their calves on the southern flank of the butte where new grass sprouts early.
The ones who make the journey successfully, that is.
Ranchers in the areas surrounding Yellowstone fear a disease some buffalo carry called brucellosis, which buffalo got from domestic cattle. Although there's never been a documented case of cattle getting brucellosis from buffalo, livestock men and their allies in government capture and kill buffalo leaving the park, lest a cow might get sick from grazing in a field where a buffalo might recently have given birth.
The most horrible thing about all this is that there are no longer any cattle on Horse Butte. Litigation forced the Forest Service to rescind grazing permits on the butte six years ago. There remained a 400-acre privately owned ranch where cattle were raised, but the property recently changed hands and the new owners declared themselves formally bison-friendly. There is simply no reason -- if there really ever was one -- for the killing to continue, but continue it does.
Recently Tim Preso, an attorney for Earthjustice, wrote to the Forest Service urging the agency to stop "hazing" the bison -- using snowmobiles and helicopters to herd the animals into corrals, where they are loaded onto trucks and sent to slaughter. The new owners of the former cattle ranch, the Galanis family, signed the letter along with almost 40 other local land owners. The Forest Service, as of early March, had yet to respond to the letter, perhaps because there's really no defense for what the agency is doing.
The bison are one of the animals people go to Yellowstone to see, along with wolves and bears and elk and the other creatures that help make that place so special. To continue to kill bison for the simple crime of wandering beyond the boundary of their home park, when they pose no threat to cattle or anything else, is totally beyond reason and understanding. The Forest Service should suspend the killing immediately and permanently.
Oh, and the buffalo that wander out of the north gap of the park: government agents have sent about 1,000 to slaughter already this year.
Print this page
Email this page
