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Dan Brister - September 06, 2006
Buffalo Field Campaign
Celebrating Bison
Celebrating Montana's Native Bison
The wild bison of Yellowstone National Park and Montana are the only bison in the country to continuously occupy their native habitat. Survivors of the mass-slaughter that nearly drove them to extinction, America's wild bison number one one hundredth of one percent of what they did just 150 years ago. Numbering fewer than 4,000, today's wild herd is threatened by many of the same forces that contributed to its near extinction.
Bison will never understand the political line separating Yellowstone from Montana, but they are aggressively hazed, shot, or slaughtered whenever they attempt to step across it. Since 1985 state and federal agencies have killed 4,935 wild Yellowstone bison.
There has never been even a single documented transmission of brucellosis from wild bison to livestock. In and around Grand Teton National Park bison and cattle have co-mingled every summer for the past half-century without a single incidence of brucellosis transmission.
Instead of celebrating and protecting this last vestige of our continent's rich and wild past, a powerful minority of cattle producers, supported by the strong-arm tactics of the Montana Department of Livestock, continues to skew the facts and engage in scare tactics in an attempt to manufacture public support for the ongoing war against bison.
In his commentary last Thursday John Youngberg tried to frighten listeners into believing that the economy of Montana and the health of its citizens are threatened by the presence of Yellowstone bison. Judging from his comments, in which he called brucellosis a bioterrorism agent, you'd think that slaughtering thousands of bison at the park boundary is essential to winning the war on terror.
Undulant fever, the human form of brucellosis, is so rare that there hasn't been a single reported case in Montana since 1995, and there have been only 46 such cases since 1957, none of which resulted from contact with wild bison. According the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, cases of human brucellosis in the United States have all but disappeared since we began pasteurizing our milk and cheese.
Montana's intolerance for bison is based more on fear than on sound science. Rather than basing actions on an accurate assessment of the risk of brucellosis transmission, land managers in the Yellowstone region rely on inappropriate techniques designed for use in livestock, while ignoring the more serious threat of brucellosis transmission from feed-ground elk to cattle. Montana has a golden opportunity to secure public and private habitat for buffalo outside the park and abandon its antiquated "zero tolerance" in favor of a policy more consistent with modern risk-management principles.
Cattle are the controllable element and any sound approach would focus management actions on them. Modifying stocking dates and building stronger fences would ensure spatial and temporal separation of bison and cattle. In combination with mandatory cattle vaccination and the development of livestock herd-management plans to encourage the grazing of "brucellosis-proof" livestock like steers, non-reproductive cows, and horses in the conflict zones, such steps would simultaneously protect Montana's brucellosis free status and the last wild herd of native buffalo. Such an approach would save millions of tax-dollars, alleviate the negative publicity Montana continues to receive in the national press, and greatly benefit two of our state's strongest industries: tourism and agriculture.
Governor Schweitzer has been looking at such solutions and has entered into dialog with ranchers of high-risk livestock to explore the possibility of buying out grazing rights in the conflict zones. Unfortunately industry insiders like Mr. Youngberg, intent on maintaining the status quo, have been doing all they can to derail such sensible solutions.
In his commentary Youngberg suggested that the National Park Service take a more aggressive approach to eradicating brucellosis from Yellowstone National Park, an impossible task. A recent study printed in the journal Frontiers in Ecology suggests that eliminating brucellosis, if possible at all, would take at least 50 years and would require killing nearly every bison and elk in the Yellowstone region.
Youngberg also said that Yellowstone should take a more active role in managing bison within the park, an absurd assertion in light of the fact that park officials sent 911 bison to slaughter in the winter of 2006, the majority of which never even left the park.
Wild buffalo are essential to the Native American nations whose cultures evolved with the freely migrating herds that once graced much of the continent. Many of these nations still hold treaty rights to buffalo in the Yellowstone area. Disturbingly, the tribes continue to be excluded from all serious management decisions affecting the herd.
While for the rest of the country buffalo are a powerful symbol of the continent's wild past, Montana is uniquely positioned to benefit from their continued presence. Bison have helped make tourism the fastest growing economy in Montana. If buffalo were allowed to re-inhabit even a small fraction of their former range, expanded wildlife viewing opportunities would bring millions of additional tourist dollars to our state.
Buffalo Field Campaign is a grassroots, not-for-profit volunteer organization working to end the persecution of Yellowstone bison through sound science and fair politics. We represent citizens from all parts of Montana, across America, and around the world who love Yellowstone and value its magnificent native wildlife. The remaining wild buffalo need lasting protection to preserve their ecological, genetic, cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual significance. Buffalo Field Campaign envisions a new Montana in which wild buffalo are recognized and celebrated as native wildlife and treated as such.
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| Northwest Area Foundation Grant Funds News Reports on Poverty Issues |
Over the next two years the Montana Public Radio News Department will be presenting regular feature stories about issues of poverty in Montana. This project is made possible with a two-year, $78,500 grant from the Northwest Area Foundation. The funding will enable Montana Public Radio to add a half-time reporter to its staff for the duration of the project, as well as cover costs for field recording equipment and travel throughout western and central Montana. News Director Sally Mauk says, “I’m excited about the project and the opportunity to get our news staff out to many Montana communities to report on such an important and timely topic.”
The Northwest Area Foundation approached Montana Public Radio with this opportunity for funding coverage of poverty issues, after beginning successful projects with Minnesota Public Radio and Seattle’s KUOW last year. The Northwest Area Foundation’s mission is to help communities in an eight-state region (including Montana) reduce poverty. www.nwaf.org.
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