On the one side of the park boundary the federal government protects the bison as a national heritage saved from the brink of extinction. On the other side, the state of Montana labels them a nuisance and orders them killed claiming parklands can't provide enough food for all its bison.
Montana's department of livestock continues shooting bison outside the park as they have every year since 1990. Director Larry Petersen says Montana is doing the park's dirty work, " The sad part of this is, my department and the state of Montana are victims of the lack of management in the park with that herd, and we're doing population control for the park service by eliminating these animals."
Now that nearly a thousand bison have been killed, National Park rangers want the state of Montana to stop shooting on public land outside the park. So do many who have witnessed it. Sue Donkersgoed lives near the park, " And it just kills you, these babies are just not even a year old that they are massacring. And the moms are pregnant, and it's really hard to take when you see that because we all love the buffalo."
A joint state federal management plan requires the park service to kill bison that try to leave or capture them and send them to be killed at slaughter houses.
That's because as many as 20 percent of Yellowstone's bison may carry the disease Brucellosis cattlemen claim might infect their livestock. Slaughtering, shooting and the winter's kill will likely claim half the park's 3200 head of bison.
Cold weather and heavy snowpack drive bison from the park in search of food to keep warm to survive. But some bison have found another way to keep warm, Yellowstone's famous hot pools.
Steam vents might help these bison survive the winter. Others that try to leave might end up in pens, headed for slaughter if they are diseased. But if they are disease free they may get another chance to survive. Wayne Brewster a Yellowstone Park ranger says," And those bison that test negative would be available for re-establishing bison populations on Native American land. This opportunity is possible because buffalo are a very important part of their culture.
Environmentalists claim there are no known cases of Brucellosis being transmitted from a bison to a cow. They say the real issue is ranchers fear they will lose some of their grazing land to the bison. Mike Clark of the Greater Yellowstone coalition says, " Our solution, is to defer those leases, and move those leases for a year during this hard winter, and allow the bison on those lands where they can find more food."
This solution doesn't sit well with rancher Brian Severin ,"We'd really like to have this grass for our cows, next spring."
Severin says park wildlife already eats a fair amount of his grass and bison destroy his property, "Bison don't know about fences. They just run through'em and demolish them."
Heavy snow bogs down animals looking for food. In the past it also kept them within the park. But trails groomed by the park for winter visitors on snowmobiles hasten the bison migration to the killing fields.
There is talk of long term solutions, a hunting season on bison, birth control, or even buying out cattlemen's leases and allowing bison to roam. But nothing will end the bison killings soon.
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