| BFC Buffalo Field Campaign
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| This
Summer, Don't Forget About the Buffalo
by Dru Dixon 6/01/06
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It’s
a beautiful Thursday morning here in West Yellowstone. I look
out across Hebgen Lake at the snowcapped mountains, shining
brilliantly white. I’m typing on a computer in our ramshackle
log cabin that we call an office. The insides are covered in
pictures of buffalo and our library is full of books about them.
Yes, it’s cluttered (partly my fault), but it’s
home. The same is true for our main cabin, which is usually
packed to the gills with volunteers that have come to do their
part in opposing the buffalo slaughter. I say volunteers but
really they are my dearest friends; some of the most beautiful
people I’ve met in my 26 years of life.
I hear a radio transmission from one of our patrols out in the
field: a bull buffalo is being hazed by 3 DOL agents on ATVs
down Duck Creek Road. It saddens me because this buffalo poses
no threat to the sanctity of the mighty cow, which seems to
be revered above all except money (and if we really want to
face it, power and control.)
But, after watching 2 buffalo drown and 10 others pulled out
of the freezing water of Hebgen Lake by the same people that
caused them to break through the ice; after watching 4 bull
buffalo freedom fighters that reached the Madison valley shot
down and murdered; after watching new born buffalo calves running
along with their mothers and herd, chased by a helicopter for
miles; after almost a thousand buffalo (1,000!!!) captured and
sent to slaughterhouses by an agency that purports to serve
the ecosystem of Yellowstone (the National Park Service); after
all of that, one buffalo being hazed seems a little tame.
And that scares me.
Because it means that I’m becoming desensitized to the
horrors that this culture of control and destruction is inflicting
on the Earth and her children. And that’s how it’s
done.
It’s okay if the polluters and destroyers (EXXON, Weyerhauser,
etc.) wreck most of our ecosystems over a long period of time,
leaving only bits and pieces to “conservation,”
just as long as it doesn’t happen over night. “There’s
nothing to get upset about,” they tell us. This is Progress.
Similarly, as long as the Dept. of Livestock and the National
Park Service don’t kill all the buffalo and the killing
that does happen is kept behind the locked doors of a slaughterhouse,
well, that’s just the way things are. “Don’t
get up, these things don’t concern you.”
But the fact is that a couple of hundred years ago, North America
was teeming with 30 to 60 million buffalo and now, in 2006,
a herd of their descendents can’t even peacefully live
on this tiny patch of public land.
We can change this. If you are reading this you are part of
the extended buffalo family. We are all in this together and
we are all needed in the struggle for buffalo freedom and freedom
for all living things.
So this summer, don’t forget about the buffalo. Talk to
everyone that you meet about this issue. Brainstorm ways to
bring about liberation for yourself and the buffalo. This fall
look for the West Coast and East Coast (and maybe Midwest) Road
shows. Maybe start your own road show. Maybe start your own
campaign. Hope and dream of the open prairie full of native
grasses and native grass eaters that this land still remembers.
And humanity is a part of this dream. We just have to figure
out our place again.
~ Dru Dixon, BFC |
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