| Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
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| News
Article 6/02/07 |
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Park
Service, state reach bison management agreement
By Matt Gouras AP, Bozeman Daily Chronicle
6/02/07
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HELENA,
Mont. (AP) -- The National Park Service and the
state of Montana agreed Friday to truck a renegade group
bison into Yellowstone National Park if they resist the
latest hazing efforts - an effort aimed at preventing
the slaughter of week-old bison calves.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer announced the plan with Suzanne
Lewis, superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. Schweitzer
said it was hammered out with the help of U.S. Interior
Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.
The plan would preclude sending the cows and calves to
slaughter - an issue that had brought intense scrutiny
from bison advocates.
"A pardon has been granted," Schweitzer said.
The agreement received mixed reaction from both sides
of the debate: ranchers who want the bison off their summer
feed ground and worry they will transmit disease to their
livestock and those who want free range for the Yellowstone
animals.
About 300 bison, including 100 calves born this spring,
have been roaming on summer cattle grazing lands near
West Yellowstone in recent weeks, despite several hazing
attempts. On Thursday and Friday, state agents on horses
and in a helicopter, pushed them back into the park.
About 280 were hazed back in on Thursday, and another
35 were pushed back into the park on Friday.
The hazing came after the Montana Livestock Department
postponed a plan to them to slaughter.
Schweitzer said the park service agreed to bend its rules
and allow them to truck the bison deep into the park should
they come back out. He called it a "middle ground"
agreement.
"This is unprecedented that the bison were getting
hazed back into the park and not staying there,"
the governor said. "The park has never agreed to
do this before, but we have not ever been in this situation
before."
Schweitzer said early reports, however, showed the latest
hazing effort may work. Many of the bison, hazed 7 miles
into the park, appeared to be heading deeper into Yellowstone.
If the bison come out, however, they will be loaded into
trucks and released in a capture facility near Gardiner
near the park's northern border. The bison would be coaxed
from there back into a different region of the park.
"I think we took a step in the right direction,"
Lewis said at a news conference with Schweitzer.
Lewis said more discussions are needed on managing the
bison.
"Clearly, finding places for bison on the landscape
outside the park remains a big goal," she said.
The Buffalo Field Campaign, a group that advocates for
a free-roaming wild bison herd, said the agencies buckled
amid public backlash to plans for an unprecedented slaughter
of so many calves.
"The cattle industry is out of control. They want
to kill little mommas and babies," said Mike Mease,
the group's co-founder. "I just think they went beyond
the line."
Mease said the plan to truck the bison back into the park
still does not allow the bison room around the park to
roam.
"I'm happy they are not going to kill the buffalo,
but the lesser of two evils is not a choice. It's an ultimatum,"
Mease said.
Ranchers weren't entirely pleased with the strategy worked
out by Schweitzer and federal officials.
Errol Rice, executive vice president of the Stockgrowers
Association, said they can live with the plan for the
short term.
He said the state has been too "lackadaisical"
in enforcing the interagency bison management agreement
that calls for the animals to be back in Yellowstone by
mid-May to make sure they don't commingle with cows being
put on summer pastures.
"But if this works, then fine," Rice said of
the new strategy.
Others have said the slaughter of excess bison that leave
the park is a needed tool to manage the size of a growing
Yellowstone herd.
Tensions are heightened after brucellosis was found in
a herd of cattle in the state last month. Another case
would cost the state its brucellosis-free status, requiring
more testing of cattle for the disease, which causes cows
to abort. It could also lead to restrictions on out-of-state
transport of cattle.
Schweitzer said the most important aspect of Friday's
agreement is that it assures that bison will not be commingling
with cattle.
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