| GARDINER,
MONTANA. Eight Yellowstone bison calves, captured
and orphaned by state and federal agencies, escaped
the Corwin Springs quarantine facility near Gardiner,
Montana on Monday of this week.
"This quarantine is a failed experiment that should
be stopped at once," said Buffalo Field Campaign
(BFC) Project Director Dan Brister. "Bison are
escaping and wild animals are entering. By definition
quarantine is 'a strict isolation imposed to prevent
the spread of disease.' The incompetence of Montana
Fish, Wildlife, and Parks and the Department of Agriculture
in allowing the quarantined animals to potentially mingle
with wild animals is astounding," he added.
Bighorn sheep and mule deer were observed inside the
facility last winter and spring.
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) and USDA's
Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)
run the joint state-federal quarantine feasibility study
under the premises of creating "a disease-free
herd," and restoring "wild bison" to
public and tribal lands. The captured wild calves are
living in domestication. They are imprisoned within
double-electric fences, wear ear tags and are fed hay
like livestock. The bison calves are routinely handled
and experimented on by scientists.
After somehow managing to escape through a double fence,
the domesticated bison remained in the immediate area
and were easily recaptured.
"Quarantine is the antithesis of buffalo restoration.
Wild buffalo restore themselves naturally, every year
when members of the Yellowstone herd attempt to migrate,
but the government keeps getting in the way and killing
them for trying," said BFC spokesperson Stephany
Seay.
The agencies obtain the wild Yellowstone bison calves
from capture and slaughter operations carried out under
the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP). The IBMP
is a taxpayer-funded state/federal plan drafted at the
urging of Montana's livestock industry. Approximately
100 bison calves have been captured from Yellowstone
and transported to the facility. Over the summer, 48
calves were removed from quarantine and sent to slaughter
to be dissected and studied. None of the calves killed
were infected with brucellosis.
Wild bison have never transmitted brucellosis to domestic
cattle, even where they have coexisted for decades (Grand
Teton National Park).
Representatives from the Buffalo Field Campaign, a wild
bison advocacy group, toured the facility last spring
and were shocked at the conditions in which the wild
calves were being held.
"We found old syringe-needles from when the property
was an elk ranch," said BFC co-founder Mike Mease,
"and there is an old semi-tractor still parked
in one of the active pastures and a lot of junk--scrap
metal and old machinery--scattered around the place.
They haven't even installed freeze-proof irrigation
to maintain the larger pastures, so the bison are stuck
in small corrals unfit even for cattle."
At a public meeting in Gardiner, Montana last winter,
FWP scientist Keith Aune boasted that they would "train
[the now-domesticated calves] how to be wild."
He went on to say that running the quarantine facility
"is a lot like ranching."
American Bison once spanned the continent, numbering
between 30 and 50 million. The Yellowstone bison are
America's only continuously wild herd, numbering fewer
than 4,000 animals, less than .01 percent of the bison's
former population.
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