INTRODUCTION
The American buffalo, or bison, once roamed North America 30
to 70 million strong. Today, less than 4,500 wild American buffalo
remain in the United States, mainly within the confines of Yellowstone
National Park.
Since the mid-1980’s agents from Montana’s cattle
industry and the federal government have slaughtered wild bison
migrating from Yellowstone National Park. This ongoing slaughter
threatens the survival of the last wild American bison.
On August 15, 2007 the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS)
issued a finding (USFWS
FINDING), in response to a hand-written petition submitted
by a citizen from Minnesota, Mr. James Horsley, (Download Horsley's
Petition, PDF, 8 pages, 1.7MB) on January 5, 1999, urging
the government to protect the Yellowstone population - the last
wild buffalo left in America - under the Endangered Species
Act (ESA).
FWS found that the wild population of American buffalo currently
living in and around Yellowstone National Park meets the criteria
of a Distinct Vertebrate Population Segment (USFWS
Distinct Vertebrate Population Segment page). Buffalo Field
Campaign has been circulating a petition (Download BFC's
ESA PETITION, PDF, 1 page, 152kb) for years to bolster support
for protecting the Yellowstone population - America's last wild
buffalo - as a Distinct Population Segment. Importantly, USFWS
acknowledges that Yellowstone National Park is the *only* place
in the U.S. where wild bison have continuously existed since
prehistoric times.
Unfortunately, USFWS has failed to adequately consider the wild
buffalo's historic range, which spanned hundreds of millions
of acres across North America. Under a policy announced in March
2007 that undermines the intent of Congress, the FWS redefined
how it determines whether a species is “in danger of extinction
throughout all or a significant portion of its range.”
In its finding, USFWS defined significant range only where bison
currently exist: the interior of Yellowstone National Park and
the Gardiner Basin, north of Yellowstone. Historic bison range
be damned.
We the people have an opportunity to help USFWS change their
minds and reconsider their decision. The task before us now
is to urge USFWS to thoroughly research what the bison’s
historic range is, what habitat has been lost and what must
be recovered. We must - and we can - clearly demonstrate that
the Yellowstone bison population - and its historic native range
- is endangered and warrants Endangered Species Act protection.
WHY
ESA PROTECTION FOR YELLOWSTONE BISON?
Yellowstone buffalo are the last continuously wild American
buffalo left in the United States. Once numbering an estimated
30 to 70 million, and ranging from the Appalachian Highlands
to the Chihuahuan Desert in northeastern Mexico, across the
Great Plains into the Rocky Mountains to the Great Slave Lake
in Canada, today wild buffalo are ecologically extinct throughout
nearly all their native range. Yellowstone is the last stronghold
for the wild American buffalo. This remnant population represents
the last of our nation's wild buffalo, not simply inhabitants
of the Yellowstone region. Yellowstone is where 23 individual
buffalo escaped the horrendous 19th century slaughter and their
near extinction.
Now is the time to help gain strong protection for America's
last wild buffalo! Please see the action item below. Read through
the talking points and supporting evidence. Submit your comments
to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS
Contact Information). Please pass this on to everyone you
know. This is a great opportunity to make a real, lasting difference
for America's last wild buffalo and their native habitat!
Background
Information
Click here to go to our Endangered
Species Act Background Information page
TAKE
ACTION! TELL FWS TO PROTECT WILD BISON UNDER THE ESA!
Please contact the USFWS today! Let them know you support
James Horsley's petition. Urge them to grant Endangered
Species Act protections to the Yellowstone buffalo, and strongly
encourage them to reconsider their current position not to
protect wild buffalo and their habitat under the ESA.
USFWS's finding is deficient and lacking serious scientific
consideration of the full range of threats that imperil the
wild American buffalo's survival. The agency must be encouraged
to gather and use the 'best available science' when making
their decision. Our task is to identify important
and substantial information that clearly demonstrates that
the last wild buffalo, those remaining in Yellowstone, and
their native, historic range, deserve protection under the
ESA. Include any information you feel is important to
the history and future of wild buffalo in America. Submit
stories, maps, books, papers; any information we can submit
to the USFWS to help them realize that the Yellowstone herd
is, indeed, endangered, and deserving of ESA protection.
INFORMATION
YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE:
* Scientific, legal, historical, literary articles and books.
* Indigenous story lines on bison occupying the Plains and
Mountain ecosystems in the West.
* Video, audio and photos.
* Population surveys, habitat maps, genetic and biological
data.
Petitions, letters, faxes, emails, and phone calls of support
to the USFWS can make a difference for America's last wild
bison!
WILD BISON NEED INDIGENOUS
SUPPORT!
The USFWS ignored any cultural significance of the bison to
indigenous peoples. First Nations must be heard. Help us fill
in the storylines of yesterday! Many Americans have only a
contemporary understanding of the buffalo's historic range.
Tribal members from the Indigenous Cultures who evolved and
coexisted with the buffalo can contribute significantly, helping
to fill in the many gaps that still exist, by sharing stories,
songs, and indigenous knowledge of the buffalo's ancestral
landscape and significance, what the people and the land have
suffered in their absence, and what their return would mean.
SEND
YOUR COMMENTS TO:
Michael Stempel
Assistant Regional Director, Ecological Services
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
134 Union Boulevard
Suite 645
Lakewood, CO 80228
mike_stempel@fws.gov
(ph) 303-236-4253
(fax) 303-236-0027
ESA
TALKING POINTS & SUPPORTING SCIENCE:
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's
finding does not consider how and by what migratory routes
bison came to occupy the Yellowstone Plateau. This is a critical
discussion - missing from their finding - on wild bison's
native range in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Without
this discussion, the American people have no way to judge
whether bison are endangered within all or a significant portion
of their native range.
Dr. Mary Meagher, Yellowstone National Park's bison biologist
for more than 30 years, believes that at the end of the last
Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, glacial retreat opened up range
for bison migrating from surrounding river valleys who followed
plant green up to the Yellowstone Plateau. Yellowstone's unique
geothermal features opened winter range for bison to occupy
the habitat year round.
Paradise Valley, along the Yellowstone River, is one of the
river valleys with documented bison jumps and other archaeological
evidence of bison inhabiting range that the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service did not consider in its finding.
"The Lamar Valley and the Yellowstone River Valley north
of the park (Figure 4.1) to Livingston and beyond was an important
area for bison and Native peoples throughout the Holocene.
This system can be considered the original Northern Range
for Yellowstone bison, functioning as an ecological continuum
of grasslands that likely supported seasonal migrations by
bison as far south as the high elevation ranges in the Upper
Lamar Valley. Davis and Zeier (1978:224) described the lower
Yellowstone Valley as an exceptional area for Native people
to gather, drive and kill bison. Eight bison jumps and three
kill sites have been documented south of Livingston. The closest
jump site to YNP is 25 km north of the park boundary. It was
used during the late prehistoric period between 1,700 and
200 b.p. (Cannon 1992). There is evidence of a human use corridor
from the Gallatin and Madison River drainages into the interior
Yellowstone National Park. Several major bison kill sites
are located in the Gallatin Valley outside of Bozeman Montana."
C. Cormack Gates et al, THE ECOLOGY OF BISON MOVEMENTS
AND DISTRIBUTION IN AND BEYOND YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK,
A Critical Review With Implications for Winter Use and Transboundary
Population Management, April 2005.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's
finding fails to consider the biology of bison, their nomadic
nature and migratory instinct, knowledge and memory of destination,
evolutionary significant characteristics of a wild bison herd.
Long distance migration, what defines wild bison as a nomadic,
herd animal that once thundered across the plains, is gone.
In The Last Mile: How to Sustain Long-Distance Migration
in Mammals, (Conservation Biology, Pages 320-331, Volume
18, No. 2, April 2004) Joel Berger examined the "ecological
phenomena" of accentuated treks of native ungulates in
Yellowstone and found that 100% of historic and current routes
for bison are lost.
Bison corridors and habitat on National Forest lands surrounding
Yellowstone National Park still exist but the US Forest Service
has yet to manage public lands for wild bison. Gallatin National
Forest, for example, which borders much of Yellowstone National
Park, does not even mention wild bison in their forest management
plan.
Migratory corridors and natural selection of habitat is critical
to maintaining the bison's herd habitat and genetic fitness,
and making a sound determination on the bison's native range.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service also fails to consider that wild bison as a native
wildlife species are at risk of genomic extinction.
A vast number of the 500,000 bison you see on the land today
have been bred with cattle. Conservatively, wild pure bison
managed as a wildlife species number around 4,500 in the United
States, and only one herd remains that has continuously occupied
its native range since prehistoric time: the Yellowstone bison.
The extensive prevalence of cattle genes in bison populations,
habitat fragmentation, limited range and population sizes,
isolated populations, artificial selection, intensive management
and fenced ranges, and non-native disease are just some of
the risk factors of ecological extinction that the U.S. Fish
& Wildlife Service failed to consider in its finding.
Curtis Freese along with several scientists writes in the
Second chance for the plains bison, (Biological Conservation
2007): "Small herd size, artificial selection, cattle-gene
introgression, and other factors threaten the diversity and
integrity of the bison genome. In addition, the bison is for
all practical purposes ecologically extinct across its former
range, with multiple consequences for grassland biodiversity.
Urgent measures are needed to conserve the wild bison genome
and to restore the ecological role of bison in grassland ecosystems."
"Today, the plains bison is for all practical purposes
ecologically extinct within its original range."
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service utterly failed to discuss the ecological importance
of bison and the vital, keystone role they play in maintaining
ecosystem health and function. Congress had intended that
the Endangered Species Act protect not just the species but
the ecosystem they reside in: "to provide a means whereby
the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened
species depend may be conserved."
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode16/usc_sec_16_00001531----000-.html
Extirpation of bison from their native range is an indicator
that the prairie ecosystem they played a part in forming is
also at risk of extinction.
"Bison were a keystone species of the prairie ecosystem;
significantly affecting the way the prairie grassland ecosystem
evolved and playing an important role in maintaining it. Wild
bison remain ecologically extinct in Montana. The State of
Montana Department of Livestock has prevented the natural
dispersal of wild bison into Montana from Yellowstone National
Park because of disease issues while no attempts are underway
to restore the species outside of this controversial region.
Current management of private, state and Federal bison herds
is leading towards domestication of bison that threatens their
wild character and limits important natural selection processes."
Position Statement of the Montana Chapter of The Wildlife
Society on Wild Bison in Montana, signed by the Executive
Board of The Montana Chapter of The Wildlife Society, and
adopted April 11, 2000.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service puts great faith in the "contingency measures"
of the Interagency Bison Management Plan and its "successful
management" to prevent the loss of the Yellowstone bison
population.
The on-going slaughter of large numbers of wild bison under
the interagency plan may threaten the genetic viability and
integrity of the Yellowstone bison herd's subpopulation structure.
Scientists have identified two distinct breeding grounds that
help maintain genetic diversity within the bison herd. However,
there is no evidence that the interagency plan has considered
bison subpopulation structure in its management decisions
and actions.
"The current practice of culling bison without regard
to possible subpopulation structure has potentially negative
consequences of reduced genetic diversity and alteration of
current genetic constitution both within individual subpopulations
and the overall YNP bison population."
"Since bison are known to naturally assemble in matriarchal
groups including several generations of related females and
the most recent calf crop (Seton 1937; Haines 1995), it is
possible that the culling of bison at the YNP boundaries is
non-random with respect to family groups, a practice that
over sufficient time may lead to systematic loss of genetic
variation."
"The caveat, however, is that caution must be practiced
in the management of populations with substructure to ensure
the maintenance of both subpopulation and total population
variation. The YNP bison population has not previously been
managed with this consideration in mind. For example, 1,084
bison were removed from YNP in the winter of 1996-97, representing
a 31.5% decrease in total population size. Even more troubling,
however, is the inequality in the reductions across the Northern
and Central herds. While the Northern herd suffered a loss
of approximately 83.9% (726/825), the Central herd was reduced
by only around 13.9% (358/2,571; Peter Gogan pers. comm.).
If in fact the Yellowstone bison population is represented
by 2 or 3 different subpopulations, disproportionate removals
of bison from various subpopulations might have detrimental
long-term genetic consequences." Natalie Dierschke Halbert,
The Utilization of Genetic Markers to Resolve Modern Management
Issues in Historic Bison Populations: Implications for Species
Conservation, December 2003.
PLEASE
TAKE ACTION TODAY!
MORE
INFORMATION:
For additional science conservation, habitat maps, and historical
manuscripts on bison visit our habitat page. http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/habitat.html
Download James Horsley's
Petition (PDF, 8 pages, 1.7MB) January 5, 1999
Download USFWS FINDING
(PDF, 6 pages, 100kb) August 15, 2007
USFWS
PRESS RELEASE August 17, 2007
TEXT VERSION OF USFWS FINDING:
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/E7-16004.htm
Congressional findings and declaration of purposes and policy
of the Endangered Species Act:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode16/usc_sec_16_00001531----000-.html
Information on the USFWS Policy Regarding the Recognition
of Distinct Vertebrate Population Segments Under the Endangered
Species Act:
http://www.fws.gov/endangered/policy/pol005.html
THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON,
By William T. Hornaday, Superintendent of the National
Zoological Park, 1889
An eBook courtesy of Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17748/17748-h/17748-h.htm
3/10/04-
Bison have nowhere left to roam, New Scientist, by
Dan Whipple
The migration of America's great mammals is being cut
off by encroaching human habitation and energy plants and
pipelines.
Bison Habitat
Click here to go to our
Bison Habitat page
|