200-210 Held at Stephens Creek in Montana
For Immediate Release:
March 6, 2025
Contacts:
Mike Mease
Campaign Coordinator, Buffalo Field Campaign
Justine Sanchez
Media Coordination, Buffalo Field Campaign,
Gardiner, MT – BFC Campaign Coordinator, Mike Mease, confirmed that a group of 200-210 Buffalo have been trapped by Yellowstone National Park at Stephens Creek near Gardiner, Montana. Buffalo began their annual migration into the Gardiner Basin last week and the Park began capturing groups of about 60 on Tuesday, March 4th and through this morning, March 6th (58). These were the first Buffalo to migrate into the basin this season. This is nothing new. In fact, last year a BFC press release dated around this same time, quoted now BFC Board Member James Holt saying, “Luring and trapping Buffalo inside Yellowstone Park is a decades-long practice that continues because of Montana’s stance to not permit a self-sustaining wild Buffalo population in the state. Wild Buffalo herds should be thriving on millions of acres of National public trust lands but for the capitulation of the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service to Montana’s plan of managing wild buffalo for extinction.”
BFC Board Vice President and Tribal Sovereignty & Indigenous Lifeways Program Director, Dallas Gudgell, Yankton Dakota, states that BFC is looking for solutions as the current and decades old Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) continues to fail the Buffalo, tribal people, and community members. "BFC believes that the best solution is to bring tribal leaders to the decision making management table and in the form of Tribal Co-management. It's time to bring Indigenous voices in to help determine how to restore and conserve wild migratory Buffalo and exercise treaty rights. It is time to allow the Buffalo to find their own tolerance zones and then protect those habitats as was done on Horse Butte."
Buffalo Field Campaign is calling for Tribal Co-stewardship of the Greater Yellowstone Bison.
Buffalo Field Campaign is a nonprofit group based in West Yellowstone, Montana working to protect America’s last wild bison in Yellowstone.
