[mossy mom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/us/23bison.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss this article made it catch my attention but I could not find it the other day. In 2000, the State of Montana, the National Park Service, the United States Forest Service and the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, which oversees disease issues for the Department of Agriculture, signed an agreement to manage the population. It had two main objectives: to stop the spread of brucellosis, which can also be transmitted from elk, and to allow some bison to leave Yellowstone unmolested. Conservationists, Montana state officials and other critics say the first part of the agreement has been honored, but the second part has been ignored by the federal government. “The public should be outraged,” said Amy McNamara, national parks program director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in Bozeman, Mont., which has worked to allow bison to leave the park. “An American icon is being taken to slaughter.” Ms. McNamara added, “By next week they’ll be in somebody’s freezer.” Federal officials say the money needed to make the agreement work — to obtain land along the Yellowstone River that would allow the bison to cross from the park to a publicly owned forest north of the park — has not been allocated by Congress. Bruce Knight, under secretary for marketing and regulatory programs for the Department of Agriculture, said his department did not manage land or pay for the acquisition of habitat. “I’ve never received a directed appropriation for that,” Mr. Knight said. At issue is a corridor of land on the Royal Teton Ranch, owned by a religious group called the Church Universal and Triumphant. Last fall, a final stumbling block was removed when church leaders agreed to move their cattle off 2,500 acres of the land so the bison could cross to the forest, about 10,000 acres farther downstream. Any movement from there is blocked by a narrow canyon and the river. With the cattle removed from the land, there would be no risk of transmission of brucellosis from infected bison. The plan would allow 25 bison who had tested negative for exposure to the disease to be allowed out of the park. If that went well, 50 or more would be allowed to leave, and so on. The State of Montana and conservationists committed to raising $1.3 million toward the $3 million or so it would cost to lease the church group’s land for 30 years. They expected the federal government, through the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, to ....... cont follow link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/us/23bison.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[treeswarper]

I likes to eat them! Buffalo...Bison mmmmmmmm

[Dane]

[mossy mom]

[Grinch]

[Klapton]

It's clear that the authors of that website are not comfortable with their position in the food chain. It must be very sad for them to see bison treated like cattle, waiting to be killed as quickly and humanely as possible. I'd be willing to bet if there were groups of people riding bareback on horses with their dark hair flying in the wind, trying to stab them with spears, it would somehow seem more "natural" and fitting. No matter how you dress it up, Homo Sapiens is the most important predator in the ecological balance of these creatures. Especially since we have crowded out other predators. What I want to know is this: since my tax dollars are paying for this, why hasn't anyone delivered my bison burgers? YUM YUM!!!

[mossy mom]

Ok so you're all for killing animals in national parks.. PLONK!

[Klapton]

[wildernessed]

[GeoHiker]

Pest, what would you suggest they do with the over populated bison? You aren't going to adopt one and take it home. Any time you have an over abundance of any animal you have problems. There has to be a healthy balance and no amount of predators is going to correct that. They'll over graze, become diseased, and die a slow painful death. I went through Yellowstone year ago last summer after being away for 20 years. I was astonished at the number of bison. They were everywhere!....in parking lots, on every trail, in the road, at the Marina. Like a field of locust they had tore up vast areas of meadow. Culling is the most effective way to reduce the numbers. May as well get some use out of the animal. Send me some bison burger!......

[mossy mom]

Overpopulation is not the issue. See the article in the New York times.

[Dane]

(By the way, I reject that "overpopulation is not the issue". If the problem weren't too many bison, how would culling them help?) By what standard are the bison "overpopulated"? They were one of the most numerous megafauna on the entire continent until whitey came along. Their near extinction is a favorite example of the massive effects humans have on the ecosystems we inhabit, and we get a chuckle out of the foolishness of those "hunters" who killed dozens for sport and just left the bodies to rot. So it's a bit ironic that when their rebound becomes inconvenient for us we decide to cull them down to an "acceptable" level. I recognize that culling can be a helpful tool in land management. But I wonder if this is unneccesary tinkering - nature will find it's own balance independent of us, and attempting to fight that will be an expensive and unwinnable campaign. So what is causing the population growth among bison? If it is human activity then it's a problem we should address, for the sake of minimizing our footprint. But humans aren't running a bison breeding program; if humans are to blame it is through indirect means, but I can't figure out what that would be. Do they have natural predators that we have wiped out? Are we somehow making more food available to them? Whatever it might be we shoud focus on that in the long term and minimize culling. But maybe humans aren't to blame. Maybe bison are just extraordinarily well adapted creatures. In that case, who are we to kill them? With most of the world's megafauna species in decline this is a good thing. Sure I'd prefer tigers or mountain gorrilas or rhinos or river dolphins to be making this kind of comeback instead, but what's wrong with allowing bison to fill out their ecological niche?

[mossy mom]

Please read the New York Times article.

[Dane]

Okay. I'm still not sure what the justification is for us to kill them. Why is it our problem that they have brucellosis?

[GeoHiker]

Because the ranchers lease the land at a $1 an ac, so they have first rights to it for their cattle. No different than the oil companies with the gas prices. They squeeze hard enough and you'll say ouch. Don't buy meat anymore that will be a good way to fight back. It all comes down to the power of the cattle industry and what they want. As long as we eat beef in this country they have the upper hand end of story. Ohh and to answer your ? Dane, Yellowstone burned something like a million acs? in that fire 15-18 years ago? It's all prime grass lands now, so there is a huge food supply that was never there before. Bison are no different than cattle, deer, or elk. They will outbreed their territory and either die off of disease or starve to death. I"m not sure why some prefer an animal starves to death. Yeah let them die a natural death. If you've ever delt with starving animals you would not say that. It's a horrible death and something you would prevent at all costs. Best thing to do would be to kick out everyone in Wyoming and MT that way the bison could migrate and we wouldn't have to manage them. Guess that's not going to happen is it.