I took this photo of a bison bulldozing through deep snow in search of dried grass a few days ago, as a winter storm blew into Yellowstone dropping snow and temperatures. Deeper snow makes bulldozing to reach dried grasses more work. And colder temperatures can create a layer of ice in the snowpack that makes bulldozing nearly impossible. Facing such difficulties, hungry bison, our national mammal, migrate from Yellowstone’s higher reaches to the Gardiner Basin seeking less snow and more dried grass. While this is a naturally caused race between starvation and spring, we humans make life even harder for these hungry bison.
Once bison migrate the thirty or forty miles to Gardiner Basin, they reach “the trap,” the Stephens Creek bison capture facility operated by the National Park Service inside Yellowstone. The trap sits right on their migration route, and bison are hazed into the trap by NPS staff. Once inside they are processed. As a squeezing device holds the grunting, frightened animal in place, an NPS biologist using a large needle draws a blood sample. Once released, the bison runs into a corral to join other captives. Bison are processed one after another. A few buck and kick so hard they are passed through untouched. Afterwards the captured bison are shipped to slaughterhouses outside the park. Tribal nations divide the meat and furs.
I took this photo of a big-eyed bison while on a tour at the bison capture facility, Tours have not been held in the last couple of years.
Death-by-trap is one of the two types of unnatural death awaiting hungry bison when they migrate each winter from Yellowstone’s higher reaches to the Gardiner Basin. Hundreds of bison that avoid the trap die at the rifles of a firing squad of shooters lurking two miles farther along the migration route and barely beyond Yellowstone’s northern border.
The two bison in the photo below were part of a group of two dozen or so grazing and walking in a protected area just outside the park in a recent winter. In the background are shooters waiting for the bison to go where they can be shot. There were more than twenty vehicles crowding the roadside and at least 35 people watching and waiting.
The Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) decides how many bison these two methods remove. Often the toll is around nine hundred each winter. This killing helps the IBMP meet its goals of confining bison within Yellowstone and artificially maintaining the park’s population at three thousand to five thousand head.
The IBMP claims this carnage protects Montana livestock from brucellosis, an infection caused by bacteria. Livestock with brucellosis may abort calves, causing ranchers to lose money. Bison can transmit brucellosis to cattle, but there has never been a documented case of that transfer in the wild. Brucellosis transfer originally went in the other direction: cattle infected bison in the early days of the park when cattle were kept in Yellowstone to provide milk and meat for visitors.
Elk, on the other hand, have transmitted brucellosis to cattle many times. Yet Montana’s livestock industry has prospered, regardless of dire predictions of the financial cost of infection. Though guilty of spreading brucellosis, elk are not confined to the park or trapped like bison. Elk are not treated as livestock and controlled by Montana’s Department of Livestock as bison are if they escape the park. Elk are trophies to be hunted and displayed. Bison are brucellosis scapegoats to be shot and slaughtered.
This devastation isn’t even necessary: cattle can be inoculated against brucellosis just as they are against other ailments. This mismanagement of bison is simply a way for livestock producers to protect pastures of almighty grass.
All IBMP partners participate in deciding how many bison are captured or killed each winter. The IBMP began as a court-ordered coalition of the National Park Service, US Forest Service, USDA-Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, Montana Department of Livestock, and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. Later, the InterTribal Buffalo Council, the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes, and the Nez Perce Tribe joined.
Since 1985 more than 12,500 genetically pure Yellowstone bison have been killed by slaughter or shooters, according to the Buffalo Field Campaign, an admirable organization committed to protecting bison.
PHOTO CREDITS: All photos by Rick Lamplugh
Rick Lamplugh writes and photographs to protect wildlife and wild lands.
His bestselling In the Temple of Wolves; its sequel, Deep into Yellowstone; and its prequel, The Wilds of Aging are available signed. His books are also available unsigned or as eBook or audiobook on Amazon.
Another powerful indictment of the wildlife "management plan" in the vicinity of Yellowstone, Rick. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThank you, George!
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