Last week's photo essay revealed how bison are captured and handled at Stephens Creek. The photos and stories generated a lot of angry comments about shipping our national mammal to slaughter. There is a life-saving alternative to ship-to-slaughter, and this week I want to focus on the growing Yellowstone Bison Conservation Transfer Program (BCTP).
This program moves captured bison through a multi-year quarantine process with the goal of eventually certifying them as brucellosis free and then transferring them to Tribal lands. The bison in the photo above was an early transfer stepping onto Tribal lands. In addition to keeping bison alive, transferring them to Native Americans also helps return bison to their important place in Tribal cultures. Bison have a cultural and spiritual significance with at least thirty Native American Tribes.
The BCTP Today
The transfer of Yellowstone bison in particular is important because the park’s 5,000 or so bison are genetically pure wild bison. While there are around 500,000 bison across the U.S., almost all are domestic livestock. Most live behind fences and many of those bison have been bred with cattle. They are no longer genetically pure or wild.
The transfer process begins at Yellowstone National Park’s bison capture facility at Stephens Creek near the park’s northern border. This is also where bison are captured for the ship-to-slaughter program. The BCTP is a partnership between the park, Fort Peck Tribes, InterTribal Buffalo Council, and the State of Montana. It receives some financial support from non-profits such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Yellowstone Forever.
The park reports on their website that since 2019, 154 bison have been transferred from Yellowstone to the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. Of those 154 bison, 82 were subsequently transferred to the InterTribal Buffalo Council (ITBC) and then given to 17 member Tribes. (The ITBC website reports that the council has 69 member Tribes from 19 different states.)
The park’s website also reports 95 bison quarantined in the Stephens Creek facilities with 28 of them to be transferred to Fort Peck this winter. The park intends to bring 80 to 120 new bison into the transfer program this winter.
While the number of bison transferred so far is small, there is no shortage of Tribes that want bison. Demand is not the limiting factor, supply is. Shana Drimal, a wildlife conservation associate with Greater Yellowstone Coalition, presented a recent bison webinar. She addressed the supply issue and said that the pinch point has been the time that it takes to get bison through the certification process. “How," she asked, "do we get more of them diverted from slaughter" and to the Tribes?
The Expanded BCTP
More bison will soon be transferred to the Tribes. Last year, a fund raising program by Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Yellowstone Forever, and Yellowstone National Park raised a million dollars. The Associated Press reports that the funds will pay for fencing to divide an existing pen in half and to build two new pens. Each pen requires double fencing so that bison inside a pen cannot make nose-to-nose contact with bison outside a pen. Removing such physical contact is one way to reduce the spread of brucellosis. Water infrastructure will also be improved and a corral used for testing the bison will be built. The expansion has begun and should be completed by early 2022.
The new pens will double capacity to about 200 bison and boost transfers to Fort Peck each year from about 30 bison to 100. With more bison transferred, fewer will be slaughtered.
State and Federal Laws Limit the BCTP
The Fort Peck Tribes could do the entire quarantine process at the state-of-the-art facility they built several years ago in northeastern Montana. They could quarantine 600 bison there. But, state and federal laws stop them from doing so.
Montana law prohibits the transfer of live bison to new areas unless they are first certified as brucellosis-free. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) won’t allow the full quarantine process to be conducted at Fort Peck, despite having approved the facilities. “The agency," the Associated Press reports, "wants to contain brucellosis as much as possible to the Yellowstone area, despite the fact that free-roaming elk also carry the disease.”
How the Transfer Works
Given Montana’s restrictive legislation and APHIS limits, the quarantine process must begin in Yellowstone. Here's how it works. The bison are captured and tested at Stephens Creek during winter when they leave the park’s higher elevations in search of less snow and more grass. The number of bison captured depends on the number that migrate past the capture facility. That number varies widely. So far this winter, for example, few bison have migrated past Stephens Creek and few have been captured. In other winters hundreds have been captured.
Once captured, the bison are kept at or near Stephens Creek and repeatedly tested until they complete the first two phases of quarantine and are considered brucellosis free. At that point, Montana law allows them to be shipped. Male bison take up to one and a half years to complete the process; females take three years. Once the bison arrive at Fort Peck, they are quarantined for yet another year until they are certified as having completed a third phase. Then some of those bison are transferred to other Tribal lands.
Here’s how one Tribal transfer worked, according to a Defenders of Wildlife press release. Last December, Fort Peck Tribes, the InterTribal Buffalo Council, and Defenders of Wildlife facilitated the transfer of 56 Yellowstone bison from Fort Peck to the lands of the Yakama Nation in Washington and the Modoc Nation in Oklahoma. Each tribe received a family of 28 bison. That transfer marked the first time two large intact families of bison were transferred under the BCTP.
“These buffalo will go to tribes that are beginning their cultural herds,” said Robbie Magnan, director of Fort Peck’s Fish and Game Department. “Like Fort Peck and many other tribes, the Yakama and Modoc will once again have buffalo for their Indian communities and traditions.”
The Importance of Yellowstone Bison
The importance of these transferred bison to Tribal nations was explained by Troy Heinert, executive director of InterTribal Buffalo Council, when he was interviewed by NPR’s Scott Simon last December.
Heinert told Simon that ITBC wants to restore Yellowstone’s bison to Tribal nations because of their pristine genetics. “Yellowstone buffalo,” Heinert said, “are the cornerstone of the species. They are the last free-roaming wild buffalo that go back to the same buffalo that our ancestors followed and made their life from.”
He added that there is also the “the spiritual and cultural connection that we have to those buffalo” “Buffalo was our main food source, it was shelter. It was tools, weapons. But it was also more about learning. Our young men watched buffalo and saw how the males protect the cows and calves.” He added, “We view the buffalo as a relative and we try to treat them as such.”
When Simon asked Heinert why so few bison can be transferred to the Tribes, he acknowledged that the limiting factor is the size of the Stephens Creek facility. He said that ITBC is working with congressional representatives and the park managers to enlarge the facility and allow for the capture and relocation of more bison because the ITBC wants to see fewer bison shipped to slaughter. “We know that we have tribes that can take care of these animals. So it is kind of difficult when some of these animals are culled.” He added that his organization wants “to get as many live buffalo to as many tribal nations as we can.”
His bestselling In the Temple of Wolves; its sequel, Deep into Yellowstone; and its prequel, The Wilds of Aging are available signed.
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