Blood on the Tracks: Yellowstone Buffalo Atrocities

[Judi Lynn]

March 25, 2016
Blood on the Tracks: Yellowstone Buffalo Atrocities

by Louisa Willcox

This winter, 582 Yellowstone buffalo have been killed, either by hunters or government agents. The killing is escalating as winter drags on and buffalo, desperate for food, leave Yellowstone Park for lower elevation grasslands north in Montana. Hundreds more buffalo could be sent to slaughter or quarantine by the time spring green-up occurs, when buffalo return to graze in the protected core of the Park.

Once buffalo approach the border of the nation’s first park, management turns fundamentally hostile. As in the case of grizzly bears and wolves, management of buffalo caters primarily to a minority of well-heeled and politically well-connected agriculture interests at the expense of the broader public, who flock to Yellowstone to see these rare and iconic species in the flesh. More on what is behind this later.

Yellowstone supports the largest and most genetically pure free-roaming buffalo population in the country. In most other places buffalo have been interbred with domestic cattle. The comeback of Yellowstone’s buffalo from the brink of extinction is one of the greatest wildlife success stories in history of the US.

We came close to losing buffalo in the American West, which is incredible given that they once numbered between 21 and 88 million animals. It is important to remember that the 4,500 or so buffalo that now live in Yellowstone are descendants of just 23 surviving buffalo at the turn of the last century. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature continues to designate Bison bison as “vulnerable to global extinction.” Our current policies that led to this year’s slaughter don’t help.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/25/blood-on-the-tracks-yellowstone-buffalo-atrocities/

Also posted in Good Reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016148973

[2naSalit]

1. K&R!!!

[mountain grammy]

2. There's a pure herd in Colorado

and now another. But, it seems, one can't say "buffalo" without "brucellosis." So is it a problem or not? From other articles I've read, I'd say not, but this one says otherwise except they fixed it.

http://www.cpr.org/news/story/small-herd-pure-buffalo-be-released-northern-colorado

[NickB79]

3. The atrocity isn't the annual bison cull, despite what so many want to believe

The atrocity is that we've taken a species that used to roam millions of acres of land across half a continent, converted 99.999% of it's habitat into farms, ranches, and cities, and then expect the survivors to subsist like they had for the past million years on the remaining 0.0001% of the land we left for them.

So long as Yellowstone is an island of habitat in a sea of human activity, we MUST cull the herds annually or they'll overpopulate and devour their ecosystem. Grey wolf reintroduction has helped a bit, but grey wolves were never the primary predator of bison. A pack MIGHT take down a calf now and then, but are useless against a mature cow or bull. Until 10,000 years ago, they were stalked by the American lion, dire wolves, and short-faced bear. Then, 10,000 years ago, a new predator drove the old ones to extinction and took over the role of top predator. That species was human, so I find it a little ironic that some argue against allowing their one remaining predator to hunt them today.

Ending the culls will kill far more of the herds, only drawn out over a longer period of time than gunfire would. Work to expand their habitat instead, or you are fighting a hopeless battle.