Since the late 90s, Yellowstone National Park has sent thousands of bison to slaughter. They did it in keeping with a legal agreement with the state of Montana to control populations and keep the animals from leaving the park in search of food in the spring. Yellowstone officials and the Intertribal Buffalo Council, which represents 83 tribes, celebrated an expanded holding facility that will reduce the slaughter, and send more live animals to tribal lands across the country.
Officials cut the ribbon in an opening ceremony recently.
More than 6,000 bison live in Yellowstone National Park now. It is the greatest number since the early 2000s, when the park was required to limit the population to 3,000.
In the winter of 1996-97, there were about 3,000 bison in Yellowstone. That season, gunmen at the park’s northern border in Montana shot hundreds of them as they were moving north out of the park for food.
“They lost 50% of the bison," Yellowstone Park Superintendent Cam Sholly said. "There was no tribal hunting. Bison were killed right on the boundary."
Blackfoot tribe member Ervin Carlson is the president of the Intertribal Buffalo Council (ITBC)
“We were here, and the slaughter was going on, and ITBC litigated, to stop the slaughtering of those animals,” Carlson said.
But the killing continued for decades. Yellowstone employees rounded up hundreds of bison each spring to be sent to slaughter. It was required by a court-mediated agreement with the state of Montana, which sought to protect nearby cattle ranches from the possible spread of brucellosis from the bison.
“I remember in 2008, that number exceeded 1,500 animals," Chris Geremia, the park's lead bison biologist, said. "This winter, it was 88.”
The Park’s management team has a new tool now. They have more holding pens to keep bison that are tested for brucellosis until they are cleared for shipment to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana.
“And so far we’ve shipped almost 300 animals to our partners, the Assiniboine and Sioux at Fort Peck,” Sholly said.
The Fort Peck tribes have another brucellosis testing and holding facility that allows the state and USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to come on to tribal lands and inspect that facility.
Sholly pointed out the Fort Peck tribes have sent bison to 23 tribes in 12 states.
"The bison were transported as far south as Oklahoma, and as far north as Alaska, where they had to be flown on a Federal Express plane,” Sholly said.
Bison are still killed as they leave the park to seek food. Yellowstone officials said 1,500 were hunted and killed this spring by members of various tribes, who took the meat home to feed their families.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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