Wyoming News

Guest Opinion

Is Gardiner, Montana, the Selma, Alabama, of Wildlife Conservation?

By Michael Leach, Guest Writer, 2-09-11

Photo by Flickr user reivax.

With temperatures hovering around minus-20 degrees Fahrenheit, I awoke this morning to blue skies and sun bathing the snow-covered landscape on the northern reaches of Yellowstone National Park.  I look out my window and see a lone bull bison working his way up the Jardine Road.  Why then, on this glorious winter day, does it feel as if a dark and lingering cloud hovers over the rolling hills surrounding Gardiner, Montana? 

When I was growing up as a fourth generation resident of the Tri-state region (Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming), observing the elephant of North America, the American Bison—Bison bison—was the highlight of many summer forays to Yellowstone.  Having worked for the National Park Service as a ranger naturalist for seven summer seasons and as a wildlife tour guide since departing my post in Mammoth Hot Springs in 2007, I have witnessed firsthand the awe and wonder visitors to the region feel when encountering a herd of wild Yellowstone bison.  I continue to experience that same awe, even as I pick up my cell phone to call the Buffalo Field Campaign office in Gardiner and let them know of the lone straggler.

Bison management is the dark cloud which makes the northern boundary of Yellowstone National Park during harsh winters such as this a depressing and oppressive place to live.  Long respected throughout the nation for its legacy in wildlife management, Montana’s current approach to managing bison represents a deeply-blackened eye that threatens to dismantle the Treasure State’s reputation as a leader in progressive management policies.

While there has never been a documented case of a bison transmitting brucellosis to cattle in the wild, this has not stopped the failing and flailing members of the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) from spending millions of tax-payer dollars to haze, capture and slaughter bison to protect the brucellosis-free status of the state of Montana.  In February of 2004, Wyoming lost its brucellosis-free status.  With back-page press coverage, Idaho’s status was stripped two years later, and in 2008, after decades of stock-growers warning that a loss of brucellosis-free status could destroy the Montana economy, their hyperbolic fear became a reality for ranchers under the Big Sky. 

But guess what?  Elk, not bison, were determined to be the culprits for all of these cases; and while testing costs certainly increased for ranchers across the Tri-state region, neither the largely tourist-based Montana economy, nor the cattle sky came falling down, nor will they ever, from a loss of brucellosis-free status.  Brucellosis just happens to be the smoke and mirror disease used to perpetuate the myth that Yellowstone’s bison have to be aggressively managed.  If this goat-show (a Western term for cluster) that is bison management had anything to do with the transmission of brucellosis, elk, too, would be targeted.  And why not accept the common sense proposal of dual classification throughout Montana, creating a hot-zone around Yellowstone National Park that would acknowledge (in the words of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, one of the five signatory agencies in the IBMP) that brucellosis “is a more localized problem?” Perhaps because such an approach makes too much sense. 
As reported in a recent Bozeman Chronicle article, area ranchers “get” it and are willing to live with bison.  Why then can’t the government agencies representing the IBMP begin acting rationally and practice greater tolerance for an animal that symbolizes the wildness and ruggedness that Montana supposedly represents?

Yellowstone’s most magnificent beast continues to be managed by politics and fear. The most recent management strategy—to allow 25 bison on land north of the park—is yet another mismanaged failure.  For a pretty penny, the Church Universal and Triumphant (known to locals as “CUT”—remember Elizabeth Clare Prophet and her doomsday sect?), agreed to retire grazing rights on their thoroughfare of land extending north from the park on the west side of the Yellowstone River.  While celebrated by the NGOs who helped broker this controversial deal, workers on the ground representing the IBMP agencies were not optimistic this plan would work.  True to predictions, just over a week after being released, the 25 bison that have been “poked, prodded, marked, vaginally violated, and all but dehorned,” according to bison advocate Glenn Hockett of the Gallatin Wildlife Association, were already under assault from Montana Department of Livestock field agents.

Frustrated by the lack of cooperation on the part of the wild bison, who simply wouldn’t stay put on the 2,500 acres of Gallatin National Forest grazing habitat that promoters of the plan hoped would contain the migratory animals until May 1, IBMP members recaptured 13 of the 25 animals and released them back into the park.  The recently-released bison then surprised agents by crossing the Yellowstone River to commune with a band of bison being held at a quarantine facility—which should not have come as a big surprise to anyone who knows the behavior of this herd animal.  One rogue bison, who refused to be hazed from private land, was shot.  Not an illustrious start to the new plan, which had been touted by its creators as a great step toward resolution of the bison problem.  Perhaps best put by Mr. Hockett: “I believe this will likely go down as one of the worst ‘conservation’ deals in U.S. history, certainly in Montana history.” It appears even the $3.3 million recently paid to CUT, on top of almost $13 million they received in 1997 for the basically the same purpose, can’t buy tolerance for bison.

Why are 300-plus of Yellowstone’s 3,900 bison currently crammed into holding pens at the Stephens Creek holding facility for simply following their ancestral instincts to migrate to lower elevations in search of food—a right all other ungulates in the Yellowstone ecosystem are afforded?  Why were the 100-plus bison walking north into an oncoming storm a week ago Sunday hazed and captured, when the band of a dozen bull elk and neighboring herd of 40 cow elk—an animal proven to have transmitted the disease to cattle—were not bothered?  Since this issue has more to do with bison competing with the sacred cow for grass, along with their fence-destroying abilities, than it does with any real concern over a disease that is 50 years past its time as a real threat, I believe there is clearly an elephant in the room that no one wants to address. 

Gardiner, Montana, is the Selma, Alabama, of conservation wars in our nation today.  I say this with great caution so as not to offend those who battled on behalf of equality for a beautiful people long oppressed because of the color of their skin.  But I believe our current battle to gain greater tolerance and understanding for animals such as bison, grizzlies and wolves requires the same passion, dedication, and leadership as the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 60s.  Those who argue the election of President Obama signals that racism and bigotry no longer exist in our nation are delusional.  While we have clearly become a more enlightened and progressive nation in regard to race, fear of the unknown still leads to hate and misguided policy. 

Driving through the Paradise Valley early this morning was eerily reminiscent of a dark time in our nation’s history.  Let the dogs loose, the bison are out! With over 300 bison already captured, another band of 15 busted loose of the park under the darkness of night and minus-30-degree temperatures.  Does this seemingly innocent movement of roughly a dozen bison really warrant the deployment of an entire brigade of state agents? In the short 51-mile drive north to Livingston, Montana, I witnessed 11 trucks and three horse trailers—representing Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, Montana Department of Livestock and local sheriffs—caravanning en route to play cowboy with 15 members of the Pleistocene. 

I have often heard state and federal agents express the opinion that bison don’t fit in a 21st century Montana.  There was a time in our nation’s history when our government didn’t believe whites and blacks were meant to co-exist, but many wise and determined leaders saw this racist nonsense to be unfit for a progressive and enlightened America.  The question is not whether bison belong in a 21st century Montana; but whether we are willing to live in a state where intolerance for a magnificent and honorable animal, and not science, drives our management policies.

In my opinion, the Yellowstone bison debate is no longer an issue of wildlife management, but one of social justice and moral responsibility.  The bison management strategy that has sent 3,800 wild bison to slaughter since 2000—simply for wandering across an invisible line in search of food—remains stagnant and archaic.  How we will be evaluated by future generations as wildland stewards will ultimately be measured by how we respond to this challenge.

Michael Leach, a former Yellowstone ranger naturalist, is a guide, writer, and founder/director of the nonprofit Yellowstone Country Guardians. He lives in Gardiner, Montana.

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