Fixing the Herd

Congress Looks at Solutions to Yellowstone Bison Debate

By Sanjay Talwani, 3-20-07

	Joshua Osher (left) of Buffalo Field Campaign listens to the discussion at a congressional hearing on the Yellowstone bison Tuesday. Also at the table, from left, are James Hagenbarth of the Montana Stockgrowers Association, Dr. Charles Kay of Utah State University and Darrell Geist, working with the Buffalo Field Campaign. Photo by Sanjay Talwani.

Montana’s lone Congressman, Denny Rehberg raised his voice Tuesday at a Congressional oversight hearing about the bison in Yellowstone National Park, the feared transmission of calf-aborting brucellosis from bison to Montana’s cattle, and the resulting years of killing and hazing thousands of bison that wandered out of the park in search of food.

“I have an answer,” Rehberg thundered in his leadoff statement to the House Natural Resources Committee panel that oversees national parks. “Why don’t you fix your herd?”

Fixing the herd—by stamping out brucellosis entirely—was central in the discussions toward solving the Yellowstone bison standoff. The hearing of the National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands Subcommittee, now chaired by Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, was the first ever to address the issue.

Also new for the new Congress was testimony from the Buffalo Field Campaign, which advocates giving buffalo full access to all suitable habitat in Montana within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and managing cattle grazing in the area to keep them brucellosis-free.

The scruffy beards and Western dress on hand were a departure from the usual sea of charcoal suits, and the BFC’s Joshua Osher said it was the first time the group has ever testified to Congress after several years of coming to Washington to sway members of Congress and their staff. 

The hearing didn’t address any specific legislation but raised several concerns, Congressional complaints against the bureaucracies, and possible solutions. Most agreed the current management scheme (the Interagency Bison Management Plan, or IBMP, launched in December 2000) is not the long-term solution and not much of a short-term solution either.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer stressed from the start: He’s a rancher and an agricultural scientist and wants to keep the government brucellosis-free seal for his state’s cattle industry.

Straying as usual from his prepared testimony into a presentation apparently guided by a few hand-written notes, Schweitzer offered three options: The first involves continued negotiations with landowners of some 9,000-plus acres for arrangements by which the cattle and bison would never graze in the same place at the same time, thus greatly reducing the risk of disease transmission.

Or, the ranchers could run other species that aren’t susceptible to the brucellosis. The largest relevant landowner is the Royal Teton Ranch, owned by the Church Universal and Triumphant, an upscale, Messianic sect known over the years for its arms cache, apocalyptic predictions, and favoring of the color purple, among other things. Schweitzer said real estate deals take seven or eight round of negotiations to work out, and so far they were only on round three or four.

Schweitzer’s second option involved a zone north of the park where the cattle and buffalo could still coexist, but the cattle would be subject to thorough—“100 percent”—testing upon entering or leaving the zone.

The third option involves developing vaccines to protect cattle, bison, elk and other animals against brucellosis. There’s plenty of debate whether that’s even possible anytime soon, but Schweitzer also warned that a disease-free herd would become classified as other wildlife, relatively free to roam and managed by hunting. He raised the image of bison cluttering train tracks and the exciting road from Bozeman to Big Sky, and knocking down fences all over eastern Montana.

Another key theme from Schweitzer and others: The need for the Department of Interior, overseeing the parks, and the USDA, overseeing cattle health certification, need to coordinate.

Schweitzer also said management of buffalo could well include hunting even inside the park, where it’s now prohibited.

James F. Hagenbarth of the Montana Stockgrowers Association zeroed in on the eradication of brucellosis, and a long-term plan of all interested parties to make it happen. After the hearing, he said he’d favor federal legislation to totally fund the development of injectible vaccines for cattle and oral vaccines on bait on wildlife.

“We need to focus right on that,” he said.

In the hearing, he noted the ultimate consequences of Montana losing its brucellosis-free stamp could be ranchers selling out their choice Yellowstone-area land to developers, replacing the cows and open space with condos for an even harsher environment for buffalo and other wildlife.

Speaking afterward, he dismissed Schweitzer’s image of disease-free buffalo with license to rampage across the prairies, noting that the state has ways of managing wildlife, including hunting. He especially took issue with Schweitzer’s suggestion for a buffer zone with increased testing for cows, saying the practical effects would be too onerous.

The nation’s top vet—Dr. John Clifford, USDA Deputy Administrator for APHIS (the Animal and Plant Inspection Service)—also called for an eradication of brucellosis in the bison and elk herds, which he said will require continued development of various methods and technologies.

Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, elaborated upon the torturous buffalo deaths that inevitably arise when thousands are killed. He recounted a 14-year-old boy taking a long rifle shot at a buffalo, nailing its spine; the beast made some 30 attempts to rise to its feet before dying, he said.

Tim Stevens of the National Parks Conservation Association testified to the cultural significance of the bison and the enjoyment of wildlife by tourists. In addition to advocating separation of cattle and bison in the short term, he and others said the USDA should designate a brucellosis sub-zone in the Yellowstone area so detection of the disease in two cattle herd there would not blacklist cattle hundreds of miles away elsewhere in Montana.

Dr. Charles Kay, a professor at Utah State University and a constituent of Rep. Bob Bishop, the panel’s top Republican, said the park was destabilized, overgrazed, and had almost zero if any bison roaming in it in the first place.

The occasion also enabled some to make plain their contempt for those stupid urbanites who want to give the whole West back to the bison and the Indians.

Rehberg scoffed at those who invoked the animal as a national icon, the very symbol of the Park Service itself and part of the NPS uniform. “If you really want to do something for the bison, this icon, if you want to wear it on your shoulder, if you want to think of Montana as the vision that you get with ‘A River Runs Through It,’ then do something about the herd,” he said. “Fix it. Don’t let diseased herd walk around the park, because you wouldn’t want us, as livestock herder, to have an infected herd in among your wildlife. You wouldn’t want us to overgraze your park, and your federal property. Where do we find the philosophy that allows the opportunity for your diseased herd to overgraze our park?”

Rehberg, who served on the Natural Resources Committee for many years before giving it up for a slot on the House Appropriations Committee, has become an occasional ersatz committee member. In this hearing, he gave testimony as a witness, took questions, and then moved to the dais to sit with the subcommittee members, where he asked questions of the other witnesses.

He also needled Schweitzer for appearing yet again before Congress, claiming that the governor spends more time in Washington than he does, and that he spends more time in Montana than Schweitzer does.

Confronting a witness from the Government Accountability Office, Rehberg asked if she had consulted with just government people on a buffalo report or also someone “who knows something about grazing.” He was assured the GAO consulted with all stakeholders.

Bishop, of Utah, took issue with some of the Park Service’s core management philosophy. He told NPS Associate Director for Resource Stewardship and Science, Michael Soukup, that he found it hard to imagine that the park service considered bison getting eaten by wolves, or freezing or starving to death, a humane way to naturally manage the herd. He also pinned Soukup down on which has a greater value: a free-roaming bison herd, or one that’s brucellosis-free. Thwarting Soukup’s attempts to insist that the two goals were not incompatible, the congressman got the bureaucrat to admit that the free-roaming bison would constitute a higher value than a disease-free herd.

“If that (the disease free herd) is not your greatest value, then there is something deeply wrong with the park service,” he said.

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