Honoring Mothers, Human and Wild

By Kathleen Stachowski, Unfiltered 5-11-06

HONORING MOTHERS, HUMAN AND WILD

In 1905 Anna Jarvis swore upon her mother’s grave that she would dedicate her life to establishing a day to honor all mothers living and dead. President Woodrow Wilson signed a Congressional Joint Resolution in 1914 and Mother’s Day was born.

But Anna subsequently despaired over the increasing commercialization of the day, feeling it should be “a day of sentiment, not profit.” She opposed even greeting cards as “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.”

This Mother’s Day, I plan to avoid the commercial morass. I’ll still send a gift card for groceries – after all, my mom is a disabled widow living on social security. But I also plan to honor her by supporting persecuted mothers of another species.

Pregnant bison cows spend the frigid Yellowstone winter as all bison do, with quiet perseverance, their massive heads sweeping deep snow aside to reveal frozen grass. When early spring creeps toward lower-elevation lands around the park, the migratory instinct in these shaggy beasts calls them forth. They frequently exit the park near West Yellowstone, making their way to Horse Butte Peninsula, for generations now their traditional birthing ground on national forest land belonging to American citizens. Here on sunny slopes they find new grass, tender and nutritious, to nourish their winter-weary bodies and the growing calves within. As winter recedes in Yellowstone, the new families return to the park.

But Montana – the Last Best Place – is not the best place for wild bison, and too often, it’s simply the last place. Already this May, Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) agents have engaged in massive hazing operations at the park’s west boundary, persecuting moms-to-be as well as mothers with newborns. As in years past, bison who were peacefully grazing one moment find themselves driven into high tension or barbed wire fences the next; terrified and bleeding, they are forced back into the park across a meaningless boundary they can’t detect. Pregnant cows and those who have just given birth are forced to run—sometimes for miles—while calves struggle to keep up.

Earlier this year, Yellowstone itself, charged with preserving native wildlife within the park by the 1872 Yellowstone Park Act, rounded up and sent to slaughter 849 bison within park boundaries near Gardiner, MT. Later, between March and April, the park captured and held another 300. While in captivity, two pregnant females aborted, two other females died without explanation from park personnel, and an orphaned newborn and a yearling were euthanized.

Among those complicit in this crime against native wildlife and wild motherhood are the U.S. Forest Service and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks as well as Yellowstone and Montana DOL, at whose behest this tragedy plays out under the guise of brucellosis risk management. Millions of federal dollars coughed up by American taxpayers are squandered year after year to force our beloved wildlife off of public lands surrounding Yellowstone. Senseless and stupid from an economic standpoint, these are crimes without compassion, lacking humanity, committed in the name of the American people. I am haunted by the image of the limping, injured calf who can’t keep up, the frantic, exhausted mother, the little orange newborn alone so early in life that euthanasia is the only option. Motherhood is not honored across species in Montana.

This Mother’s Day, I’m opting out of the commercial frenzy and choosing sentiment and action over profit. Since I have no control over the tax dollars that fund bison persecution on my public land and in my national park, I’ll counteract it with a tax-deductible contribution – in my mother’s honor – to Buffalo Field Campaign (www.buffalofieldcampaign.org). The hardy volunteers at BFC spend every day – including those that break the thermometer and those that break the heart – standing with Yellowstone’s wild bison, documenting every move committed against them. Further, the group works for legislative fixes and habitat acquisition, looking to the day when Montana welcomes its native wild bison families home. By supporting BFC, I can stand in solidarity with those wild moms even from afar.

Folks who have watched any wild mother nuzzle and nurture her newborn know that maternal love crosses species lines. Don’t the wild mothers with whom we share this earth deserve the same dignity and respect we wish for our own?

Happy Mother’s Day to ALL moms human and wild.

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