It’s time to let the buffalo roam in Montana

By LetBuffaloRoam, Unfiltered 11-28-08

By Stephany J. Seay
Buffalo Field Campaign
West Yellowstone, Montana

Bison advocates should remain cautious of the news that Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) officials may allow some buffalo to temporarily access Horse Butte. While it sounds a tad encouraging, like the Royal Teton
Ranch land lease, the devil is in the details. Under the draft western boundary document, all bison will still be forcefully removed from Horse Butte and any other lands outside of Yellowstone National Park by May 15, while lethal methods are still at the top of the agenda for the livestock industry-driven plan.

The agencies continue to ignore the fact that Horse Butte is 100% cattle-free at all times of the year. They also keep a deaf ear to the majority of Horse Butte residents who have made it clear numerous times that they welcome wild buffalo in their neighborhood. Public lands in our surrounding area are also cattle-free and should be immediately and perpetually available to wild bison, as they are to other native wildlife. It's a no-brainer: no cattle on Horse Butte; let the buffalo roam!

The IBMP is supposed to be an adaptive plan; the agencies are supposed to change their management tactics with the advent of new information and altering circumstances on the landscape. But, to date, the IBMP agencies refuse to adapt their management scheme to provide wild bison year-round habitat on cattle-free Horse Butte and other western boundary lands.

Ruthless, relentless harassment and slaughter has always been the name of the game under the IBMP, and unless that plan is scrapped, there's no reason to believe things will be otherwise. The agencies have never even honored
the "cap" of allowing 100 non-tested bison to remain on the Butte, save during the Department of Livestock-authorized bison shoot that Montana likes to call a hunt.

The tiresome argument of the "threat" of brucellosis continues to drive these nefarious actions against wild bison. It can't be stated often enough that there has never been a single documented case of wild bison transmitting brucellosis to cattle, even prior to the IBMP and even where bison and cattle coexist (Grand Teton NP).

Cattle brought brucellosis (and a plethora of other diseases) with them to
North America. They are the manageable element and already require intense handling, vaccinations and testing to prevent the spread of disease into the
human food supply. If the Department of Livestock (DOL) focused their management actions on cattle instead of wild bison, they could have prevented the loss of Montana's prized brucellosis-free status.

It makes sense to require the DOL to shift their focus away from harassing and killing wild bison, and instead require them to responsibly manage cattle. If the DOL and cattle producers in the area want to prevent the co-mingling of bison and cattle they should pay more attention to cattle
ranches.

A recent Associated Press article mentions the sad fact that the herds making up fewer than 3,000 wild bison is marked "one of the world's largest populations." Was that a boast? Wild bison currently number fewer than .001% of their historic population and we should take this as a warning sign that the population is extremely vulnerable. Any and all efforts to help wild bison naturally recover their historic range should be encouraged and carried out immediately. Horse Butte is a great place to start. It's a cattle-free zone and the bison have a lot of public support. Allowing bison
to occupy Horse Butte is not a "defacto expansion" of park boundaries, as cattle interests claim. Bison are not "park" animals; they are a prehistoric wildlife species native to the majority of the North American continent and they must have room to roam.

As to the RTR land lease, what a bad deal for wild bison! There's no actual, long-term positive benefit to anyone but the Church Universal & Triumphant (CUT). CUT stands to gain another $3.3 million in addition to the $13 million U.S. taxpayer funds paid to CUT back in 1999 so buffalo could access a few acres of habitat. CUT never lived up to their part of that $13 million deal, and in the past ten years since, thousands of wild bison have been killed for even approaching that land. Again, the devil is in the details.
The RTR land lease under consideration is an extension of the IBMP, allowing for a mere 25 bison to temporarily access portions of a fraction of their native range along Yellowstone's north boundary. First, the buffalo will be
run through the typical bison torture gauntlet of capture, test, slaughter, tag, vaccinate, quarantine. Had this deal been in place last winter, more than 1,575 wild bison would still have been sent to their deaths.

Neither of these plans addresses the needs of wild bison as a native wildlife species; they simply maintain the status quo of caving to the unfounded fears of livestock producers. If we continue to allow the IBMP and cattle industry to call the shots on how buffalo are managed, the American bison will remain ecologically extinct. Let's begin to turn the tides for the mighty buffalo by saying no to the RTR land lease and demanding that wild bison be immediately given year round access to Horse Butte.
--
Stephany J. Seay
Media & Outreach
Buffalo Field Campaign
P.O. Box 957
West Yellowstone, MT  59758
406-646-0070
bfc-media@wildrockies.org
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org

BFC is the only group working in the field every day
in defense of the last wild buffalo population in the U.S.

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