NEWWESTERNERS: INTERVIEW WITH BOB 'ACTION' JACKSON, PART V
A Bare-Knuckled Poke At Public Bison Herds In the West
By Todd Wilkinson, 9-26-07
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| Caption: While working in the saddle as a backcountry ranger in Yellowstone, Bob Jackson tried to outwit poachers and cultivated both a mystique and unique understanding of the remote Thorofare region. He was controversial then for speaking his mind and remains so today. | |
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Click on the links below to read previous installments of the conversation with Bob Jackson.
NEWWEST.NET: You have a harsh assessment of how public bison are managed in the West. Your opinions have attracted the ire of those working for public land management agencies. Frankly, it would be perilous for NewWest.Net to even try and paraphrase your thoughts. Would you share your no-hold's barred comments again?
BOB JACKSON: I have a lot of friends who still work for the land and wildlife agencies. They have told me that unless someone steps forward and speaks up, nothing is going to change. I have nothing to lose. Let me begin by rephrasing your question. Why can't we turn to our public herds if we want to restore the kind of family infrastructure that I've been talking about? Especially when government agencies and public lands like Yellowstone, Wind Cave, the National Bison Range, the National Elk Refuge, and other preserves seem to be ideal for providing the kind of long-term time frame needed?
Your readers need to know some background. It takes three to four generations and 12 to 15 years to develop rudimentary functional families in bison, which actually is no longer than it takes a purebred beef producer to establish his own line. In my opinion, the reason we can't rely on famous bison parks like Yellowstone is because the people running the wildlife “shows” have a professional bias that stymies the very change that is needed. They have their hands tied even more than private producers do.
For the people who have chosen to work for public agencies, it is their very training and education that locks them into an attitude of superiority over animals that is very difficult to overcome when managing them. They are what I call "the defaulters". All one has to do is look at our refuges, parks and state hunting grounds for proof.
Let me begin by talking about Custer State Park in South Dakota. From what I saw two to three years ago, Custer, which next to Yellowstone holds the other premier public bison herd, is about as far from “restoration” as can be. Their managers, like those of most other public herds, feel the obsessive need to “improve” the herd. Custer’s total budget comes from selling bison and the established way to do this is to think in terms of individual animals, rather than taking stock of the whole herd and then extrapolating out how much they can net per bison on the open market.
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| Jackson on the porch of the Thorofare ranger cabin where he spent long stretches refining his attitudes about the relationship between people and wildlife. Today, he believes that in many cases management of public bison herds is missing the mark. | |
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These buffalo don’t even have a chance to start social order because they are never managed as part of distinct families or satellite groups. Some bulls are simply looked upon as candidates for trophy hunts once they reach five years of age, but their functional role as patriarchs and teachers of younger bulls in the herd is ignored.
In Yellowstone, bulls don’t even start to breed at this age unless they are the ones allowed to tag along with their prime age hero bulls that are much older. This means Custer’s managed herd is missing most of the male role model components except for the few lucky mature bulls allowed to live to fill the viewfinders of tourist cameras.
As for cow bison, most females in Custer, as well as female bison in public herds across the rest of this country, are sold by year 6 so they can fetch more money at these sales as breeding animals. In the wild, bison cows live and reproduce up to thirty years of age. The final “cull” of all females at Custer , however, is 11 years of age. There are none older. Mature mothers, who would otherwise have a lot of knowledge to pass on to their offspring, do not exist. Imagine a human community like that.
Looking at our own species, we see most all training, learning and order comes from mature adults, not the teenagers. But what you have at Custer are teenagers teaching the kids how to live. Eliminating older bison mentors leaves the herd incredibly dysfunctional compared to what it should be. In the end, Custer justifies its actions because, like all other state and federal agencies, it has a perceived need to “improve” its herd by, in this case, constantly selling off aimals. Maybe now with relatively low market prices for bison, Custer will reconsider and slow down its culling program. I hope it does.
Next, let me mention the National Bison Range in Montana, the refuge that got its start with America’s original need to “restore” America’s bison after the slaughter that occured in the 19th century. I know I may rile some feathers for saying this but their focus today is seeding all other refuges with what I consider purebred “Aryan” bison. They are oblivious to what this constant exporting of bison does to their own herd structure and to the landscape.
Refuges across the nation are replacing “mixed blood” herds, meaning bison with cattle genes mixed in, with what I call "the master race" buffalo from the Bison Range. Neal Smith Refuge in Iowa sent their mixed-blood herd which they built up over 15 years to slaughter via Indian donation so they could get some of the Bison Range’s Hitler youth.
NEWWEST.NET: But Bob, why is it a bad thing to aspire to preserve pure genetic lines? Part of what makes a species a species is its genetic distinction. In many cases, genes confer advantages for survival and many have said that it was genetics in bison that gave them resistance to many of the diseases that came across the Atlantic with Europeans and exacted a deadly toll on humans, wildlife, and livestock.
BOB JACKSON: I'm not saying that preserving genetic lines isn't important. It is. What I'm saying is that there's more to a bison being a bison than whether it has 100 percent bison genes or 98 percent bison genes with cattle blood from the distant past mixed in. Achieving genetic purity in all of the bison herds out there will never happen, especially if the goal is to rapidly grow bison numbers and get more bison out there to serve as tools for achieving healthy landscapes. Bison, with a little bit of cattle genes in them, still behave like bison if you let them.
The genetic cleansing that is taking place, using animals from the Bison Range, is the equivalent of researchers and managers saying we need to go to all reservations and weed out all Native Americans with any DNA markers in them from white settlers. Otherwise, there is no validity to them being Indians. That, of course, is absurd. Native Americans are unique because of their culture, traditions, languages, and knowledge of having lived closely with the land over untold generations. Having genetic purity in bison is less important than nurturing healthy natural bison behavior. Bison are healthiest when they interact in family groups because the animals are less stressed.
NEWWEST.NET: You know, don't you, that what you're saying is controversial and is certain to attact a fair share of detractors. Aside from those concerns, what else do you see as you look at public bison herds across the West?
BOB JACKSON: Let's discuss the hallowed National Park Service, my former employer. And let's look to the neighbor of Custer State Park, Wind Cave National Park. It has what I consider a “crack whore” herd with just as much damage if not more being done than in Custer’s and the Bison Range herd. The bison there are a mirror image of Yellowstone’s former roadside bears. Except the bison addiction at Wind Cave is salt, not human garbage.
It started with 150 years of humans removing ungulate bones from the land which has produced mineral deficiencies that Wind Cave managers, in their quest for “natural herds” don’t see or want to correct. Animals need minerals such as natural salts. A drive through the park reveals mature cows and bulls coming up to and surrounding any stopped or slow moving vehicle looking for salty handouts. They snort at radiators dripping anti-freeze and lick the ground in the spill spots so much at pull outs that holes three feet wide and a foot deep have been formed. Scared calves stand back 50 yards, quietly pleading for mommy to come back from the artificial salt licks.
Further inspection at Wind Cave reveals small herds staying far away from all these red light district happenings. These groups are generally made up of one or two harried cows struggling to form up some semblance of order with 10 to 15 calves and yearlings under the most difficult of living conditions. It's like a day care with too many kids and not enough teachers. Of course, Wind Cave’s perpetual need for herd reduction means they also get to jump on the same Aryan race band wagon with the recent discovery they have also have the “chosen ones”, meaning their own pure genetic strain.
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| Among the things that have made Jackson a critic of the test and slaughter program for Yellowstone bison, meant to placate cattle ranchers concerned about brucellosis transmission, are the capture facilities where animals are kept in tight quarters, adding to stress levels, and leading to fights in which some bison get gored and fatally injured. Yellowstone National Park Photo | |
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And then there is Yellowstone, in a league all by itself.
With at least 10 years of brucellosis reductions carried out at Yellowstone’s Draconian corrals (they have the worst designed and managed corrals I have ever seen), fractured families and chaos in Yellowstone’s Lamar and Hayden herds is now the norm. During my last years of patroling the park backcountry, I could not ride in Hayden Valley without having remnant bison groups start running one half mile off and continue to do so for the 2 to 3 miles back to the safety of the woods. Why is that?
Every federal and state entity involved in the numerous well meaning brucellosis conferences deal only in terms of NUMBERS of animals Yellowstone can sustain. Yellowstone naturalists can write the words “social order” on their bison exhibits at the Canyon Village Visitor Center or Yellowstone biologists can be seen talking of “bison families” on the Discovery Channel but they might as well be discussing how cows on the moon make the cheese we used to see from earth.
Outside the park, “thoughtful” state biologists have been given very generous budgets to run brucellosis-free calf facilities that are really prisons. A lot of money with very fuzzy justifications is being spent all for the end goal of leaving Yellowstone gloriously freed of “diseased animals” and then replaced someday by animals that were lucky enough to test negative or other purebred animals brought in.
The thing is, we don't know the value of animals that might test positive for brucellosis and yet, at the same time, represent little risk of actually transmitting the disease. We don't know because we aren't interested. The other thing is, these prisons are for bison children that are not allowed to have visitors or any other contact with adult bison from the outside world. What is the park going to do, someday “soft release” them back in Yellowstone but with no behavioral knowledge?
They don’t even know to employ the purebred German SS mothers of Hitler’s era to train these “special” children. These calves will make for poor substitutes and cause ecological destruction if reintroduced into Yellowstone. Maybe the park can start up Lamar’s old buffalo ranch and baby these animals through the winter with hay? Then what? Thinking only of replacement of numbers is elitist and ends up as perpetual symptom of bad management by park decision makers.
NEWWEST.NET: Wait a minute. Isn't it unfair to paint all public bison managers with broad negative brushstrokes? You seem to be condemning public servants and once upon a time you were one yourself. I've known many different bison managers and researchers over the years and most seemed well-intentioned and were committed to doing a good job.
BOB JACKSON: It isn't a problem of having bad individual managers, biologists and researchers. It is a problem of having a bad bureaucracy that doesn't allow narrowly-trained individuals to think outside the box and challenge the norms. The reason things can't change for the better is because of the politics and interference from Washington that is running the show in Yellowstone, Wind Cave, the Bison Range and Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole. At the field level, people are not allowed to manage with a different set of insights. It's almost like the bureaucrats above them want to weed out the emotional side of them and turn them into cold analytical thinkers. There's a lot you miss when only one side of your brain is working.
Biologists, visiting me in the Thorofare so they could tell their grand children about being at the furthest point from a road in the lower 48, were outwardly anxious in their mannerisms because their cell phones wouldn’t work. They rode fast to the tops of mountains to call Washington so they could get their stories straight on brucellosis issues for the press. Thus, priorities have been skewed.
Applicants for field biologist positions are considered more for their expertise in writing Environmental Impact Statements than their ability to make field observations. In the end I see studies of bison being approved that have a lot of the Marlin Perkins, Wild Kingdom flare in them but not a lot of substance.
Operations like netting fleeing bison from helicopters in Hayden or Lamar Valley might get a “paper biologist” on a show like Animal Planet but films don’t show all the dead bison dying in one summer—exhausted and overheated animals suddenly not being able to move in the corrals which are out of public sight. Most any private producer operating a squeeze chute in warm weather knows not to leave a mature bison in the confined space very long.
As long as politics and top down management have the winning hand I do not see much help on the horizon for Yellowstone’s bison. In a few short years, insensitivities to what has happened on the ground in its corrals and its “reductions” will have destroyed most of what it took Yellowstone’s introduced inexperienced Plains buffalo a hundred years ago to build in family foundation.
Yellowstone has busted up families from the distinct Lamar and Hayden herds, chewed them up, spit them out and let them crawl away the best they could. Sometimes Yellowstone holds these scared, scraped up, crushed-ribbed remnants together for months in pens, and then releases them as a pack. The effect is those dependents of families most fractured from reductions subordinate themselves to any sort of bison organization or dominance left over after each year’s cataclysmic round ups and hazing outside the park.
They follow the “leaders” to their temporary safe location in the park for the summer. It is not home, at least not theirs. Thus displaced adults are being continually bumped out of any turf they try to claim. The effect is big herds of milling animals in Lamar that never go to their normal summer haunts. In the midst of all this chaos, however, the wildlife cinematographers of Yellowstone tell me they are now getting a lot more footage of bulls in “real” fights. That's a sign of very stressed animals.
Yellowstone’s latest gambit, the okay to trailer bison captured outside its West Entrance for release elsewhere in the park's northern herds is going to cause the problem of not only placing animals outside their homes but also tremendously taxing already stressed resident bison families.
The end result will be even more bison escaping Yellowstone in the winter. Even if the resident herds were left alone it would still take 12 to 15 years for these animals to sort it out and get themselves and the ecosystem back to functioning order. With Yellowstone administration capitulating at every turn to the whims of politics from the cattle industry it is even more urgent to save the only families left undisturbed. It is the last remnant of Bison Culture that still can be recognized and is barely holding on from the indigenous mountain bison that have evolved in Pelican Valley over the last 10,000 years.
NEWWEST.NET: What roles do the states have?
BOB JACKSON: Can we really rely on the state fish and game departments that are supposed to be dealing with wildlife on the ground every day outside of Yellowstone? I agree that they have a vested interest in keeping public herds healthy, don’t they? But a look at management actions again shows decisions all based on individual animals, not what is in the best interest of bison populations. There is no thought given to bison families. What state fish and game agencies unwittingly promote in their big game management is akin to aliens coming to Earth yearly for a human hunt and killing off most of Earth’s adult and sub adult male populations. I’d hate to say what kind of emotional and physical shape our human species would look like if we were treated and managed like the elk herds in the Rocky Mountain West.
NEWWEST.NET: Now that you've just angered the federal and state land management agencies and riled up the public, do you have any suggestions to bring a solution?
BOB JACKSON: The obvious answer would be for me to suggest that we, as appalled and newly-enlightened herd-friendly people, run to the local land grant university to seek salvation from the academics. It sounds logical because they are on the cutting edge, aren’t they? But the reality of “peer review” means colleagues are the judges and they are a reflection of mainstream attitudes. Besides, most of the land grant universities in the West reward attitudes that are very cattle-centric with how they think about range health. It is colored by livestock models. But livestock are not managed with attention paid to family groups. And most of the successful bison ranchers I know realize that bison are very different than cattle.
Academia, in spite of its reputation for promoting free thinking, can actually be a setting where tolerance for opposing viewpoints isn't condoned. In fact, if you go too far out on the fringes and challenge what some professors are teaching kids in the classroom, you will discover people who aren't willing to be your friend any more. It's considered too threatening to their own cultural identity and the security of their paycheck. They are also the same academics our government uses on its committees to dole out taxpayer money for studies and they select the studies that supposedly have merit. Academia, as stated earlier in this discussion, is where the word, Anthropomorphism, is mentioned with a hand-over-the-mouth when tattling on another researcher who dares to question it.
So how can anyone objectively study animals, where realization of equality with humans must be considered if they are to come up with truly meaningful data? They can’t, at least not yet in the Applied Science field. It is a knock out blow for any researcher trying to study the effect of herd families, and their emotions, on the environment, grass lands and economic viability for its ranchers, who are supposed to be served by knowledge discovered in the university enrvironment. I wish there was hope in the short term, but I see little research in this arena happening until a researcher with enough colleagues supporting him runs with all the overwhelming “anecdotal” info and the same thing happens with others until it becomes undeniable, even to the ardent skeptics.
Who gets credit wouldn’t be important if it meant animals were treated with more respect in the end. But the reality on the ground is this: How can any human researcher with big brain-itis and having the need to belong and have acceptance, objectively formulate study criteria, let alone accurately analyze his results when our culture subjugates other life forms on Earth to lesser meaning? Bad science is often worse than no science at all.
Stay tuned for the next installment of Todd Wilkinson's conversation with Bob Jackson. NEXT TIME: In the last part of NewWest.Net's interview with Bob Jackson, the bison provocateur lays out new directions and invites readers to take a tour of how he manages bison on his own ranch.
Click on the links below to read previous installments of the conversation with Bob Jackson.[End of article]
I can't remember when I've enjoyed a column so much or had such a vicarious experience seeing through my mind's eye Bob Jackson's experience. In my opinion, this material is worthy of a book (hint!).
I believe animals are blended, sentient beings that have both atavistic, genetic responses, and learned knowledge that determines their behavior. It doesn't surprise me one bit that bison would forget how to be bison when their experiential knowledge was removed from their social structure. We see this in humans too. Recently, my wife and I attended the convocation ceremony at the university where are daughter is attending. One of the speakers went on to decry the current state of public education. He talked about how he saw a vicious fight occurring at a public school and went to tell the principal about it. That principal, also a male, said they did not have budget to hire a playground monitor. Neither man stepped in to stop the fight. Regardless of the other issues that come from this incident, when did men learn how not to be men and loose their manliness to step into the breach to protect the weak against the vicious? Look at the soaring single parent family situation. When did men learn not to feel in their bones the responsibility to provide for and protect their 'mates' and the children they create? Playground fights aren’t all bad. These days competitive games are not even allowed.
It's not just bison who are endangered in the attitude reflected by the academics that Bob throws darts at.
Most of my people have been laughed at, smiled about and idolized because we consider animals as natural beings akin to us. Bob Jackson has put his observations in terms we should all understand. What academia needs is imperical studies of bison using the same methods Bob Jackson did. Live with and study a bison family year after year. Of course with the destruction and disruption going on in the name of game management a study group would be hard to find. That should tell you something.
Comment By bob jackson, 9-27-07Thank you everyone. Pit Bull, there have been people who have made doctoral and academic carrers specializing in bison behavior. The recently deceased Dale Lott of the University Calif Davis campus was one of them (speak no evil of the dead?). He wrote books about bison behavior but he never Got It !!..and I imagine it was because of the academic superior species intellect prejudice. To give him a bit of slack, he did not choose long term access to functioning herds (Bison Range herd mostly) but he should have at least noticed the bonding of yearlings and two year olds to some of the mothers still left with these offspring. That in turn should have given him the curiosity to search further. But alas, it was not to be. There are those in academics (the fighter jocks), after reading my observations, chomping at the bit to study social family order in bison, but they are willing to comprimise the legitimate study essentials (functioning herds for one) in order to get something out there in the journals quickly to be known as the "one" (This entitles them to be the first in line showing the need for more and bigger studies ....and funding). I can point out to them the herd they want to study is not a functioning herd but ease of location and cooperating entities trumps this need. They don't ask again. Plus it fits into supervising PHD's oversight, spousal demands (can't be away too long you know) and travel budgets. Of course the study is a flop but it can be spun to "get meaningful insight" into herd dynamics. They, then can be hired by places like Yellowstone because there is nothing threatening to administration and the researcher knows he knows nothing ...so it is all perpetuated.
To do this right it is going to take a Craighead type of team approach such as they did studying the G.Bears in the late 60's. Native American colleges and their students want to be a part of this.... and they have a lot of resources at their desposal in the form of grants, cameras, radio collaring and telemetry equipment. The Universities and Yellowstone administration are very afraid and very isolationist of any team approach such as this, however. They want, as Yellowstone says, "pilot" studies, but behind the scenes Yellowstone administrators contact potential endorsers of these proposals to discourage them from signing on the dotted line. They did this with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition for one (didn't work). Any well known journalist or writer who is pumped up about these thoughts and inquires more is also given the whispering treatment.
As it is, the only herds I know of in the public arena with functioning order is a part of the Hayden herd and all of the Pelican herd. Any researcher who has the grit to take this project on, however, better expect procuring headquarters and camp for students outside Park boundaries, however. The Park has plenty of space, vehicles and supporting resources (back country cabins) for the chosen ones but not for others. Such good PR for Yellowstone with cooperating research (think of this country's past CCC days camps and projects...and all the possible spin off filming, press and film linking to the students tribes) is trumped by the needs of politics for those in Yellowstone. thats the way it is.
Bob you really didn’t touch on some key “bad guys” in this mess – the Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and the Department of Livestock. A friend of mine told me about this story available online.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1998/06/bison.html
This article outlines some history on the subject and how those agencies led us and keep us in this mess. The good news is, if the governor of Montana steps up, we could be working on a sustainable, respectful solution tomorrow.
We have functioning wolf packs growing 19% a year, even with extirpations for bad behaviors. With the new grass available from missing elk, Jellystone is capable of feeding more bison. The wolves have yet to do their job on bison, as promised. And I would agree with them: there has to be an easier way to make a living other than having to fight bison day in and day out. Moving to somewhere else to eat deer and elk is the easy solution. And when that gets hard, eat livestock.
Nowhere are limits established as to where and how private capital is supposed to exist with free roaming bison. Unhunted, predator deficient ungulates tend to expand at about 20% per year, compounded. All need to eat someone's grass. I get sort of tired of hearing the same old story about greedy ranchers. How about greedy enviros? I have watched this salami slicing for a better part of my life. The rancher or logger forgoes a part of his salami, and two years later what he has left is up for partitioning again. We are nearing the point where the salami slices are getting thin.
Most government range is high elevation summer graze. Private capital owns the winter grounds, the low elevation arable lands that produce irrigated and dryland crops. Winter range is the issue. Uncle Sam does not own enough winter range to feed his summer range critter capacity. And that is especially true in the National Park System. So they feed at Jackson Hole and elsewhere. A lot of the issue is a can't get there from here deal.
The social order and the need for older animals in a herd was well documented in elk by Sargent and MacCorkadale (sp?) on the Hanford Atomic reservation elk herd (I think I read their work on a U of Idaho site). And so was the need for security cover, observations of how elk respond to temperature extremes, and how a tiny bit of water can keep a whole lot of critters operating. Why would we suppose bison, which evolved with humans just as elk have, be any different?
Bison and elk are survivors from the last Ice Age because humans favored them, and their body mass was ideal to survival in both a hot summer and a cold winter. They were ideal livestock for aboriginals. Over thousands of years, it is possible in my mind that the bison culture was a shared one with the Native Americans, as they evolved together. To say the least, they were not animals that were hunted to extinction as were giant sloths, mammoths and mastadons, several types of camels, early wild horses and others.
I have to agree that academia can be the most hostile environment on earth to dissenting ideas. I am transposing my lifetime experience in the timber game to today's cult of collegiate biology. I have no idea what goes on in critter science, but in timber and forestry, the Jerry Franklinites have highjacked the whole of government largesse for research, and no dissent will be tolerated or funded. A lot of very good research is not being funded because the academic preservationists favored by the econazi NGO's are getting all the money. The trumpets of diversity blow from dawn to dusk, but the reality is one of academics goose stepping to the drums of the narrowing status quo. The heralds are dispatched with cruel precision, and vicious reviews of heretics' work is commonplace. Brave are those who are wont to leave the beaten path of the University. They have to go make a living in the real world.
There is most certainly a place for bison in America. There also has to be a way for bison to live in established order from within. Certainly, this story tells us much, and there is much more to know. Too bad the process has to involve egos jockeying for a spot in the Journal Science.
The one thing that is driving all of the problems with buffs is brucellosis. I still do not see anthing dealing with that problem. Buffalo simply cannot be turned loose to raom until brucellosis is eradicated.
Interestingly enough the disease appears to be endemic in buffalo, they do not appear to abort like elk and cattle do. If we could get rid of brucellosis a lot of things could be done differently. I do not think we can ever have the big herds of buffs running free. I would not want to be buzzing up a freeway at 60 mph and meet a herd.
Mr. Jackson, do you have any thoughts on how to deal with that? I would agree that the Craigheads did some wonderful research, but remember what happened to them.
Marion, did you ever come across 'Old Lonesome?' See: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/outdoors/2003904367_webbison26.html
Comment By bob jackson, 9-27-07Marion, did you get a chance to read my comments in part 2? It might give some assurances for bison being allowed in the Gallatin and the Madison Valley without fear of them going on to Ennis and Bozeman. As for the bison-highway problem I guess we would have something similar to the open range laws still in force in parts of the West. Impact with cattle would not be much different than with a buffalo. There are a few dramatic accidents but our society says its tolerable. A lot of cars go through Hayden Valley with lots of fog in the early mornings without anything happening. Big bulls appear out of this fog standing by the side of the road and it can be fairly breath catching going by them. To me the most dramatic moments with buffalo come with riding my horse through Pelican Valley on coal black nights and all at once realizing I'm in the mist of a slumbering herd of 150 bison. It takes a very good horse, a strong set of reins and a lot of nerves that one doesn't know if they are in you to keep the whole landscape from exploding.
I guess I'm trying to say I like what it means to have a country still with characteristics that open range is considered. It all lets my spirit run free and I would never consider ceasing going through this Pelican Valley at night.
As for "herds" on the highway this means cow-calf herds and unless they are traveling through small meadow - high down timber areas (or other obstacles to travel off road) these herds won't be near the roads once homes are established. The West Yellowstone areas (US191) today have a lot more road conflict chances because these bison are not allowed to settle down. Also when migration occurs across the highways I guarantee any safe passage area (underpass or over pass for travel) will be used every time by these bison. The bison crossing our highway to other pastures here in Iowa use the same 15' wide spot to cross every time whether they have started from an oppisite side gate or a quarter mile up the road. The mothers make sure there is as little turmoil and disturbances as possible for the herd. This means staying off the highways and its cars buzzing by. In the winter, especially around West Yellowstone, if roads are designed or plowed a little wider bison there will stay to the sides.
As for eliminating disease the separations between extended families and its territories is the most perfect way to control and minimize brucellosis. Plus, each family works on eliminating chronic diseases detrimental effects with time on their side. The families most successful live on through the centuries and the ones that don't counter it as well become weakened in infrastructure and eventually disappear as a family. In dysfunctional herds there is only the luck of each individual coming up with a resistance. Its kind of like having one University research lab working on cancer cures instead of having many different labs working on it. In Yellowstone I predict the brucellosis infection rates will be going higher the more these families are broken up. Thus the Lamar herd will show this increase first.
Your mention of the Lamar herd brings up an interesting point, do you know if they have ever done a study comparing the brucellosis rate among the different herds? If brucellosis was in the herds imported, and not already in the Yellowstone area, one would expect the Lamar herd to always have had the highest rate since they were imports and kept penned for quite a number of years. The Pelican herd was the native remnant left, at least that is the one where Howell was caught poaching in 1894. The Washburn Expedition did not see any buffs in 1871 when they did the first exploration, but they saw tracks in the Yellowstone Lake area, which would indicate the Pelican herd, I think.
It seems to me that buffalo go pretty much where buffalo want to go. A buffalo is nearly double the size of a cow, not that I would want to hit either one of them.
Craig's question about Old Lonesome reminds me of another thing I have wondered about, why do some bulls seem to leave the herd and live relatively solitary lives? There are several east of the Park, along North Fork and they wander up and down & have for years.
I had not heard of Old Lonesome until I saw the article on the Jackson News web site about him being taken this fall and being a possible record book.
The plains bison from Lamar were trucked to Hayden. There was already a remnant herd of mt. bison on upper Mary mt. probably an extention of the Beechler-Old Faithful mt bison herd. All disappeared with the Idaho folks nailing them. Untill 10-15 years ago the Pelican herd had a sister herd on Saddle mt. With the Lamar Plains aggressive colonization of winter range the Saddle mt herd has lost its identity and there are none to be seen anymore. That is why the maintainance and the expansion of the Pelican herd is so important. They do not leave Yellowstone EVER and their behavior is consistent with all historical accounts.... they run from people on summer range due to their eons long vulnerability of being trapped by human predators in the small grassed valleys they occupy. Thus Mt Bison will never leave Yellowstone to colonize people used areas.
The worst thing Yellowstone Park administration did was allow overnight horse camping on the Mirror Plateau. The outfitters want to show the guests buffalo so search these Mt Bison out. The effect has been much of these buffalo's summer range is no longer used. The rangers going up from the Lamar side say there no longer see them in these expansive high elevation meadows. They just hear crashing through the trees in areas where these cow-calf herds are trying to eke out an existence grazing in forest instead of meadows.
Giving this herd protection the same as the no go areas for grizzlies is the first step. I would hope the light bulb would go off with somebody in Mammoth that long term this is still another viable solution to the brucellosis issue. Of course they are all so defensive of their positions the person who understands any of this and actually cares about Yellowstones bison will have to slip an unsigned note under a higher ups pillow saying HE can be the one to show the world his discovery (this person then strokes the ego of the Supt.) or they will have to be humble with somewhat lowered heads (that is the fatherly advice my Chief Ranger gave me and said I should do when talking with my immediate supervisor) and give this info in submissive formation so the status quo is never breached. of course everyone in this chain will have their own intrepretation of these illuminating bits of info so the chances of effective implementation is zero!!
So, what about APHIS? APHIS is pushing a huge federal government brucellosis eradication scheme with no magic wand in sight. This scheme, in my mind, is what is truly hampering meaningful wild bison recovery and conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Area, in particular southwest Montana. This is being pursued through a "memorandum of understanding" force fed to the 3 states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee (GYIBC), a huge conglomerate bureaucracy of federal and state agents will carry out the dirty work as long as they get plenty of federal funding to do so (much of it earmarked). This is being sold under the false hope of a magic wildlife vaccine that does not exist. Not to mention how do you deliver it to free ranging wildlife? Instead, lets vaccinate and protect the few susceptible domestic cows that are present during the primary window of potential transmission (March - June) and move on.
Capture and slauther is how eradication of brucellosis is done in livestock and that is how it will be pursued in wildlife. However, the questions of how, when, where, by whom and at what cost this immense federal undertaking will take place remain unanswered. While most admit such an undertaking will be extremely costly, extremely problematic and result in severe consequences to wildlife, significant questions remain about whether such an undertaking is even possible.
Elk and bison are not the only brucellosis-exposed wildlife species in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Grizzly and black bears are known to be exposed as well. The extent moose, bighorns, mule deer, white-tailed deer, antelope, rodents, coyotes, wolves, birds and other wildlife are exposed remains uncertain. To get a sense of what it would take to attempt to capture, test and eradicate brucellosis from all the wildlife species within the 18 million acre Greater Yellowstone Area one must contemplate a huge federal government takeover of state’s rights over wildlife. The infrastructure, logistics and costs necessary to conduct such a massive wildlife hazing, containment, confinement, capture, vaccinate and/or slaughter program across the Greater Yellowstone Area is daunting even to imagine. This vast and remote landscape includes 2 National Parks, 6 National Forests, 3 National Wildlife Refuges, 6 Wildlife Management Areas in southwest Montana, at least 22 feedgrounds in Wyoming and Idaho, the Wind River Indian Reservation and a variety of other public and private lands. Some of the most important habitat occurs on private land. Will the federal government be willing to force its way onto private lands in an attempt to accomplish this goal?
If it were just about brucellosis, why don't we let the fences down at the National Bison Range at Moiese Montana and let them roam? Is the Custer State Park and the Wind Cave National Park fenced?
According to Chittenden when the buffs were hauled into the Buffalo Ranch in 1902 they were kept penned for several years years. By 1907 they were turning them out during the day into the Lamar and putting them back in at night, and that herd had increased to about 150. By the time the 1933 edition was published there was growing concern about an over population because the herds numbered over 1000.
When were they trucked down to Hayden? I gathered from the history I have read that they just roamed further and further after they were no longer penned at night. I had never read about the trucking of them down there.
Glenn' I was invited to talk at a state producers bison meeting in Texas a few years back and listened to the Texas state veterarian or Aphis guy give a speech about brucellosis. He confided with the crowd that Idaho started doing some exploratory brucellosis studies on their elk herds throughout the state (note not near Yellowstone) and his friend/cohort who was part of this study told him they cancelled it after finding brucellosis in those first herds.
I'm sure everybody at any decision making level in Aphis knows there is no chance of eliminating Brucellosis in this country. Are they going to cut down all the brush and forests down South to get those feral pigs with "bangs disease"?
Highlighting a very public issue means increased budgets and more access in networking meetings with those in higher yet positions of govt. for personal gain. Plus, the turf wars means Aphis gets to see the perceived haughty and aloof Park Service squirm. Yellowstones only defense should be to fight back with all the logic you mention. It is overwhelming evidence. But if a career NPS person wants to climb the ladder they do as a lot of govt. folks have to do.....capitulate to the "go along to get along" method of operation. Since the govt is hierarchal this form of obedience means top down management rules. NPS administrators may resist a bit on the surface (to keep the job "hander outers" above a paper justification for advancement for loyality to the cause and mission). But how can anyone with any real belief in NPS goals and mission not be screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs right now with what is happening to the very animal that is their logo? Why aren't they scrambling for ever possible solution whose "higher" value trumps personal turf , power and position?
Wind Cave, and I know at least part of Custer, is fenced. I am told Wind Cave employees cut holes in their fence to let elk out to the Roman Colliseum hunting crowds (one has to wonder if there are kick backs or some other kind of compensation going on if the stories of cutting fences is so). If some bison get out also then I guess they think all is well if there is nothing to see or animals left to herd back in. I imagine there are lots of illegally placed outfitter salts all around the perimeter of Wind Cave also that state game wardens are aware of but do nothing to stop. Why would you when there is a cup of coffeee waiting for you at the outfitter cook tent?
Got to go cut hay Marion, but if you have access to the NPS archives in Gardner start reading all that is in there. If you already have started reading then do more of it. It will tell about the trucking. Having this kind of knowledge is the only way one can combat what special interest state and federal biologists and administrators use as selectively read "proof" to further their illogical points of bison distribution etc.. When I would go in to read these materials phone calls from this place to Mammoth administration always followed to inform them of my doings. They should have been coming down to read with me if they really cared about their bison. I just wanted to stop the abuse of these animals and they wanted to protect their turf....and keep using millions of dollars of congressional appropriated money specified for bison care and research as soft money for normal operating budgets. But that is another story.
Comment By Marion, 9-28-07If you think the brucellosis ban is not serious, jsut try taking a positive testing buffalo or beef into any other state, including those whose politicians blab on about saving the buffalo from hunting.
Comment By Bob jackson, 9-28-07Marion, I believe any disease is serious. It is serious because without it and all the parasites and predators there would be no species left on this earth. It is how species "improve" themselves. As for bison testing some states require it and others don't. For example I have sold two families of 100 bison each to strart up producers in the two states next to me. Missouri requires just a temporary tag of number identification for each animal to transport but Illinois requires brucellosis and tuburculosis testing.
Comment By Monty, 10-01-07Very interesting discussion, keep it coming!
Bearbait, many of your comments are valid but stop being so one sided. You love to beat up on the "greedy enviros", what about the greedy "industrial extremists (concret huggers in your parlance)" who support "eternal human growth & consumption" in a finite world (is this sustainable?). Last time I flew across this country, it appeared that the vast, vast majority of the productive landscapes are paved over, urbanized or in agriculture production. The land is mutating into a "vast urbanizated human feedlot". Your winning Bearbait!
how many bison is there in pone herd
Comment By Nicole, 2-01-09how many are there in one herd
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