Not if I can help it.

You also did not hear about the calf who died when his horns were broken off as he was processed through the bison trap at Stephens Creek. This capture facility is WITHIN the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park itself and is where YNP personnel have in recent days cruelly confined more than 500 bison, shipping them off to slaughter by the tens and hundreds. This certainly refutes the notion that Yellowstone is serving "as a model and inspiration for national parks throughout the world" (as its mission states). It is indeed a bitter pill for all those citizens who are inspired by the noble idea of America's national park system, and particularly for those of us who love Yellowstone in a manner that words defy.

But you're right about the lack of coverage, particularly in Missoula's daily paper. As the dirty work was escalating to fever pitch, nothing appeared in the Missoulian, not even after the park service rounded up 200 bison IN MONTANA (1/11) for shipment to slaughter. This isn't Montana news? Yet it appeared nowhere in the Missoulian on 1/12; that particular edition devoted 46 column inches to a huge photo & article about a jack-knifed semi (no fatalities), front and center on the "Montana" page. A quick on-line check that morning revealed that the story was covered in the Billings Gazette, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the Helena Independent Record, and on-line at New West and Headwaters.

Nor did the Missoulian carry anything about the temporary hunt suspension called for so MT Department of Livestock agents could haze bison on the park's western boundary -- a story that was even picked up by the Washington Post (as in Washington, D.C.)!

After I contacted the editor about the missing coverage (nicely, with congrats on her new post as editor...) articles appeared the next two days, "buried," as it were, on the obituary page (rather fitting, really). It finally made the top of the Montana page on 1/17 when the sizeable headline proclaimed, "Officials call bison hunt a success." Draw your own conclusion.

So we have the National Park Svc. capturing and shipping to slaughter within the park itself at the northern boundary (Gardiner); on the other side of that boundary, Montana's "fair-chase hunters" are still blasting away at the animals not caught up in the park-sanctioned extermination, while at the western boundary (West Yellowstone), we see just how legitimate this hunt (and the state's revered hunting tradition) really is when it is "suspended" at the whim of the Department of Livestock, suddenly compelled to haze bison even though they are in the so-called "tolerance" (i.e., "hunt") zone. Whatever happened to those vast 460,000 acres that MT Fish, Wildlife & Parks so proudly proclaimed were open to bison at the outset of this disaster?

What passes for "bison management" in Montana is nothing short of a national tragedy. And why? We're sacrificing America's wild heritage to "protect" the bottom line for a handful of cattle ranchers surrounding Yellowstone and grazing on public land welfare provided by U.S. taxpayers. Disgusting.

This is a real portrait of govt authorized rednecks playing "good guy" on a bunch of 2stroke machines. No one should have such authority.

It is a discrace that the MT cattle lobby is so strong that these "protective" measures are being carried out with such brutal consequence.

This has been escalating for years and the Bison camp still seems to be regarded as some kind of tree hugger spiritualism..They protect a noble truth that the media simply dosent resonate with.

THe cows lovers have as much stake here as we have taken and it is the story of the last 200 yrs...It is only by greed and power that it reigns.

The bison belong, not barbed wire and feedbins.
It would be less of a tragedy to have every cow in Montana mutilated unto a puddle of ooze by space aliens than for the harrassment of any of these sacred bison to occour.