Yellowstone Set to Kill 1 in 5 Bison This Winter

According to the national park’s officials, they have no other recourse but to deliver around 20% of the park’s bison to Native American tribes for slaughter. Since the 1980s, more than 6,300 have been slaughtered and nearly 1,900 killed by hunters.

Wildlife advocates point to the Yellowstone buffalo as America’s last great herd of wild bison and a reminder of the worst excesses of human savagery against another species.

This year’s proposal puts more emphasis on killing females and calves, to reduce the population’s reproductive rate.

The Yellowstone bison is the largest herd of purebred buffalo in the USA and draws in millions of visitors every year.

Bison have been culled from the park on an annual basis since 2000, as part of an agreement between Montana and the federal government to keep the bison population near 3,000. Although the agreement is met with much controvesy, Yellowstone National Park maintains that it must be done to maintain the balance of the park’s bison population in relation to the park’s area.

Weather is a key factor, with fewer animals likely to migrate out of Yellowstone’s high country to lower elevations in search of food outside the park if snowfall is light.

Hunters, including from tribes with treaty rights in the Yellowstone area, are anticipated to kill more than 300 of the animals this winter.

Pregnant cows or other livestock often have miscarriages when inflicted with brucellosis.

“No formal decision has been made, but the park proposal is for 1,000 fewer bison”, said park spokeswoman Amy Bartlett. Others would be captured and slaughtered or used for research.

Despite that aggressive effort, the park’s herds remain at near-record levels. In 1884 only 325 were in the United States.

Last year, there was even a proposal issued by Montana Governor Steve Bullock, who suggested that bison might be allowed to inhabit regions west of Yellowstone, provided that the total number of these herbivores is reduced to under 3,500. However, ranchers stand against this as they fear that there will be competition for grazing space between the wild and the cattle.

“You can’t predict how many bison will go into the trap”, Montana state veterinarian Marty Zaluski said.

While the Nez Perce in Idaho have been favorable to this culling, becoming actively involved in the hunting and slaughtering process, members of the Blackfoot tribe have condemned these actions, calling them shameful. Jimmy St. Goddard, a spiritual leader of the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana, told Reuters, “the culling, for him, evokes a painful chapter of American history in which US extermination campaigns pushed the massive, hump-backed creatures to the edge of extinction …”