For some bison, a date with death
Culling is a routine, if little-known, facet of managing the roughly 4,900 bison in Yellowstone National Park.
Even for a park with a history of unhappy encounters between people and wildlife, 2015 is shaping up as an eventful year for Yellowstone and its bison. Since mid-May, at least five visitors have been hurt — gored, trampled or tossed into the air — from run-ins with the park’s most famous residents.
The tourists all came away with treatable wounds and memorable stories. For bison, however, the year’s brushes with humans didn’t always end as well.
Since January, more than 500 of the woolly beasts — the most in years — have been chased onto trucks by government workers and hauled to slaughterhouses. About 200 others that wandered off park grounds were also rounded up or shot by hunters.
The culling of the bison is a routine, if little-known, facet of managing Yellowstone’s roughly 4,900 bison, the country’s biggest and wildest repository of descendants of the great herds that once roamed the western plains. Yellowstone officials are required to keep a lid on the bison population to appease farmers and cattlemen who don’t want hungry bison on their fields and grazing lands.
Yet, despite expensive control efforts — the annual cost to taxpayers is about $2 million (U.S.) — the herd continues to swell.
Park officials are pushing for changes that could result in alternatives to slaughter for the bison, including possibly easing limits on moving disease-free animals to new locations. But changing the policies requires a buy-in from multiple bureaucracies as well as private interests.
“Everything we do with bison is complicated,” lamented Rick Wallen, Yellowstone’s lead wildlife biologist for bison. “This is a conservation program that is steeped not only in ecology and sociology but also in politics.”
Almost no one is happy with the current system. Wallen acknowledged that the “park service is doing things that aren’t very park-like” in its ship-to-slaughter program. Wildlife groups criticize the management plan as a tarnish on what is arguably one of the most successful species-recovery stories of modern times — a century ago there were only 23 bison.
Yellowstone’s lush valleys have been home to bison since long before the area was designated as the country’s first national park in 1872. By then, the legendary herds had shrunk to a few thousand from an estimated 30 million.
While usually peaceable, bison are unpredictable animals that can display an aggressive streak when a threat is perceived. But for neighbours, the fear is germs. More than half of Yellowstone’s bison test positive for exposure to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that can be devastating to domestic livestock.
Kit Fischer, an outreach co-ordinator in the National Wildlife Federation’s Missoula, Mont., office, said resistance to changing the rules is deeply ingrained among established ranchers.
“If you walk into a bar in Montana, there are two animals you don’t want to talk about: bison and wolves,” he said. “The notion of bringing back these animals — of re-wilding the West — is contrary to their personal beliefs. For some, it’s like trying to bring the dinosaurs. Why would you do it?”