Yellowstone National Park’s long-awaited plan for
managing its wandering bison herds hasn’t made everyone
happy.
The park’s final environmental impact
statement, released in early September, tries to satisfy both bison
advocates and the Montana Department of Livestock, which kills
bison it fears could spread brucellosis to cattle. The park’s
preferred alternative would allow a bigger herd and more bison
outside park boundaries than that of the draft EIS proposed two
years ago (HCN, 9/28/98). But the park’s preferred plan also allows
officials to capture, test, vaccinate and haze bison that leave the
park, and it requires that all bison come home to the park 45 days
before domestic cattle arrive in the spring. Bison that fail to
comply would be killed.
“The government fails to
maintain free-range aspects of buffalo and fails to protect
livestock,” says the Bison Field Campaign’s Darrell Geist. He says
the government is prepared to spend $2.6 million to $2.9 million
per year to protect roughly 4,000 cattle that graze near the park’s
north and west borders. Instead, Geist says, the agency should act
to accommodate bison. Geist adds that the Park Service has
“contrived a risk” because no proof exists that bison spread the
disease to cattle.
But Wayne Brewster, a
Yellowstone official who has worked on the plan, says bison will
have a better chance of surviving if Montana livestock officials
approve of the proposal. He also believes the park is better off
actively separating its bison herds from the cattle to keep the
risk of transmitting the disease to a
minimum.
The three-volume final environmental
impact statement for the Bison Management Plan and its 97-page
executive summary are available from the National Park Service
(307/344-2159), which will accept written comments until Oct. 2.
Send them to Sarah Bransom, YCR, P.O. Box 168, Yellowstone National
Park, WY 82190.
*Tim Sullivan
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Yellowstone’s bison get a time limit.
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