I was heartened to read that even though Hal Herring
called it “hunting” throughout his story of the Yellowstone
buffalo, he finally called it what it truly was, an ugly slaughter
(HCN, 2/6/06: The Killing Fields). Killing those placid buffalo was
no more hunting than going out to the back pasture and plugging
your Hereford bull.
It’s not just the buffalo of
Yellowstone that are treated with contempt and cruelty. There has
been about as much mismanagement of the West’s wild horses.
Some say mustangs don’t deserve protection, because they are
not wild, but domesticated animals gone feral. But couldn’t
the same be said of the American buffalo? The Buffalo Field
Campaign says that the herd now roaming free in Yellowstone is from
a small, protected band of a meager 23 (left over from an
incomprehensible 50 million) saved from the slaughter of the 1800s.
Both buffalo and wild horses endure under the will and
generosity (or lack) of the federal government, and the advocacy
groups that campaign for their safety and survival. Both of these
creatures, indigenous or not, are living in sanctuaries, just as
clearly as are the elephants of Hohenwald, Tenn. Our mustangs and
buffalo just have a larger territory to roam “free.”
Maura T. Callahan
Snoqualmie,
Washington
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Neither bison nor mustangs are truly free.
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