You may have seen news photos
of the massive, shaggy beasts that are a national totem, standing
more or less complacently while hunters approach. Easy as one, two,
three, the animals come crashing down.
It’s an outrageous
sight, but strangely acceptable — the first hunting of
Yellowstone National Park bison in 15 years. The last hunt died
amid a barrage of bad publicity, because everyone saw that it was
more like shooting animals in a cage. The hunt still boils down to
that, but there’s not much bad publicity now. Almost everyone
finally realizes that our Yellowstone bison policy is a failure,
whether or not we have a hunt.
It’s also rich with
ironies. Hunters have long been leaders of conservation, with a
wild as well as a preservationist streak. In the late 1800s and
early 1900s, responsible hunters organized to stop the over-hunting
and market hunting that threatened the survival of many species.
They supported the preservation of habitat, including the creation
of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, where the nation’s once-vast
bison herds were saved from extinction.
The park remains
the primary sanctuary for wild bison. But over the years, the
cattle industry has effectively taken charge of the park’s bison.
Because the bison carry a disease, brucellosis, that might spread
to cattle, every time the bison population exceeds the capacity of
the park’s habitat, federal and state agencies protect the industry
at all costs, using harassment, roundups and mass slaughterings to
prevent the bison from roaming outside the park.
Livestock spread the disease to Yellowstone wildlife to begin with,
and now the wildlife pays the price of protecting livestock. Going
into this winter, due to a few good recent years, the park had
about 5,000 bison, though the park’s habitat can support only 3,000
long-term, according to biologists. So Montana’s wildlife agency,
with wide public support, began the new hunt, running a lottery and
attracting thousands of applicants for the chance to get one of the
50 permits.
Hunters have bagged some 30 bison so far. The
bison are so accustomed to being around tourists, a person with a
gun can drive within a hundred yards of a herd that has no place
else to go. Then the gunner finishes the nonchalant stalk by
walking up to the specific target and shooting from a few yards
away.
Meanwhile, in between the hunters, the agencies
continue the policy of total control, using snowmobiles to do
roundups of bison along the park’s borders. They’ve trucked more
than 550 of the park’s bison to an Idaho slaughterhouse in the past
few weeks, and more will be dispatched to that fate.
As
unfair as the hunt looks, it’s better than this industrial roundup
and slaughter. It could also spur a solution. That’s why the
agencies hope to expand the hunt. If the bison are subjected to
more hunting pressure, they’ll learn to be more wary of people with
guns. And an increasing demand for opportunities to hunt the
animals enshrined on our nickels from 1913 to 1938 might also build
political support for allowing them to roam beyond the easy access
roads.
It’s clear hunters can still be an impressive
political force. They asserted their power magnificently two months
ago, when a few Republicans tried to sneak a proposal through
Congress that would have sold some public lands to mining companies
and other developers. The National Wildlife Federation led a
campaign that quickly enlisted more than 700 sporting and
conservation groups, including many thousands of hunters. The
broad-based, nonpartisan uprising halted the proposed selloff.
Hunters know that without wild lands, and animals roaming
on their own terms, there can be no real hunting. Their next
rallying could be for Yellowstone’s bison. Groups like the Wildlife
Federation are already working with willing landowners and agencies
to move cattle off habitat outside the park, allowing bison more
room to roam. And researchers are trying to invent a vaccine that
could be used to protect bison, elk and cattle from the brucellosis
disease, which would also lower barriers to roaming bison. Those
efforts need more funding and leadership.
If more hunters
call for opening the cage around Yellowstone’s bison, and expanding
the bison’s territory; if they demand solutions from the
region’s governors, legislators and members of Congress, it would
be good for them, and for the animals, and for the nation as a
whole. Those are good reasons for giving this outrageous hunt a
try.
Ray Ring is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). He is the paper’s Northern Rockies editor, based
in Bozeman, Montana.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
