Secrecy on APHIS bison project is perplexing

By Chronicle Editor

There's a axiom in public relations: Secrecy breeds suspicion. And suspicion almost invariably leads to negative public opinion.

It's a lesson that seems lost on the domestic livestock element of the Yellowstone bison controversy. Where state and federal government ag agencies get involved in the bison controversy, secrecy seems to become the order of the day.

The latest example is the federal bison research facility near Gardiner. The facility is on leased private land near Corwin Springs. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has leased the land for three years and has apparently been testing contraceptive vaccines on bison imported from South Dakota for some months now.

APHIS officials have said the project is not secret. But asked to elaborate on the issue, an official with APHIS veterinary services in Denver declined to comment. The National Wildlife Federation last week formally requested the Department of Agriculture to release more information on the project.

Even Yellowstone National Park officials, who are employed by the National Park Service - another federal agency - say they would like more information on the project. Their concern is that escaped bison could contaminate the pure Yellowstone bison genetics.

"We would have appreciated being informed earlier," says Wayne Brewster, deputy director of the park's resource division. "But it's sort of their business, I guess."

We beg to differ.

APHIS is a federal agency using public money to conduct experiments that will have impacts on park bison, a public resource. This project is the public's business.

Apparently the project is aimed at gauging the effectiveness of contraceptive measures on bison. Some bison carry brucellosis, a disease which can cause domestic cattle to abort their calves. Contraception would prevent bison from producing infected aborted fetuses, the most common way the disease is communicated.

If APHIS officials are working on a way to eliminate the brucellosis threat from the park bison equation, they should willing - even anxious - to share it with everyone involved. The fact that they aren't, makes one ... well, suspicious.

The biggest flaw in any government secrecy strategy is the almost certain knowledge that everything becomes public - eventually.

In this case, the National Wildlife Federation's Freedom of Information Act request should do the trick in a scant few weeks.

It's perplexing, though, and suspicious, as to why it has to come to this.

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