Guest opinion: Myths concerning roaming park bison disputed

By Mike Mease

It is time for honesty about wild buffalo that leave Yellowstone National Park for Montana's lower elevation habitat. Let's start with the myths being portrayed as facts by the Montana Department Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP):

1) Wild buffalo are now free to roam 460,000 acres of public land. The vast majority of this acreage lies in areas where wild buffalo never set foot. Hunters will actually find buffalo on less than 40,000 acres. This land will only be available for buffalo during the three months of the hunt, after which the Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) will commence hazing, capture and shooting operations. If wild buffalo cross the boundaries set by the DOL, the hunt may be suspended while buffalo are hazed, captured or shot. Since early September, the DOL has conducted seven hazing operations and shot two bull buffalo. Bulls can't transmit brucellosis.

2) Montana designates wild Yellowstone buffalo as a species requiring disease control. While this is true, MCA 87-2-101 (6) lists wild buffalo as a "game animal." FWP's big game management policy, codified at ARM 12.9.101, aims "to produce and maintain a maximum breeding stock of big game on all suitable lands of Montana, public and private, in harmony with other uses of such lands, and consistent with the available forage supply, and to utilize, through public hunting, the available crop of big game produced annually by this breeding stock." FWP has neither produced nor maintained a breeding stock of buffalo anywhere in Montana, nor has it determined a target population for wild buffalo in Montana as it has for all other game species. The DOL, an agency with no interest in wild buffalo as a big game species, and no training in wildlife management, maintains ultimate authority over buffalo and the upcoming hunt.

3) Each tribe in Montana will receive two permits to kill wild buffalo that will be administered by tribal diabetes programs. Many native people now suffer from diabetes mainly due to the commodity food programs supplying reservations with unhealthy products filled with white sugar and highly processed flours. Diabetes is two to three times higher in American Indians in Montana compared with the non-Indian population. If Montana is concerned about the health of its Native population, it should provide the tribes with more nutritious food including meat from some of Montana's many domestic bison herds or help the tribes maintain live herds. Two permits issued to each tribe will not reduce diabetes, but have been given to offset the negative publicity the hunt is certain to bring.

Montana has always preferred the fifty-cent solution, the bullet. The greater Yellowstone ecosystem's most profitable industry is tourism, not livestock. The Buffalo Field Campaign has suggested to Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer that he work with Idaho and Wyoming's governors to redefine the brucellosis classification system so that in the unlikely event that brucellosis transmission ever did occur from wild buffalo, cattle producers far from the greater Yellowstone ecosystem would not be affected.

This would allow for greater freedom in designing a scientifically sound, long-term management strategy for wild buffalo that will benefit local economies and Montana's hunting and outfitting industries. Instead, Gov. Schweitzer has put in for a buffalo permit. Why must Montana repeat its mistakes and refuse to treat buffalo as the wild animals they are?

Wyoming has a buffalo hunt without all the controversy that comes to Montana because in Wyoming they don't haze, capture and kill buffalo the second they leave Teton National Park or the National Elk Refuge. In at least some parts of Wyoming, buffalo are recognized as wildlife and are free to roam as they choose. Montana could save face if we followed suit.

In the coming months people from around the world will join the Buffalo Field Campaign as we document every move against the buffalo migrating from Yellowstone National Park. Montana's dirty laundry will once again be aired in view of international audiences. The Buffalo Field Campaign's stance remains "No habitat, no hunt." Let buffalo establish a native Montana population. Then, working together with all interests at the table, we can develop a long-term management strategy that may include hunting. The buffalo slaughter now bears your name, Gov. Schweitzer. Is this how you want to be remembered?

Mike Mease is co-founder of Buffalo Field Campaign in West Yellowstone.

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