More than 500 park bison captured

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

The National Park Service has captured more than 500 bison and plans to ship most of them to slaughter, hauling them as far as Nampa, Idaho, a journey of more than 500 miles.

A total of 106 bison made that trip Tuesday, Yellowstone National Park spokesman Al Nash said.

There, the meat, heads and hides will be distributed to a variety of Indian tribes, according to Teresa Howes, spokeswoman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services, the federal agency arranging the transports.

That location was chosen because a processing plant was ready and people wanted the meat and hides.

A total of 524 bison have been captured near Gardiner this winter, Nash said. Of that number, 218 have been shipped to slaughter and 38 calves that tested negative for exposure to brucellosis have been shipped to an experimental quarantine facility at Corwin Springs.

One calf died in the bison trap.

That means 267 bison remain in the pens just inside the park's northern border.

Some of the calves in that facility could be tested for brucellosis, with those showing no signs of the disease going to the quarantine pens. But most of the trapped bison will die in slaughterhouses as quickly as it can be arranged.

Buffalo Field Campaign, a bison advocacy group, accused the state and federal governments of being "in a taxpayer-subsidized killing frenzy."

Indeed, the financial costs are rising.

Slaughterhouses charge an average of about $100 per head to kill, skin and hang a bison. Trucking companies charge between $2.25 and $3.35 per mile to haul bison, Howes said.

That means kill fees for approximately 500 bison will total about $50,000. Shipping to a place like Nampa costs at least $1,125 a load.

Other costs include feed in the pens, staff time for rangers, veterinarians and others, and salaries and expenses of federal security officers brought in to guard the operations.

Most slaughtering so far this year has been done in five Montana plants, scattered from Sheridan to Roundup.

Howes said there has been no problem so far shipping animals or finding people to accept the meat and hides.

"Right now there isn't a problem," she said. "There's no bottleneck. But could there be? Yes."

She urged charities or Indian organizations interested in receiving bison meat, as well as federally approved slaughterhouses that want work, to call the APHIS office in Helena at 449-2220.

Yellowstone bison, which numbered about 4,900 animals in early winter, are managed under a complex state/federal plan adopted in 2000.

It allows for bison to be rounded up for slaughter, without testing them for disease, when the herd is above 3,000 animals.

BFC has maintained that for the slaughters to be legal, that number must be confirmed by a late-winter count, which hasn't been done yet.

Nash said the Park Service is confident there will be more than 3,000 bison remaining in the area when the count is made.

Most of the animals captured in the past week had left the park and were feeding on Church Universal and Triumphant property, including the 200 that were rounded up Monday.

Approximately 100 more bison are now in the Gardiner/Mammoth Hot Springs area, Nash said.

Meanwhile, hunters have resumed their activities on the east side of the Yellowstone River, and along the park's western border, according to Mel Frost, spokeswoman for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

At least 26 animals have been shot by hunters, she said, including at least six in the past few days.

"There may be more," she said, but she has been unable to confirm that.

Bison advocates called on the government to give bison more room outside the park, to treat them like other wildlife.

The beef industry and animal health officials fear the bison will spread brucellosis to cattle, even though that has never been confirmed in the wild.

Bison captured near Gardiner in recent days face a long ride to a slaughterhouse.

But most of them had a long walk to reach the the boundary of Yellowstone National Park.

"Our best belief is that these are all central herd animals" from the Hayden and Firehole valleys, park spokesman Al Nash said Tuesday.

That's an important distinction.

The park has two main bison herds: the northern herd and the central herd.

The northern herd is a "semi-independent unit," according to a 2005 study by C. Cormack Gates, a University of Calgary researcher.

He found that the northern herd could be nearly wiped out, under current management plans, during a mass migration.

"The potential exists for most of the population to be culled if it exits the park," he wrote.

However, most of the northern bison appear to be staying put this winter.

Gates found the central herd to be at lower risk from "culling" at the park borders.

Nash said there are radio-collared animals among the 425 bison rounded up recently, indicating the animals came from the central herd.

Bison herds tend to be highly socialized and animals generally stick together.