By Jim Stanford on March 26, 2009
Wild bison are an icon for Wyoming and America. The publicly funded slaughter of these animals by the Park Service is a national disgrace.
Of all the wildlife and land management issues in our region, none is more maddening than the slaughter of bison in Yellowstone National Park.
Try explaining to a group of tourists that half the bison population of Yellowstone died in the winter of 2007-08, and the National Park Service was responsible for killing more than 1,600 animals. And they, the tourists, paid for it with millions of their tax dollars.
Click to enlarge.
And the bison were killed for migrating out of the park onto public land in Montana, and testing positive for a disease, brucellosis, that’s exceedingly rare to transmit to cattle. And there are few, if any, cattle on said public land. And brucellosis is a disease originally introduced to wildlife from domestic livestock. And so on.
Buffalo Field Campaign, a group of rugged and passionate activists based in West Yellowstone, Mont., has done yeoman’s work in fighting to stop this madness.
Tonight the restaurant Stone Table is hosting a fund-raiser for the campaign, “A Night for Bison.” The $15 ticket gains you entry, free tapas prepared by owner Julie Zell, a raffle ticket for prizes such as Tom Mangelsen artwork, and the satisfaction of helping activists who are effective and on the ground.
The party will run from 5 to 10 p.m. Additional ways to donate are found here.
Buffalo Field Campaign got started in the winter of 1996-97, when the Park Service and Montana Department of Livestock killed more than 1,000 bison and decimated America’s last free-roaming herd.
Since then the campaign has been diligent in videotaping the slaughter of wildlife by these public agencies, and when appropriate even disrupting the roundup and hazing operations. The group shares its video and observations with the media and has worked tirelessly to keep the slaughter in the public eye.
Maurice Hinchey, a Democratic congressman from New York, has been trying for years to de-fund the bison slaughter in Yellowstone. With a new administration in Washington, D.C., and a Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, and U.S. senator, Jon Tester, in Montana, there is hope of finally ending this insanity.
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• 2,400 Yellowstone bison dead (Jackson Hole Daily, April 19, 2008)
Posted under Environment, Politics
Jim, do you anticipate any single femiwookies will be attending?
this is disgraceful!… i had no idea. the bison has been a very strong character in my family’s life [my dad being from south dakota and all]. hell, i even wear a necklace of a buffalo nickel. [a friend sent it to me with a note saying, "so it can remind you of your family."]
anywho, i wish i could be around for the Stone Table event… i’ll have to help out some other way.
thanks for the article, jim.
I’m out of the country for a couple months…but I hope this pulls in a full house.
This makes absolutely no sense. I like the idea of explaining to the tourists how our government slaughters thousands each year…see how well that plays into our image of clean, pristine, greater yellowstone.
On a sidenote…what is done with the meat? Is it donated to shelters of any kind? Resold to fund the holocaust? Let to rot, for fear of plague–er–brucellosis?
The meat is donated:
http://www.newwest.net/city/article/yellowstone_bison_slaughter_halted_meat_distributed_to_food_banks/C396/L396/
In the past, some tribes have turned it down because of the way it is obtained. In 1997, a group of Lakota Sioux walked 500 miles to Yellowstone to protest the slaughter; the march was documented in the PBS movie The Buffalo War by former Jackson resident Matt Testa.
http://www.pbs.org/buffalowar/