In the middle of winter, when the wind roars through Maiden Basin near Yellowstone National Park, it is the chilling sound of bullets against skulls that reverberates in your memory. The sound of Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) bullets shooting down the last wild buffalo herd in the United States; mothers, babies and fathers. This summer, state and federal officials issued a document that will decide the fate of the buffalo for the next 15 years. After killing almost half of the Yellowstone herd, 1,100 in the winter of 1997 alone, the long awaited draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Interagency Bison Management Plan for the state of Montana and Yellowstone National Park is ready. The sound we hear today is paper shuffling.
After taking eight years to prepare the draft EIS, the government is now moving fast, allowing just 120 days for public input before finalizing their buffalo management plan. October 16 is the deadline for written public comment. Options listed in the EIS share common elements, including use of so-called lethal controls as the herd approaches 1,700 animals (presently larger than that now); defining management boundaries beyond which agencies take action to ensure bison do not stray; and auctioning or distributing slaughtered bison to social service organizations or tribes.
Native peoples involved in the buffalo controversy, from the emerging activist group Buffalo Nations to the established tribal-based coalition, Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC), have come out in opposition to the federal proposal and hope to increase public opposition and debate about the EIS. The underlying point is that in all the so-called alternatives, the buffalo will be shot. That is what constitutes a lethal control. In some cases, lethal control will be undertaken by wildlife officials, other agencies or through hunting permits. All proposals have one distinct end result. And all proposals share another common element. They seem to lack a long term consideration of what is best for the buffalo and the ecosystem.
At the heart of the EIS is a major public policy question: whether one should manage the buffalo, indigenous to the region, or manage all the introduced, non-indigenous factors which now impact the buffalo. Such introduced factors include cattle. Consider that the buffalo are a self serve sort of critter, when the winters get cold and the snow deep in the high elevations of Yellowstone, they do what they need to do to survive; they move into winter grazing areas. Those grazing areas are quite often outside the formal park boundaries. The winter ranges include the north and west boundaries of the park, areas that are primarily national forest land and US Forest Service grazing allotments. According to law, the allotments are designated primarily for wildlife, secondarily for livestock. But cattle are on those allotments. Those areas designated for wildlife and occupied by cattle are where the majority of buffalo have been killed over the past three yearsïsome 1,900 total.
Only one formal proposal in the EIS, the "Minimal Management" Alternative Two, calls for aggressive acquisition of private and public lands in the grazing allotment areas to be set aside for buffalo and for expanding the protected area to include a larger, more sustainable ecosystem that can feed the buffalo herd in the winter. This alternative focuses on changing the behavior of the cattle and ranchers to manage the alleged threat of buffalo, rather than trying to exclusively manage buffalo. It includes pro-active solutions such as "acquisition through purchase or easement or changes in cattle operations from willing sellers of additional winter range for bison." Alternative Two falls short, however, in that lethal controls remain, including killing of expectant mothers.
The distinction in the approaches is a significant point to buffalo activists like Rosalie Little Thunder, a Sicangu Lakota. Rosalie is an outspoken, front-line organizer on the buffalo issue. Buffalo Nations, a group she founded, has spent much of the past two winters with the buffalo at Yellowstone, serving as a human shield between the animals and the guns. Rosalie, a noted beadwork artist, Lakota language instructor and educator, is one of many committed to preserving the herd and all it represents to Lakota and other indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. Rosalie's position is that all the approaches mean buffalo will die needlessly. That in itself drives a larger set of cultural and spiritual concerns around which Rosalie works. Rosalie and others begin the debate by pointing out that much of this whole controversy is politically driven by economic and special interest factors which have little to do with the actual protection of animals, buffalo or any other.
One of the key political factors underlying the killing of buffalo at Yellowstone is the unfounded threat of brucellosis transmission. Brucellosis is a livestock disease that can cause abortion of calves and ungulate fever in humans who consume the meat. Some of the buffalo have it, and Montana's cattle ranchers do not want their cows to get it. Ironically, there has never been a single case of brucellosis transmission from buffalo to cattle in the wild. The disease is only transmitted through birth materials, so it is the calving period in which the alleged danger can occur. But at Glacier National Park, buffalo and cattle have grazed side by side for forty years, including calving seasons, with no cases of transmission between the animals ever reported.
Finally, there are economic underpinnings to the myth of brucellosis. Elk in Yellowstone, which are 25-30 times more populous than bison, also have the dreaded disease. Elk have possibly transmitted the disease to livestock in six cases, according to wildlife biologist Virginia Randavi. Although bison continue to be slaughtered, elk are ignored, perhaps because elk hunting earns the state of Montana $11 million a year from licenses and permits alone. And in spite of the alleged threat to human health, the state of Montana sold the carcasses of bison killed in the winter of '96-'97 as "Property of the Department of Livestock," pocketing $185,763 in proceeds.
Buffalo Nations representatives take the position that brucellosis in the Yellowstone herd has neither hurt the buffalo, nor had any economic or health impact on cattle. Rosalie Little Thunder remains steadfast in her position that there should be no killing. She calls for the expansion of grazing areas, holding cattlemen accountable to the law (by moving cattle off grazing allotments designated for wildlife) and as a last option instead of killing, live removal of mother-calf pairs to grassland areas and communities controlled by Native tribes.
"If they are going to kill buffalo based on the alleged threat of brucellosis, then the public deserves absolute proof that there is a threat," says Rosalie. "There is no proof because a risk assessment on brucellosis has never been done. At the least, the EIS should be based on a scientific mandate." She adds, "If buffalo are going to be killed to allow cattle to graze on lands designated for wildlife, then we need to demand an EIS on the impact of cattle!"
The ITBC, along with some 15 other organizations, has developed what is called the "Citizen's Plan" as an alternative to the proposals presented by the federal government. Elements of the Citizens Plan include establishing buffalo population goals "based on science, not politics;" actively acquiring key migration and additional range land; adjusting cattle grazing allotments adjacent to the park; vaccinating the cattle against brucellosis and vaccinating the buffalo when a safe and effective non-invasive vaccine is available. The ITBC plan also calls for a live removal option for buffalo using a health certification center or quarantine facility. The plan, supported by organizations like the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the National Wildlife Federation, is quite a bit more innovative and, many would argue, more viable in the long term than approaches outlined by the federal government.
Whether the short-sighted option of killing buffalo or the long-term viability of the herd and the ecosystem will win out in this battle depends to a great extent on the voice of Native peoples and the public at large in the process. The outcome will determine more than the fate of the buffalo. "As long as the buffalo live, we can also live," says Birgil Kills Strait, of the Pine Ridge Reservation. "The buffalo have the right to be here, they were here before we were, this is their land as well. Our lives as humans rely on the buffalo."
Please send your comments on the draft EIS to Sarah Branscom, National Park Service, POB 25287, Denver, CO 80225-9901. To help protect buffalo at Yellowstone National Park, contact Buffalo Nations at POB 957, West Yellowstone, MT 59758, (406) 646-0070.