Red Lodge Clearinghouse

Two winters ago, wildlife advocates protested when federal and state wranglers rounded up roughly 900 Yellowstone bison on Montana rangelands outside the park and shipped them off to slaughter. This October, Yellowstone biologists reported that the park's summer herd numbered roughly 4,700 bison, close to the 2005 peak of 4,900 animals. Already, some parts of Yellowstone received a foot and a half of snow; and a brief thaw followed by freezing temperatures created icy layers that will make it tough for grazing bison to plow their massive heads through the snow cover to find forage.

Wildlife managers calculate that these factors make it increasingly likely that bison herd will be forced outside the park in the next few months onto national forests and private lands at lower elevations. "It's all about access to food," Tim Reid, Yellowstone's deputy chief ranger said Dec. 12 in an interview. "We already have those conditions, and it doesn't bode well for bison staying in the park this winter."

After an especially hot and dry summer, "we are looking at a rugged winter for bison," said Amy McNamara, the national parks coordinator for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, an environmental group based in Bozeman. "There are clear signals that the agencies are prepared to be pretty heavy handed this winter" controlling bison that cross Yellowstone's boundaries, she added in an interview with Land Letter.

Brucellosis threat

Of particular concern, Yellowstone's bison herd has been infected since 1917 with brucellosis, a bacterial disease that causes cows to abort their calves. Brucellosis can be transmitted to domestic cattle, and Montana ranchers fear that their livestock will contract the disease, costing the state's cattle industry millions of dollars.

Since 2000, the National Park Service has been managing bison under an interagency agreement with the Montana Department of Livestock and three other government agencies designed to reduce the brucellosis risk for ranchers. The other parties to the management agreement are Gallatin National Forest, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and Montana's Fish, Wildlife and Park Department. The agencies work together to drive herds back into the park, test captured cows for brucellosis exposure, and send surplus bison to slaughterhouses. The agreement sets a threshold of 3,000 bison in the park, and when the population surpasses that level "it gives us more discretion and autonomy in making management decisions," Reid said. "We'll implement the interagency plan to the fullest if necessary."

With the population above 3,000, the plan empowers agencies to ship captured animals straight to slaughter without testing them for brucellosis exposure, Reid said. If large numbers begin leaving the park in early winter, bison managers could take that step to keep enough space available in holding corrals at the park boundaries for bison that rangers expect will move outside the park later in the season.

In the first years of the 2000 arrangement, wildlife and agricultural agencies were often at odds over bison policies; but observers say they have now begun working together more smoothly.

Details of this year's management plan

On Nov. 16, the five agencies agreed to updated procedures that call for proactive hazing this winter in an effort to keep more bison inside the park. In hazing operations, wranglers on horseback, snowmobiles, and all-terrain vehicles push bison back across the boundary, firing exploding "crackershells" and rubber bullets from shotguns.

Officials say agencies may haze bison back into Yellowstone more aggressively this year. Last spring, some bison lingered longer than usual outside Yellowstone's western boundary and were then transported by truck and released at the park's northern entrance (Land Letter, June 7).

This year, however, park officials are ruling out transporting bison again. "Yellowstone National Park doesn't see trucking bison as a practice we want to repeat," park spokesman Al Nash said. "We really want to manage and handle bison as wildlife. They are not cattle."

In the coming spring, the agencies "want to avoid that situation if at all possible," said livestock director Mackay. If bison begin moving outside the boundaries in large numbers, he adds, "we'll do hazing earlier and push them deeper back into the park so they'll stick." In past years, wranglers have pushed bison as far as 10 miles inside the park, Reid said, but hazing "is expensive and hazardous" for agency employees. "It's not a thing we undertake lightly as a way to manage bison," he added. "Bison won't go where they don't want to go."

On the park's western boundary, bison management may be complicated this year by the sale of a 700-acre ranch where cattle had previously grazed on the Horse Butte Peninsula on Hebgen Lake. The new owners, Rob and Janae Galanis of Salt Lake City, removed livestock from the land and wrote to the Department of Livestock in September declaring their property "a Bison Free Zone and a wildlife preserve" where agencies can no longer conduct bison hazing. Department of Livestock officials say Montana law gives them authority to enter private lands to conduct bison management. State veterinarian Marty Zaluski has asked to meet with the couple and suggested that the agency may be able to tolerate some bison in the area. The owners had not responded by Dec. 12, Mackay said, and at present "we're left with our obligation under the law" to protect livestock against brucellosis.

As part of the bison management program, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department now offers bison hunts that this winter will give as many as 144 hunters licenses to kill bison, depending on how many animals leave the park; and Native American tribes also conduct hunts for an equal number of bison. In July, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials reached a tentative agreement to lease grazing rights on a ranch just north of Yellowstone to allow as many as a hundred bison to move through to reach winter habitat on the national forest. Pat Flowers, the state wildlife agency's regional director who negotiated the lease, said Dec. 6 that agencies are still working to find funding to complete the deal (Land Letter, Aug. 2).

Last summer, brucellosis was detected in seven cattle grazing north of the park. No evidence has been found suggesting that they contracted the disease from bison, and ranchers and government agriculture agency officials suspect that the disease was transmitted by the region's abundant elk herds.

In November, the Montana Board of Livestock sidetracked a proposal by Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) to set up a buffer zone around Yellowstone that would be treated separately for brucellosis risk management. If another case of brucellosis is found in livestock near the park, adjacent ranches still would be forced to conduct expensive testing for the disease under the "split-state" plan, but the rest of Montana would keep its advantageous "brucellosis free" status. The National Parks and Conservation Association and some ranchers backed Schweitzer's proposal, but the Montana Stockgrowers Association opposed the idea. Mackay said the livestock board instead is working with ranchers near Yellowstone on developing herd management plans and vaccinating their livestock against the disease.

McNamara contends that agencies have yet to follow up on the interagency plan goals for expanding bison habitat outside the park. "They've been quite successful in keeping bison separate from livestock in time and space" as a disease control measure, "but what they've failed to do is manage bison as wildlife," she adds. "Montana welcomes elk and deer and pronghorn outside Yellowstone, and we want to get to the point where we are welcoming bison outside the park as well."

But this winter, "all of the partners will be ready to fully implement the interagency plan" by hazing and rounding up bison leaving Yellowstone, Mackay said. "That's going to make some people happy and make some people unhappy."

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