Contacts: Dan Brister, Pete Leusch (406) 646-0070
Montana DOL and Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Violate Gallatin Forest Plan in Capture of 9 Bison near Yellowstone.
West Yellowstone, MT: Nine bison, including pregnant cows and yearling calves, were hazed five miles through more than three feet of snow and captured in the Department of Livestock's (DOL) Horse Butte bison trap on Sunday. The DOL didn't try to haze the small herd, which had only been in Montana for two days, back to the park. The bison were grazing along the Madison River a few hundred yards outside the west boundary of Yellowstone in the Gallatin National Forest.
Agents from the DOL and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks violated the Gallatin Forest Plan by driving snowmobiles off designated trails along the Madison River. According to the Forest Plan's provisions for protecting fish and game, "Motorized vehicle use will not be permitted during the period December 1 through May 1, except on designated routes" (Gallatin National Forest Forest Plan, III-44). The Park Service, the Forest Service, Gallatin County Sheriff's Department, and the MT Highway Patrol also assisted with the operation.
"These agencies are violating the laws they are supposed to uphold, destroying our wildlife, and spending 40 million of our tax dollars in the process," said BFC spokesperson Dan Brister. "Every time an agent drives his snowmobile through a riparian area, a thousand tourists are tempted to follow in his tracks," said Brister.
Firing cracker-rounds and throwing sticks and snowballs at the bison to make them move, the agents chased the animals for more than three hours. Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC) journalists were restricted from areas where they were documenting the operation and threatened with arrest while tourists on snowmobiles were permitted within the same areas.
Because the brucellosis test used by the DOL to determine whether to slaughter or release captured animals detects antibodies rather than infection, the majority of the bison that test "positive" and are killed don't actually carry the disease. Eighty percent of bison testing positive for exposure prior to slaughter test negative according to the more accurate culture test conducted after slaughter.
There has never been a documented transmission of brucellosis from wild bison to livestock. In its 1998 study, Brucellosis in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the National Academy of Sciences concluded, "The current risk of transmission from YNP bison to cattle is low."
Even if buffalo were capable of spreading brucellosis, the absence of cattle between mid-October and mid-June make such a transmission
