Montana Delays Slaughter of 300 Bison Amid Uproar

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Montana Delays Slaughter of 300 Bison Amid Uproar

 

 

May 31, 2007 — By Laura Zuckerman, Reuters

 

SALMON, Idaho -- Public outrage prompted a temporary stay of execution Wednesday

for 300 bison, including an estimated 100 calves, roaming in Montana outside the

confines of Yellowstone National Park.

 

The Montana Board of Livestock on Tuesday announced plans to capture and kill

the bison, or buffalo, in the wake of news earlier this month that seven Montana

cows had tested positive for brucellosis, a disease that can cause stillbirths

in cows and infects some of the Yellowstone bison herd.

 

Bison advocates, including the Buffalo Field Campaign, launched an opposition

campaign that caused an e-mail and telephone backlog at the state and federal

agencies that manage Yellowstone's 3,900 bison.

 

" We've been getting the calls, " said Christian Mackay, executive officer with

the Montana Department of Livestock. But " capture and hauling to slaughter is by

no means off the table. "

 

The department said it would delay plans to round up and kill the bison until

early next week.

 

The proposal comes as the tourist season is under way at Yellowstone, where

bison draw hundreds of thousands of admirers. Under a controversial

state-federal agreement, bison that leave the protection of Yellowstone are

subject to hazing and to slaughter. The department had recently tried to

encourage the wayward buffalo to return to the park.

 

While officials have yet to pinpoint the source of the brucellosis infection in

the seven cows, and there is no documented case of brucellosis transmission from

bison to cows in the wild, Montana's influential cattle industry is calling for

a forced thinning of Yellowstone bison.

 

Cattle producers say the herd is an imminent threat to Montana's

brucellosis-free status, which allows ranchers to ship cows across state lines

without testing. The state has a $1 billion livestock industry.

 

Animal activists say a historic prejudice against the buffalo, which were hunted

and killed to near extinction by the late 19th century, continues to threaten

the nation's last wild herd of purebred bison.

 

Plans to forcibly thin the Yellowstone herd comes even as the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service has proposed allowing hunters to kill more than half the bison

in the National Elk Refuge in Wyoming -- reducing the herd from 1,100 to 500

animals -- because of overgrazing, concerns about brucellosis and federal budget

cuts.

 

Source: Reuters

 

 

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