Yellowstone Bison Roam Into Deadly Battle

In a mountain valley where arctic blasts have encased the grass in sheets of ice, wild bison are on the move.

The search for food has taken hundreds of the animals onto private land, where sharpshooters under federal guidelines are killing them in record numbers to prevent the spread of disease.

So far this winter, 733 American bison have been shot or sent off to slaughter for leaving this 2.2-million-acre national park. And some biologists fear that the nation’s last free-ranging bison population--a remnant of the vast herds nearly annihilated by hunters in the 19th century--may be reduced from about 3,000 to a few hundred within a matter of months.

On Thursday, federal officials announced a proposal to slow the pace of the killing, at least temporarily, by allowing Yellowstone bison to expand their range onto adjacent Gallatin National Forest land. It also calls on the National Park Service to stop sending to the slaughterhouse bison that have been captured and placed in a paddock, and to step up efforts to use rangers on horseback to scare the shaggy giants back into the park.

The survival of the herd will depend on decisions made by the state of Montana and federal authorities, who are locked in an acrimonious stalemate over how the bison should be managed and how much influence private interests should have on operations inside Yellowstone.

The National Park Service wants to let the bison roam free, despite the fact that Montana officials fear that the wandering animals could transmit brucellosis--a disease that causes spontaneous abortions--to cattle on local ranches.

But the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is threatening to revoke Montana’s brucellosis-free status if wild bison are allowed on state land. Such certification--which required a $30-million investment by ranchers--allows them to forgo expensive testing procedures before selling their cattle. To protect their investment, some landowners have won court orders allowing them to kill trespassing bison.

“It’s the toughest Gordian knot I’ve ever known,” said Yellowstone National Park Supt. Mike Finley, who believes that the brucellosis threat is overblown. “We are witnessing the second persecution of the American bison, and it is almost as violent and prejudicial as the first.”

Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, who has asked President Clinton to intervene, put it another way: “Montana is in the cross-hairs of America’s scope because we cannot act unilaterally,” he said. “The president must tell the two federal agencies that have conflicting approaches to reconcile in terms that are holistic.”

The trouble began this winter, when arctic freezes separated by heavy rains encased the park in ice as hard as concrete. That forced hundreds of bison to wander out of the refuge and onto neighboring ranches.

But Montana, under pressure from the health inspection service, has little tolerance for the animals that carry brucellosis. Never mind that transmission from bison to cattle has never been proved in the wild, or that wiping out the bison would not get rid of the disease because Yellowstone’s vast elk herds are rife with the bacteria.

To eliminate any chance of the bison infecting livestock, state officials are shooting the animals as soon as they hit private land. And under an agreement between state and federal authorities, the National Park Service is rounding up bison and holding them in a paddock outside the park’s northwestern boundary, near the town of Gardiner, Mont.

The paddock was ostensibly designed to reduce stress and injury to the animals while they await shipment to slaughter. However, a Yellowstone park ranger conceded that “to call [that captivity] humane is an oxymoron.”

A week ago, three of the bison had to be put down. One had a broken leg. Another rammed a barrier wall and broke its neck. A third got caught on a gate latch and was disemboweled.

A mile from the paddock, the ranches and hayfields are strewn with mounds of entrails left by American Indians and local outfitters who salvage the felled bison for their meat and hides. Whether the abandoned innards, which are consumed by coyotes and ravens, harbor the disease is hotly debated.

But then, nothing is clear-cut when it comes to Yellowstone’s bison.

No one has been able to come up with a minimum herd size upon which all sides can agree. Nor can anyone say with certainty how many Yellowstone bison are actually carrying brucellosis, although park scientists figure at least 50% have been killed unnecessarily.

Amid an increasingly hostile war of words, Finley has criticized Racicot for reneging on a promise to cooperate with federal authorities. He also refuses to even consider inoculating or managing the herd of 1,000-pound “mowing machines” that seasonally compete with livestock for grass on adjacent public lands.

“If we managed AIDS the way brucellosis is being managed here, you’d be shot when you left your house,” Finley said.

“Beyond that,” he added, “if these draconian measures are justified by the purported seriousness of the disease and there is a conflict between bison and cattle adjacent to Yellowstone, then the cattle ought to be removed.”

But Racicot insists that only the federal government can prevent a quarantine of Montana cattle. “There has to be a better way of preserving the integrity of a national treasure and the requirements of disease control--both animal and human,” Racicot said.

That message is not lost on the White House. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman met several times this week to come up with a way of managing the disease and protecting livestock without annihilating the bison.

But, according to Racicot, the proposal announced Thursday “quite frankly doesn’t suggest anything new.”

The National Wildlife Federation and a consortium of 40 American Indian nations, however, have come forward with a plan to stash brucellosis-free bison on reservation lands. Under this proposal, which Montana supports, American Indians would preserve the park’s genetic strain even as they restocked Indian country with the animals they venerate.

“We’re offering to raise $2 million to build a quarantine facility somewhere in Montana, and pay to ship healthy Yellowstone bison to safety on reservations,” said Steve Torbit, senior scientist with the wildlife federation. “We could cut to the chase and get it done this winter, but Montana officials have to let us ship buffalo out of the park alive.”

In the meantime, state sharpshooters have set up operations in Gardiner motels. At least once a day, they are dispatched to put down bison with a bullet placed below the horn and behind the ear.

“That breaks the neck and causes instant death,” said local outfitter Bill Hoppe. “One inch off the mark and the animal thrashes.”

“But these bison are dead one way or the other,” he said, driving a pickup past the remains of 30 bison killed a week ago a few miles outside the park. “They are going to get shot, shipped to slaughter or die of starvation.”

Not necessarily.

Park rangers are trying to haze bison back into Yellowstone. Those that won’t be deterred are funneled into the paddock currently holding 62 disease-free animals that park officials have dubbed “our symbolic hostages.”

“You have to wonder if it isn’t more humane for a grazing bison to instantly have a bullet in the head,” Finley said, “as opposed to going through the fear and trauma of the processing, loading, transportation and slaughterhouse process before ending up with the same death.”

Racicot agreed, to a point.

“We love those bison,” he said. “But . . . we are going to remain steadfast in our effort to do what is right.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

On the Firing Line

Yellowstone National Park’s estimated 3,000 bison make up the largest free-ranging herd in the United States.

WHY THEY ARE SHOT

Some of the bison carry brucellosis, a bacterium that causes cattle to abort their calves. In humans, brucellosis can cause undulant fever, which is difficult to treat if not caught early.

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HOW IT’S DONE

State sharpshooters place the bullet here, which breaks the neck and causes instant death.

Sources: National Wildlife Federation, Travel Health Online, Times files

Researched by JANET LUNDBLAD / Los Angeles Times