The group hopes to have native animals grazing on some 5000 square miles or about 3.2 million acres of private land including 63,000A. in Phillips County connected with corridors to federal land owned by the Bureau of Land Management and to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. Total land including the purchase of 34 ranches is as big as the State of Connecticut or the size of Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks combined. Adjacent is the Fort Belknap Reservation where the Nakoda and the Aaniiih manage a range with more than a thousand bison so building a tourist destination helps economic development for the entire region.
But, since Republicans seized power in Montana they've argued Yellowstone National Park is neglecting its commitments to managing the park’s bison population in order to decrease the spread of brucellosis to cattle despite knowing wapiti spread it to cattle far more often than bison do. In Montana, the Department of Livestock is the governing arm for bison that leave the protections of the park.
Chico Hot Springs hosted the annual meeting for the Interagency Bison Membership Plan where bellicose welfare ranchers insisted YNP isn't doing enough to kill off America's National Mammal.
Yellowstone’s Lead Bison Biologist Chris Geremia told officials at the meeting that a harsh winter brought more than 1,000 animals outside of the park into the Gardiner Basin. The herd was reduced by around 25 percent: more than 1000 of them were removed by the tribal and state hunt, 282 were entered into a program that transfers bison to tribal nations, and 88 bison were slaughtered, their meat and hides given to tribes. IBMP voting member and Custer Gallatin National Forest Supervisor Mary Erickson, says from her vantage point having served on the IBMP for the past 16 years, bison management has always been complex and controversial, but over the years the group has made a lot of progress. [Yellowstone Public Radio]The feds should buy out landowners unwilling to lease for wildlife corridors. Unless the West embraces rewilding on portions of the Missouri River basin west of a north/south line from Oacoma, South Dakota through the CM Russell National Wildlife Refuge to Yellowstone National Park then to the Yukon water wars will clog the courts leaving violent armed vigilantism to settle disputes.
Learn more at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
In my latest column, I write that Gov. Gianforte is trying to bully Yellowstone National Park into killing more bison.https://t.co/K4N10ROsot
— Darrell Ehrlick (@DarrellEhrlick) October 19, 2023
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