Open Thread - Buffalo

At first light on Tuesday at the end of a closed road, past a boneyard of junk cars, trailers and old cabins, more than 60 of the park’s wild bison were being loaded on a semi-trailer to be shipped to a slaughterhouse.

With heavy snow still covering the park’s vast grasslands, hundreds of bison have been leaving Yellowstone in search of food at lower elevations. A record number of the migrating animals — 1,195, or about a quarter of the park’s population — have been killed by hunters or rounded up and sent to slaughterhouses by park employees. The bison are being killed because they have ventured outside the park into Montana and some might carry a disease called brucellosis, which can be passed along to cattle.

The large-scale culling, which is expected to continue through April, has outraged groups working to preserve the park’s bison herds, considered by scientists to be the largest genetically pure population in the country. It has also led to an angry exchange between Montana state officials and the federal government over a stalled agreement to create a haven for the bison that has not received the needed federal financing.

Now it seems that the pieces of the financial puzzle and buffalo safe access had been pretty well worked out waiting on congress to do its part until...

At issue is a corridor of land on the Royal Teton Ranch, owned by a religious group called the Church Universal and Triumphant. Last fall, a final stumbling block was removed when church leaders agreed to move their cattle off 2,500 acres of the land so the bison could cross to the forest, about 10,000 acres farther downstream. Any movement from there is blocked by a narrow canyon and the river.

With the cattle removed from the land, there would be no risk of transmission of brucellosis from infected bison. The plan would allow 25 bison who had tested negative for exposure to the disease to be allowed out of the park. If that went well, 50 or more would be allowed to leave, and so on.

The State of Montana and conservationists committed to raising $1.3 million toward the $3 million or so it would cost to lease the church group’s land for 30 years. They expected the federal government, through the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, to provide the balance.

Mr. Schweitzer blamed Representative Denny Rehberg, Republican of Montana, for leading the opposition last summer to a $1.5-million Congressional appropriation that would have fulfilled the federal obligation. “He killed it,” Mr. Schweitzer said.

Kinda sad that there is not a vaccine for brucellosis but maybe the buffalo are just getting a bad rap. I sure find it disgusting that a solution is so close. Let's just do it..

What can be done about stupidity of would be hunters....well, maybe you have some ideas!