The last wild herd of American buffalo in the United States are roaming once more – and facing slaughter from the cattle ranchers who reduced them to the brink of extinction in the 19th Century.

Tensions are running high around Yellowstone National Park in Montana where the Board of Livestock has agreed to kill a group of 300 bison, including nearly 100 newborn calves, which are being blamed for spreading disease among cattle.

A public outcry has forced a stay of execution until early next week while a final attempt is made to drive the buffalo deep into the park and away from neighbouring ranch land.

But Jay Bodner, a local rancher and the Stockgrowers Association’s natural resources director, said: “We have tried hazing them off our land six times and they keep returning because the forage in the west of the park is poor quality.

“The population of bison is too big to be sustained by the food available in the park. If they come back again next week, they will be rounded up and slaughtered.”

The Buffalo Field Campaign, which advocates the right to roam for wild bison, is planning to use civil disobedience tactics to stop any such killing.

Although there have been culls of bison from the park before, Stephany Seay, the campaign’s spokesman pointed out this has usually happened in winter before calves are born. “Slaughtering unprecedented numbers of these little babies is going to be a political, public nightmare for state officials,” she warned.

Unlike other herds in the US, the Yellowstone bison are pure-bred and neither fed nor managed by park rangers. Their number has grown to around 3,800 from the 23 surviving buffalo who found refuge on the highlands of Montana a century ago.

Hunters and cattlemen had forced the bison, along with American Indians, from the Great Plains during the 19th Century where their population had once been estimated at up to 100 million.

Ms Seay said: “The buffalo are now trying to come back and reclaim their land by roaming. This is a conflict with the cattle industry, just as it was in the 19th Century, which is once again dictating whether the buffalo should live or die.

“Most of the land around Yellowstone is publicly-owned which the ranchers get cheap. If any animals are going to be moved off, it should be the cattle.” Mr Bodner dismisses such views as sentimental nonsense from an environmental lobby which has little sympathy or understanding of rural needs.

“We’re not against the bison,” he said. “But people have to be realistic, we don’t have the same society we had 200 years ago: if the livestock producers are forced off land around Yellowstone that habitat will be sold off in subdivisions for houses.” Montana’s fragile cattle industry is desperately worried about a recent outbreak of brucellosis, a disease known to be carried by the Yellowstone bison. Another such case would mean they lose their coveted disease-free status and force them to conduct expensive tests of any beef being exported over state lines.

“That could cost us maybe five or six million dollars, money that would come directly out of the ranchers’ pockets,” said Mr Bodner.

The disease, which causes pregnant cattle to abort, is also cited by the US Fish and Wild-life Service as a reason for its recent decision allowing hunters to kill around half the bison herd in the National Elk Refuge in Wyoming.

But Ms Seay claimed that the only recorded proof of brucellosis being transmitted from bison to cattle was in artificial laboratory conditions. She added bison only became infected by the disease because they caught it off cattle.

Montana’s Governor, Brian Schweitzer, addressed a angry public meeting on the issue.

His policy adviser, Hal Harper, said that the Governor was facing a public relations disaster by allowing the slaughter of week-old bison calves but added that “the protection of this state’s cattle industry is a top priority”.

He is praying that the buffalo remain within the park’s boundaries this weekend.

Park life

— Established in 1872, Yellowstone is America’s first national park

— It is at the heart of the 18 million acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem – one of the largest intact ecosytems left on Earth

— Native Americans settled in the Yellowstone region over 11,000 years ago

— Organised expeditions into Yellowstone did not occur until the 1860s, after the rest of the West was already largely settled

— It contains approximately half of the world’s hydrothermal features. There are more than 10,000 hydrothermal features in the park, including 300 geysers

— In the largest forest fire in the park’s history, in 1988, almost one third of it was burned.

Source: www.greateryellowstone.org ;www.yellow-stone.net ;www.yellowstone-natl-park.com

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