There may be places in this world where the buffalo roam free, but the north-western corner of Yellowstone National Park is not one of them. If, following their winter migration routes to lower ground, the Yellowstone buffalo move near and across the Park’s boundaries in Montana, while remaining on public lands, they are rounded up and slaughtered. This winter, the National Parks Service, which carries out the killing, has set itself the target of “culling” 900 buffalo and has already slaughtered 582 so far.
Why would the parks service, supposed to be dedicated to protecting wildlife and the natural environment, deliberately slaughter hundreds of buffalo from one of the last remaining wild and genetically pure herds? The reasons given for the culls are a moving target. For years, the parks service and other agencies like the Montana Department of Livestock have argued that the buffalo posed a risk of infection of brucellosis, a disease that affects pregnant cows and causes miscarriages, to the herds of cattle grazing on the public lands adjacent to the Park.
This argument has been demolished by animal rights groups like the Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC), which has shown that there is not a single recorded case of transmission of brucellosis from buffalo to domestic cattle. A secondary reason for the culls is given as the “carrying capacity” of the Park, fixed at 3000 bison. The herd was estimated at 4400 before this winter’s killing began.
Animal advocates have argued that the estimated “carrying capacity” reflects not the Park’s available resources, but the interests of the livestock industry and the ranchers who use the public lands bordering Yellowstone to graze their free ranging cattle. The purpose of the culls is to reduce the number of buffalo likely to stray outside the park boundaries. The buffalo culls have been going on since 1985 and 9161 buffalo have been slaughtered at Yellowstone since then.
The Buffalo Field Campaign and Native American groups have been documenting and opposing the culls since 1997. Earlier this month, along with journalist Christopher Ketcham, they won the right to visit and film the holding pens where the buffalo are kept while being processed for slaughter or quarantine. The horrific footage from the Stephens Creek bison trap, which shows injured and panic stricken animals confined in narrow spaces, is another reason why the parks service prefers to carry out the culls in secrecy and silence.
Fortunately, the buffalo spring migration, which takes them deeper into the Park, has started, and this video shows two separate groups eluding capture by park rangers.
