Buffalo Field Campaign update for Feb. 21, 2008

Along the north boundary, near Gardiner, Yellowstone National Park has captured and sent to slaughter 290 of America's last wild buffalo. It is so hard to imagine the stress and horror these buffalo go through as they are captured and separated from their families by age and sex. Frightened, they run around in a panic, goring each other as they try to find a way out of this thoughtless prison. The sacred buffalo, being loaded onto livestock trailers and hauled to the dark nightmare of the slaughter house, to be processed and cut to pieces. How dare Yellowstone National Park condemn the buffalo under their care to such a fate.

Here in West Yellowstone, Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) agents have plowed the 610 Forest Service road that leads to the Horse Butte trap site. This morning, patrols began witnessing the livestock agents assembling the trap. According to the DOL, hazing, capture and slaughter could begin any minute now. The buffalo scattered throughout the Madison Valley and Horse Butte Peninsula are doing the best they can just to survive the winter. Now their true enemies are back in town ready to dominate the landscape and terrorize every creature that lives here. There are never any cattle on Horse Butte, at any time of year, so why must the DOL make a presence here at all? Why don't they go to their precious feedlots and cattle pastures and mind their widgets and leave the wild buffalo alone?

All this killing and preparation for killing is happening while the Nez Perce are engaging in their treaty hunt. Near Gardiner the Yellowstone River divides the types of death the buffalo are dealt: to the west, slaughter and to the east the hunt. But here along the western boundary all these actions take place on the same landscape. Will the DOL and other agencies haze and capture buffalo that the Nez Perce are trying to hunt? What conflict will this incite? Already on Horse Butte conflicts between Nez Perce hunters and state and federal agents have taken place. Hunters are none too pleased to know that a buffalo trap is being set up by the government while they are trying to hunt buffalo; their treaty rights are being infringed upon, to be sure. The response of the Nez Perce to these actions remain to be seen, but things may heat up. Yesterday, on Horse Butte, seven buffalo were taken by Nez Perce hunters; unfortunately, they killed the buffalo in the middle of the bald eagle closure, an area closed to all human activity from December through August to protect nesting pairs of bald eagles. Their thinking was that this area didn't apply to their treaty rights to hunt on the landscape. While this violation is tragic, even more telling is how the Forest Service immediately ticketed the Nez Perce, but have turned a blind eye to white hunters who have also violated the closure, and have practically ignored the hundreds of snowmobiles who have disrespectfully trashed this protected area. It's selective law enforcement, and the Forest Service even admits to it.

Either way, the buffalo lose. They are being killed by the hundreds.

More than 400 of the country's last wild buffalo have been killed just because they stepped foot into or approached Montana's borders. Always, the decision-makers try to justify their actions by touting the threat of brucellosis. Yes, brucellosis is a threat, but not to cattle. It is a threat to the buffalo because it is being used by the government and cattle interests to keep wild American bison from reclaiming their native, historic range. This is their land! It's infuriating how the industry-backed media reports how these mismanagement actions take place to prevent bison from transmitting brucellosis to non-native cattle, when it is the cattle that infected our native wildlife to begin with. And wild bison have never transmitted this disease back to cattle. There are upwards of 100 million cows in the U.S., and wild American bison number fewer than 4,300 individuals. Brucellosis is an excuse that is being used to control and kill wildlife, and give cattle interests dominion over our national heritage - it's not just bison; it's elk and wolves and bears and grasslands and water, and so much more. Cattle make the land and the people sick. The cattle industry believes their profits are more important than the health of the land, and has the government's support in every possible way, using our tax dollars to kill the buffalo.

Over the weekend we were blessed with a visit from BFC co-founder and Lakota elder Rosalie Little Thunder. See below for a special message from her. She, her sister Donna, and Donna's son Robert came to stay with us and talk about how we can bring the Buffalo Culture tribes together to make something happen for the buffalo. Rosalie reminded us that, while we may feel that change seems to never be in site, things are moving in a positive direction. It's like a pendulum, she said, and it can only swing so far one way before it must start back in the other direction. We are on the cusp of that counter swing.

Roam Free,
~Stephany