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Yellowstone Bison Now Being Sent To Slaughter In Droves — ‘It’s Time For A Change’

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 01:45 PST, Mar 11, 2016

North America used to be teeming with bison — tens of millions of them. Native American tribes revered the animals for “sustaining their people in body and spirit,” and were considered a “great beast of spiritual power.”

A little over century ago, they roamed Yellowstone National Park in massive numbers until commercial hunting drove them to extinction, The Casper Star Tribune reported. Intervention kept the animals from the brink. But now, the bison are being sent to slaughter in the hundreds in an attempt to keep their population down.

The media was allowed to witness the culling at Yellowstone this year, a grisly process that in the past was done in secret. Irish photographer Michelle McCarron came to see it when it started Wednesday and said her fellow Europeans are “shocked” Americans round up and slaughter bison, especially at a national park like Yellowstone, where the last wild population of tghe animals exist.

And slowly but surely, the slaughter at Yellowstone is being questioned and criticized by advocates and park officials.

“Nobody here wants to be doing this,” spokeswoman Jody Lyle told The Associated Press after the bison were loaded into trailers to be shipped to slaughter. “It’s time for a change.”

Mounted horseman and an SUV rounded them up and into the Yellowstone’s Stephens Creek Bison Capture Facility. Workers there drew blood to test for disease, aged and weighed them, then tagged the animals for shipment in livestock trailers, which would head to a meat-processing plant for slaughter. The meat will be sent to the Native tribes that traditionally subsisted on bison.

Yellowstone has 4,900 bison, which is well above the 3,000 allowed under a management plan passed in 2000. The park decided to remove 600 to 900 animals this winter. So far, tribal hunters have shot 400. On Wednesday, 30 were sent to slaughter and another 63 will be sent in the next few days. Tribal hunts will continue through the end of March. Even more bison will be sent to slaughter i they migrate into Montana; 150 were captured ahead of the mass slaughter for that reason.

Yellowstone officials are trying to keep peace with Montana, which passed the management plan.

In the 1990s, Montana stockmen started to complain about the bison who — according to their migratory nature — roamed outside the borders of Yellowstone, Inquisitr previously reported. The state of Montana sued the park service to keep the animals under control. The motivation: an as-yet unjustified and unseen risk of the creatures infecting local cattle with brucellosis infection, which causes pregnant cows to abort calves. The management plan in 2000 was the result of this legal spat. Critics have concluded that the agreement forces Yellowstone to answer to “the politically powerful livestock industry.”

Critically, there isn’t a single case of brucellosis being transmitted to cattle; bison free of the infection are slaughtered anyway. Since the 1980s, worry about the infection has led to the killing of 8,200 bison.

But there is a movement to stop the cull at Yellowstone.

“We’re hoping for a greater tolerance of bison in the state of Montana. That’s what we’d like to see,” said park spokeswoman Amy Bartlett.

The Montana governor is working to move bison into areas near the park; even though Yellowstone supports that alternative, it’s not likely to happen soon since everyone is bound by the 2000 agreement. Park, state, federal, and tribal officials are working to draft a new agreement that would guide the cull; it may include a plan to let some bison be quarantined and shipped to tribes.

This year’s slaughter was preceded by protests by bison advocates.

[Photo By Matthew Brown/AP]

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