Yellowstone Bison Calf ‘Rescued’ By Tourists Rejected By Herd, Has To Be Euthanized

A bison calf in Yellowstone National Park placed in an SUV by well-intended tourists who “thought it was cold” last week, has died. The incident happened Monday, May 9 and was witnessed by students and their parents visiting Yellowstone on a school field trip.

Reportedly, the unnamed tourists were a father and his grown son. They’d come across the bison calf while exploring Yellowstone and believed it to be cold and dying. Fearing for the animal’s well-being, the pair loaded the bison calf into the back of their SUV and drove it to a park ranger station.

It was at the ranger station that the group of parents and students saw the men pull up with the bison calf in the back of their vehicle. The men were agitated and demanding to see a Yellowstone park ranger to tend to the animal. They were warned by at least one parent in attendance that they could “get in trouble” for possessing the bison calf and told that they should take it back to where they got it. However, the tourists reportedly didn’t care about potential legal liability, and authorities were ultimately called to the scene.

When Yellowstone National Park rangers got to the ranger station, the father-and-son tourist pair were cited for snagging and transporting the bison calf. They reportedly led the park rangers back to the location where they’d picked up the calf, and rangers released the baby bison back into the wild in the hopes that it would reunite with its herd.

Unfortunately for the bison calf, the situation ended in tragedy. As KREM reports, the Yellowstone bison calf was not welcomed back into its herd. Rather, its herd rejected it. According to an announcement by the National Park Service on May 16, Yellowstone National Park rangers tried repeatedly to reunite the newborn with its herd, but to no avail. The National Park Service said that they ultimately had to euthanize the bison calf because “it was abandoned and causing a dangerous situation by continually approaching cars and people.”

According to Karen Richardson, the pair that put the calf in their SUV and drove it to the ranger station seemed to genuinely have good intentions and were concerned more about the well-being of the bison calf than they were about the personal consequences of the ill-fated rescue.

“They were demanding to speak with a ranger. They were seriously worried that the calf was freezing and dying.”

When the National Park Service addressed the fate of the Yellowstone bison calf on their website, it was in an open letter-style statement to visitors in which they asked for the public to “respect wildlife and safety regulations” when visiting Yellowstone. The statement focused initially on the citation of the father-and-son tourists for their “misplaced concern” and the actions they took to intervene with the bison calf, but it went on to address other recent incidents in which visitors to the park violated the rules.

In the past few weeks, two videos of people approaching bison at Yellowstone at unsafe and ultimately illegal distances. One of the videos was recorded near Old Faithful and involved a tourist getting “within arm’s length” of an adult bison. The other showed several visitors posing for pictures with Yellowstone bison, again much too close to the massive animals.

According to Yellowstone National Park, bison injure more people than any other animal at Yellowstone, with five people being injured by bison last year alone.

If you happen to visit Yellowstone, it’s important to both know and follow the rules for viewing the park’s wild animals. Visitors are required to stay at least 25 yards away from all wildlife (including bison). When it comes to large predators (wolves and bears), tourists are legally required to stay at least 100 yards away.

These rules are in place not only to protect humans but to protect the animals of the park from injury or death, as in the case of this unfortunate Yellowstone bison calf.