Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer have been butting heads in recent weeks over plans to relocate disease-free Yellowstone National Park bison.
Schweitzer would like 143 animals that are being held in a quarantine facility in Montana — after they wandered out of the park — to be relocated to the National Bison Refuge in western Montana, which is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He does not oppose shipping disease-free bison currently in the park to other federal land.
Salazar has said any effort to place the quarantined bison on the refuge cannot be completed in 2012 and has put forward the idea that they be relocated to areas outside of Montana, including Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado.
We think the parties should resolve their differences and agree to a plan that would bring genetically pure animals to the refuge at a specified date and allow for the relocation of other Yellowstone bison to areas across the Great Plains.
The framework of any plan should keep livestock health and bison genetic purity as top priorities. And relocation should draw support from state and tribal governments and only happen in areas that have available carrying capacity.
The bison at issue in this dispute were quarantined as a result of state and federal efforts to prevent the spread of brucellosis — a disease that causes animals to miscarry — to cattle from bison when they leave the park. They have been tested multiple times in recent years and are determined to be disease-free.
The quarantine effort is an example of the strides that have been made in recent years to reduce the slaughter of bison when they wander outside of the park looking for food during harsh winters.
With the Yellowstone herd size approaching 4,000 animals— a bison-management plan for the park says 3,000 is an acceptable — there is likely additional supply of disease-free animals to seed relocation efforts.
Setting aside state and federal boundaries, the trickiest issues to negotiate are really about timing: How long should additional bison be quarantined and tested, and who gets which disease-free animals when?
Yellowstone bison are desirable for relocation because they are considered to be genetically pure. Schweitzer’s call for shipping some to the bison refuge is due in part to the fact that the current herd is a hybrid between bison and cattle, which was not the intention when it was established by Teddy Roosevelt.
Our hope is that Salazar’s well-earned reputation as a thoughtful broker of compromise can once again carry the day.
As winter pushes more animals to the boundaries of Yellowstone, we would be comforted to know that potential for a better fate than slaughter — in this case, relocation — awaits them.
