We've gone over this a thousand times, but in this particular case, let's look at it again. The hazing of bison in the park, according to the NPS, was to make room for buffalo being hazed from Montana by the Department of Livestock. Those bison were being hazed from a peninsula just outside the park boundaries in Hebgen Lake called Horse Butte. Awhile back, there used to be cattle on this peninsula in the summer months (after brucellosis can be spread) leased to a man named Munns from Idaho. That property has since been sold to a family named Galanis who don't own cattle, don't want cattle, and want wild buffalo on their property. The peninsula itself is mostly in the Gallatin National Forest, though there are about 100 - 200 people who live on the peninsula on private property. Many of those private citizens have formed a buffalo advocacy group called Horse Butte Neighbors of Buffalo (HOBNOB) to protest Department of Livestock intrusions onto their land and to promote wild buffalo on the Butte.

None of this has mattered. This year, Department of Livestock helicopters once again flew as low as 20 feet over private land to haze buffalo back into the park, they continued that hazing well into the park - and as I understand it, well inside the Wyoming state line. That action has prompted the hazing from Madison Junction to Fountain Flats of bison more than a dozen miles inside the park boundary.

Of course, even if there were cattle, we would support wild buffalo populations just as we and others have supported wild elk populations (who also have the disease and have been strongly suspected of spreading it - I believe they have, but there are very knowledgeable hunting advocates who even doubt that). The onus of doing business when you are trying to restore wildlife populations should be on the cattle grower who is currently heavily subsidized for leasing on public lands (public lands have preferenced cattle over wildlife, especially wild buffalo). The locals in areas who want wildlife (and some produce cattle) should be allowed to keep the Department of Livestock from enforcing their draconian provisions. The cost of management of buffalo hasn't stopped Montana from losing its class free status on brucellosis anyhow. The cost of having brucellosis hasn't outweighed the cost the state has spent supposedly trying in vain to prevent it. Stockgrowers in Montana have tried to prevent buffalo that don't have brucellosis from being moved to other areas in the state, trying unsuccessfully this time to pass laws in the legislature designed to stop that movement. And, we can go on and on, all of it adding up to the reality that brucellosis is a red herring here, that the issue is about grass, about who controls it, and what sorts of species should have preference over it. Indeed, when talking about buffalo in other parts of the state, stockgrowers give up their hand and mention competition for grasslands. However, if that's the issue, then the Department of Livestock wouldn't have any authority to stop buffalo from moving over public lands and over private lands where the owners wanted buffalo. They've masqueraded this as a livestock disease issue to assert their barony over Montana (despite the reality that at most, livestock makes up 1.5% of Montana's GDP).

So, all of this has led to NPS hazing of bison that are nowhere near the boundaries and to delays. Kurt has posted NPS spokesman Al Nash's defense of the hazing on this site. They probably should have posted a press release alerting travelers last week to the delays. I think those management operations are over, although Buffalo Field Campaign members told me Sunday at a prayer ceremony for the buffalo lead by Lakota Chief Arvol Looking Horse that the buffalo continue to move back and forth across the boundary and that it was hard to predict if there would be another round of hazing.

Jim Macdonald
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