We already knew that this has been a gruesome year for the buffalo of Yellowstone National Park. But a recent flight by park service personnel has given us a new understanding of just how terrible the toll has been on America’s iconic free-roaming herds.

The flight was an aerial survey to assess the health of the rapidly diminishing herds. The resulting park service estimates surprised even those of us who have been fighting for fundamental changes to the unnecessarily brutal buffalo management practices of the park service and State of Montana. Their population models estimate that only 1,950 to 2,150 buffalo are left in the park. That means that more than half of the 4,700 animals that were a part of the herds going into the winter were killed off---most of them rounded up for slaughter by Montana wildlife officials as the buffalo approached park boundaries. This is the largest death toll since the 19th century, when we nearly wiped the species off the planet.

With the population plunging, state and federal administrators of the Interagency Bison Management Plan "may" take steps to stop any further slaughter. But with winter’s grip still strong in the park, and the calving season underway, the herds’ most vulnerable animals must be protected now.

This is why NRDC has proposed a way out of the needless slaughter. Every year mothers head to a unique area west of the park to give birth and find food for their calves. The Horse Butte peninsula offers a unique set of conditions that should eliminate the concerns of those who oppose buffalo leaving the park. Typically, Montana officials would haze or capture buffalo in this area for slaughter once they have strayed outside the borders of the Yellowstone. However, NRDC and our partners from the Buffalo Field Campaign and Gallatin Wildlife Association has called for a moratorium on these techniques in the Horse Butte area west of the park. They are just plain unnecessary. Simply put, there is no conflict between the needs of the buffalo and people in this place, so there should be no killing.

A couple weeks ago, NRDC sent letters and publicly called for the governor and administrators to make immediate changes in the management of buffalo at Horse Butte. The new numbers from the park service make the need for action all the more obvious. Our proposal is a good start. It protects a lot of the buffalo at no cost to taxpayers. The state and federal authorities can protect all the buffalo in the calving grounds of Horse Butte today without spending a single cent.

Yellowstone’s buffalo are a national treasure. It is time we treated them that way.