3,300 Bison Inhabit Yellowstone, And They Deserve Better
Posted September 15, 2009 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Yellowstone National Park estimates that approximately 3,300 bison currently roam its wild landscape. The Park's annual summer bison population estimate, which is based upon aerial surveys conducted over the summer, was released on Friday.
Yellowstone's bison are the only continuously wild bison that exist in the United States today. When you read about the tens of millions of wild bison that once thundered across the plains, Yellowstone's bison are the only direct link to those herds that remains.
While hundreds of thousands of bison can be found around the country these days, almost all of those bison are raised as livestock on private property. And of the relatively few wild herds that exist, most are small, intensively managed, and contain cattle genes (Yellowstone's bison do not).
As you can see, Yellowstone's wild bison are rare, unique, and incredibly important for the conservation of the species.
The current population of 3,300 bison includes about 2,800 adult and yearling bison and 500 calves born this year. The Park estimates that the animals are equally distributed between the Central Interior and Northern Range herds.
This summer's population estimate is up from the late winter estimate of 2,900 and last summer's estimate of 3,000. In the summer of 2005, a peak population estimate of 4,900 bison was recorded.
The pink elephant in the Park's report is the question of what will happen to Yellowstone's 3,300 bison over the coming winter months.
Summer is the sweet season for Yellowstone's wild bison. The fertile, lush valleys of Yellowstone -- Lamar, Hayden, Pelican, Madison -- teem with grazing, rutting, and wallowing bison.
But soon below-freezing temperatures and snow will arrive in Yellowstone, and the bison's hardiness and survivability will be tested.
You need not worry about the actual bison. They're tough, and they're survivors. We're talking about an animal -- the largest land mammal in North America -- that's been around since before the last ice age and is evolutionarily equipped to survive from the west coast to the east coast, Mexico to northern Canada, and everywhere in between.
You need to be concerned with how we, the two-legged critters, "manage" their survival instincts.
If the snows that blanket Yellowstone each winter are especially deep and relentless, some bison will leave the Park and go looking for forage at lower elevations. In the spring, some bison will leave the Park in search of the first sprouts of green grass. And pregnant cow bison will head to the Horse Butte Peninsula in Montana to give birth to the next generation of Yellowstone's bison.
The pink elephant is how will the government agencies in charge respond? Just a year and a half ago, they slaughtered over 1,600 bison for leaving the Park in the winter and spring.
Why? The ostensible concern is brucellosis -- a disease that causes pregnant animals to abort -- and fear that wild bison may transmit the disease to domestic cattle in Montana.
But no documented case of brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle has occurred in the wild, and elk, which also carry the disease and greatly outnumber bison, are allowed to freely wander in and out of the Park (as they should, but it begs the question: why elk and not bison?).
The Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) is the five-agency management scheme that governs Yellowstone's bison. Under the IBMP, the five state and federal agencies in charge -- National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Montana Department of Livestock, and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks -- are encouraged to adapt the plan as circumstances change.
In fact, adaptive-management changes were made last December, and bison were awarded a dash of more tolerance outside the Park. But the agencies can -- and must -- do better.
Significant bison habitat exists outside the Park (e.g., the cattle-free-year-round Horse Butte Peninsula), and the fear of brucellosis is overblown.
The IBMP agencies are scheduled to meet in Montana in November. They should modify the IBMP to allow more bison to occupy the suitable habitat outside the Park year-round.
After our almost total obliteration of the species, we owe the 3,300 survivors that much.
