Great News: Yellowstone's Bison Get More Room to Roam

The furry beast of the plains can finally dance a little jig, and – for the first time in many decades – it can bust those moves north of Yellowstone National Park. 

Yesterday, the federal, state, and tribal agencies that collectively manage Yellowstone’s bison population signed an historic agreement that gives these iconic animals access to tens of thousands of acres of habitat north of the Park.

An attorney for the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho commented, “This is the most significant advance in recent times in tolerating bison outside Yellowstone.”

Specifically, the Interagency Bison Management Plan agencies agreed to allow wild bison from the Park to roam the 75,000-acre Gardiner basin north of the Park during the winter and most of the spring. While bison will not be allowed to enter Paradise Valley north of the Yellowstone River’s Yankee Jim Canyon, they will have access to U.S. Forest Service habitat and other lands in the Gardiner basin.

In modern times, this area has been off-limits to Yellowstone bison because of concerns related to the disease brucellosis, which some of Yellowstone’s bison carry. Brucellosis causes pregnant females to abort, and livestock producers fear wild bison may transmit the disease to domestic cattle. 

Thousands and thousands of wild bison from Yellowstone have been hazed or slaughtered in the past few decades in the name of brucellosis – and millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent along the way.

But significant changes in recent years have forced all stakeholders to take a fresh look at the Yellowstone bison issue, which has been marred in conflict and controversy for too long.

These changes include new science documenting the very low risk of a brucellosis transmission, land-use changes near the Park (e.g., fewer cows on the landscape), more tolerant landowners, the reality that elk also carry the disease but are allowed to roam freely, and, maybe most significantly, a radical overhaul last December of the brucellosis regulations by the Department of Agriculture (which lessened the burden of brucellosis on livestock producers).

Collectively, these changes set the stage for more bison tolerance outside the Park.  And NRDC – and our incredible Members and Activists – relentlessly advocated for commensurate changes to be made to bison management (as did business owners, hunters, property owners, Native Americans, and other conservation organizations).

The agencies listened, and they responded with this historic agreement.  Each of the agencies – National Park Service; U.S. Forest Service; USDA-APHIS; Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks; Montana Department of Livestock; Nez Perce Tribe; Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes; and the Intertribal Buffalo Council – deserve a hearty thank-you. 

While this agreement is certainly not perfect and more work still remains, today we should celebrate a big step forward for Yellowstone’s bison.

Let the bison roam – and, today, let ‘em dance!

 

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