Montana Regains Brucellosis-Free Status
Posted July 10, 2009 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) restored Montana's brucellosis-free status yesterday. That is good news for the State of Montana and its livestock producers.
Brucellosis is a disease that causes pregnant animals to abort, and it unfortunately drives much of the draconian management of Yellowstone National Park's buffalo. Both buffalo and elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) can carry brucellosis.
Even though no documented case of brucellosis transmission from wild buffalo to cattle has occurred under natural conditions, Yellowstone's buffalo are generally not welcome in Montana because of concern that wild buffalo may spread brucellosis to domestic cattle in Montana.
Montana lost its brucellosis-free status after cattle infections were discovered in both 2007 and 2008. Elk likely caused the infections; buffalo, without question, did not (because they're generally confined to the Park and literally have not been in either infected area for years).
And there's the rub.
There are approximately 3,000 buffalo in Yellowstone, and they are aggressively managed, hazed, and slaughtered in the name of disease control.
There are almost 100,000 elk in the GYE that freely wander the area (as they should), and "elk are the suspected culprit in all seven cattle herd infections in the [GYE] over the last decade."
You do the math. Why are our government agencies still hazing and slaughtering America's only remaining continuously wild, free-roaming buffalo herd?
