FWP announces
support for establishment of wild bison herds
By Jessianne Castle EBS ENVIRONMENTAL & OUTDOORS EDITOR
LIVINGSTON –
In the shadow of Sepulcher Mountain and Electric Peak, wind mounts the flats
north of Gardiner and fractures the air, screaming past cuts and cracks in the
lower valley hills and funneling straight down the Paradise Valley toward
Livingston. Specks of snow pound the gnarled junipers and sage.
It’s there
in the Gardiner Basin, along the northern boundary of Yellowstone National Park,
that the northern Yellowstone bison herd seeks forage and respite from the
heavy snowfall that engulfs the higher elevations of Yellowstone National Park
in the last months of winter.
When the animals
move beyond the park boundary, they are only granted passage on adjacent
National Forest land in the Gardiner basin. If they try to move north toward
Yankee Jim Canyon, state and federal partners with the Interagency Bison
Management Plan push them back toward the park and by May 1, all cows and
calves are hazed back into Yellowstone. During the winter, permitted Montana
hunters and tribal members hunt those that linger outside of Yellowstone, and
National Park Service employees capture some of the migrating animals for quarantine
or slaughter.
On Jan. 7,
after an eight-year public process, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks announced
a decision to support statewide bison restoration and the establishment of a
wild, free-roaming herd. But department officials also said that despite their
support for restoration, they are not seeking to establish a wild herd just
yet, as more work still needs to be done to create space where buffalo can
roam.
In 1910,
there were an estimated 151 bison in public herds in the U.S., approximately
two dozen of which were in Yellowstone National Park. Today, there are roughly 5,000
bison in the Yellowstone herd, and although they have been a fracture point
between Montana’s agricultural and environmental communities, overall public support
for statewide bison restoration has grown.
The
process
In 2012, MT
FWP began formally evaluating how bison restoration would impact Montana, considering
environmental, social and economic consequences, both positive and negative.
This process, known as developing an Environmental Impact Statement, is
required by law prior to an action by a governmental agency.
The
department formed a “Bison Discussion Group” comprised of stakeholders from agency,
tribal, governmental, agricultural and conservation interests. This panel
guided the development of a draft EIS that was released for public comment in
June 2015. At the time, hundreds of people attended public hearings and MT FWP
received comments from 51 Montana counties and 38 states.
It took five
years for the department to collate public comment and come to a final
decision, and in January officials released the final EIS. It stated that MT FWP
supports bison restoration under strict provisions. While the agency is not
going to develop any specific proposals at this time, it will consider
collaborative stakeholder proposals that take into account various landowner
and community interests. Any proposal would undergo a period of public
engagement, as well.
“FWP
recognizes that a sustainable future for wild bison in Montana depends on
carefully balancing complex biological, sociological and economic
considerations,” wrote MT FWP Director Martha Williams in a Jan. 7 statement. “Only
by building trust and working earnestly with these various interests,
especially people concerned that their livelihoods might be affected by
restoration, will Montana be able to return bison to its rightful place among
the other successfully restored wildlife species that, collectively, make
Montana a state unlike any other.”
Next
steps
Many
wildlife organizations commended MT FWP for supporting bison restoration, but some
wish to see more immediate action.
“This
long-awaited plan is really a 30,000-foot vision document,” Chamois Andersen,
senior Rockies and Plains representative for Defenders of Wildlife, told
“National Parks Traveler” after the EIS was released. “While we are encouraged
that Montana will now officially restore wild bison to the state, it is
unfortunate that the state wildlife agency leading the charge did not offer any
specific sites where bison can return.”
Andersen
said Defenders of Wildlife will advocate for and help develop proposals for
specific sites outside of Yellowstone including the Badger-Two Medicine/Chief
Mountain areas of the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and the Charles M.
Russell National Wildlife Refuge.
The American
Prairie Reserve, a Bozeman-based nonprofit that manages a herd of genetically
pure bison on lands it owns in eastern Montana and acreage it leases from the
Bureau of Land Management, also supports FWP’s bison restoration rule.
“We view
FWP’s decision as a positive step forward for wildlife restoration for the
state of Montana,” APR spokeswoman Beth Saboe told EBS. She added, however,
that APR isn’t currently planning to put forth a proposal for wild bison, and
for now, it will continue to manage its 800-head bison herd as livestock.
Within the
agricultural community, many remain skeptical of bison reintroduction.
Montana Rep.
Dan Bartel of Lewistown has carried legislation aimed to stop APR from grazing
bison on public lands out of concern for over-grazing. Plus, he points out,
under the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, grazing rights are only granted to
horses, cattle or sheep. Bison are difficult to control and can break fences,
mix with cattle and threaten human safety, he said.
“You just
can’t have bison everywhere. It’s not the bison’s fault, it’s our fault,”
Bartel explained. “It sounds great to have bison—it does—but how do you
fundamentally employ it not to affect adjoining landowners? What do you do when
you have federal lands that are patchwork? FWP, the counties, are not ready to
rewild bison.
“In central
Montana there hasn’t been a lot of participation in the ag community to rewild
the bison,” Bartel said. “I think we need to have a seat [at the table].”
Yellowstone’s
plan
As the state
grapples with the idea of bison roaming wild throughout Montana, Yellowstone
National Park is pressed to manage a herd that’s growing by an estimated 10 to
17 percent every year.
Managers
have established a working partnership with the Confederated Salish and
Kootenai Tribes, Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho of the Wind River
Reservation, and the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation to ship some of
the bison that migrate out of the park during the winter for slaughter; others are
placed into a quarantine program with final release at the Fort Peck Indian
Reservation. This year, park officials intend to remove between 600 and 900
bison through hunting and capture. Approximately 110 of those bison will be
placed in the quarantine program.
“For long-term conservation, Yellowstone bison need access to more suitable habitat outside the park…” YNP Superintendent Cameron Sholly told EBS last year. “It’s our goal to find ways of expanding the quarantine program, at Fort Peck and other locations, to ensure a more regular and predictable number of bison can move through the pipeline.”
