Groundbreaking Program Transfers Female Yellowstone Bison to Grow Herds
Suzanne Potter, Public News Service – MT
FORT PECK INDIAN RESERVATION, Mont. — Thirty million bison once
roamed the American West. Now, only 21,000 remain that are managed as
wildlife.
But this week, for the first time, female bison are being transferred
out of Yellowstone National Park in a new program to build other herds.
The animals will be retested for disease before release. Chamois Andersen, senior representative for the Defenders of Wildlife Rockies and Plains Program, says the bison in Yellowstone are highly prized as direct descendants of the original herds.
“Yellowstone bison are of high genetics in terms of the wildest herd,”
says Andersen. “And any entity right now on the plains that has a wild
herd of bison wants Yellowstone bison.”
On Tuesday, 14 cow-calf pairs were taken from Yellowstone to be retested
for brucellosis, a disease that affects cattle, at a state-of-the-art
veterinary facility built by the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes at the
Fort Peck Indian Reservation.
The females then will be released to herds in places that could benefit,
such as the Fort Peck, Fort Belknap and Blackfeet Indian Reservations
in Montana; the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming; and Wind Cave and
Badlands national parks in South Dakota.
Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the late 1800s, and some of
that was an effort by settlers to deprive native American tribes of
their main food source and drive them off their lands. Andersen says
these magnificent creatures — our national mammal — are an important
part of Western heritage.
“We will nowhere see the 30 million wild bison on the plains like Lewis
and Clark did back in the early 1800s,” says Andersen. “But if we can
build these herds, we’re doing everything we can to bring it back.”
Bison also are considered a crucial part of the plains ecosystem, as
they spread the native grasses with their hooves and their wool and have
a symbiotic relationship with other species.Disclosure:
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