1998
by Winona LaDuke

"... Like us, they are the last survivors. Those of our ancestors who survived the 19th century found sanctuary on the reservations. In 1894, the last wild buffalo herd in the United States--about 20 head--found sanctuary in Yellowstone National Park." - Caleb Shields, Tribal Chairman of the Assiniboine and Sioux Nations, Ft. Peck Reservation, Montana

In the middle of winter, the wind roars through Maiden Basin near Yellowstone National Park and it is the chilling sound of bullets against skulls that reverberates in your memory. Montana Department of Livestock bullets, shooting down the last wild buffalo herd in the United States. Mothers, babies and fathers. This summer, state and federal officials issued a document that will decide the fate of the buffalo for the next 15 years. After killing almost half of the Yellowstone herd, 1100 alone in the winter of 1997, the long awaited draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Interagency Bison Management Plan for the State of Montana and Yellowstone National Park is ready.

The sound we hear now is paper shuffling. After eight years preparing the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), the government is moving and moving quickly now that their proposals for managing buffalo are on the table. And the prolonged preparation process, characteristic of federal agencies, is being followed by a short window for public input. In fact, October 1 is the deadline for written public comment. Native peoples involved in the buffalo controversy, from the emerging activist group Buffalo Nations to the established tribal-based coalition Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC), have come out in opposition to the federal proposal. In the upcoming month, through the public comment period and hearing process, organizers from these and other groups hope to increase public opposition and debate on the EIS. Most of the options listed in the EIS share common elements, including use of so-called lethal controls as the population size approaches 1700 animals (the herd is presently larger than that size now), defined management boundaries beyond which agencies take action to ensure bison do not stray, and auctioning or distributing slaughtered bison to social service organizations or tribes.

The underlying point is that in all the so-called alternatives, the buffalo will be shot. That is what constitutes a lethal control. In some cases, lethal control will be undertaken by wildlife officials, in some cases, other agencies, and in some cases, through hunting permits. All proposals have one distinct end result. And all proposals share another common element. They seem to lack a long term consideration of what is best for the buffalo and the ecosystem. The "Preferred Alternative" of the National Park Service, known as Alternative Seven, is a sort of potpourri of multi-use, multi-interest management of the Yellowstone herd, a proposal which many will argue does little to preserve the integrity of the herd, preserve the long term viability of Yellowstone as an ecosystem for large ungulates (i.e. buffalo), and represents instead a non-innovative, those who have guns should make public policy approach. As the EIS notes, "The preferred alternative includes the use of capture, test and slaughter, and the creation of special management areas (SMAs)... hazing and shooting bison outside the SMAs, and on private land within the SMAs, quarantine of some sero-negative bison, hunting for recreational purposes and to help control bison distribution, vaccination of bison, the potential acquisition of additional winter range and the proposed creation of a SMA on that range as management tools..."

At the heart of the EIS is a major public policy question: whether one should manage the buffalo, indigenous to the region, or manage all the introduced, non-indigenous factors which now impact the buffalo. Such introduced factors include cattle. Consider that the buffalo are a serve yourself sort of critter, and when the winters get cold and the snow deep in the high elevations of Yellowstone they do what they need to do to survive; they move into winter grazing areas. Those grazing areas are quite often outside the formal park boundaries. The winter ranges include the north and west boundaries of the Park, areas that are primarily National Forest land and include some large US Forest Service Grazing Allotments. According to law, the allotments are designated primarily for wildlife, and secondarily for livestock. But cattle are on those allotments, and it is those areas--areas designated for wildlife and occupied by cattle-- where the majority of buffalo have been killed over the past three years. Some 1,900 total. Only one formal proposal in the EIS --Alternative Two, or the "Minimal Management" alternative-- calls for aggressive acquisition of private and public lands in the Grazing Allotment area for buffalo and expanding the protected area to include a larger, more sustainable ecosystem, i.e. one which can feed the buffalo herd in the winter. This alternative focuses on changing the behavior of cattle and ranchers as the primary means to manage the alleged threat of buffalo, rather than trying to exclusively manage buffalo. The alternative's pro-active solutions include "acquisition, through purchase or easement or changes in cattle operations from willing sellers of additional winter range for bison..." Alternative Two falls short, however, in that lethal controls remain, including killing of expectant mothers.

The distinction in the approaches is a significant point to buffalo activists like Rosalie Little Thunder, a Sicangu Lakota who has been an outspoken and front line organizer on the buffalo issue. Buffalo Nations, the group she founded, has spent much of the past two winters with the buffalo at Yellowstone, serving as a human shield between the animals and the Department of Livestock guns. Rosalie, a noted beadwork artist, Lakota language instructor and educator is one of many committed to preserving the herd and all it represents to Lakota and other indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. Rosalie's position is that all the approaches mean buffalo will die needlessly. And that in itself drives a larger set of cultural and spiritual concerns around which Rosalie works. Rosalie and others begin the debate by pointing out that much of this whole controversy is political--driven by economic and special interest factors which have little to do with the actual protection of animals, buffalo or any other. One of the key political factors underlying the killing of buffalo at Yellowstone is the unfounded threat of brucellosis transmission.

Brucellosis is a livestock disease that can cause abortion of calves and ungulate fever in humans who may consume the meat. Some of the buffalo have it, and Montana's cattlemen do not want their cows to get it. "A lot of cattlemen remember eliminating entire herds", explains Beth Almond, Communications Director of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. Ironically, there has never been a single case of brucellosis transmission from buffalo to cattle in the wild. The disease is transmitted only through birth materials, so it is the calving period in which the most alleged danger can occur. But at Glacier National Park, buffalo and cattle have grazed side by side for forty years, including calving seasons, with zero transmission between the animals. Finally, there are economic underpinnings to the myth of brucellosis, and an economic analysis of why some brucellosis is of greater policy interest than other brucellosis. Elk in Yellowstone also have the dreaded disease and are 25-30 times more populous than bison. Elk have reportedly transmitted the disease to livestock in possibly 6 cases. Although bison continue to be slaughtered, elk are ignored, perhaps because elk hunting earned the state of Montana $11 million a year from the sale of licenses and permits alone. And in spite of an alleged threat of brucellosis to human health, the state of Montana sold the carcasses of bison killed in the winter of 1996-97 as "Property of the Department of Livestock" and pocketed $185,763 in proceeds.

Buffalo Nations representatives take the position that brucellosis in the Yellowstone herd has neither hurt the buffalo themselves nor had any economic or health impact on cattle. Rosalie Little Thunder remains steadfast in her position that there should be no killing. She calls for the expansion of grazing areas, holding cattlemen accountable to the law (move cattle off grazing allotments designated for wildlife) and as a last option to killing, live removal of mother-calf pairs to Native tribes, communities and other grassland areas. "If they are going to kill buffalo based on the alleged threat of brucellosis, then the public deserves absolute proof that there is a threat," says Rosalie. "There is no proof, because a risk assessment on brucellosis has never been done. At the least, the EIS should be based on a scientific mandate." Rosalie adds, "If buffalo are going to be killed to allow cattle to graze, then we demand an EIS on the impact of cattle." The Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative along with some fifteen other organizations has developed what is called the "Citizen's Plan" as an alternative to the proposals presented by the federal government. Elements of the Citizens Plan include establishing buffalo population goals "based on science, not politics", actively acquiring key migration and additional range land, adjusting cattle grazing allotments adjacent to the Park, vaccinating the cattle against brucellosis and vaccinating the buffalo when a safe and effective non-invasive vaccine is available.

The ITBC plan also calls for a live removal option for buffalo, using a quarantine facility and a limited hunting of the animals "only in situations where live removal is not appropriate". The plan, supported by organizations like the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the National Wildlife Federation, is quite a bit more innovative and many would argue, more viable for the long term than the approaches outlined by the federal government. Whether the short sighted option of killing buffalo or the long term viability of the herd and the ecosystem will win out in this battle depends to a great extent on the voice of native peoples and the public at large in the process. The outcome will determine more than the fate of the buffalo. "As long as the buffalo live, we can also live," says Birgil Kills Strait, of the Pine Ridge Reservation. "The buffalo have the right to be here, they were here before we were, this is their land as well. Our lives as humans rely on the buffalo."

What You Can Do:

Those interested in the future of the Yellowstone herd are urged to forward comments by October 1 to the National Park Service, PO Box 25287, Denver, Co, 80225-9901.

You can view the EIS and respond on line at: http://www.nps.gov/planning/current.html

Public Hearings are scheduled in:

Billings, MT--August 25, Holiday Inn Billings Plaza
Cody, WY--August 27, Holiday Inn
Denver, CO--September 1, Holiday Inn Denver West Village
Salt Lake City, UT--September 3, Wyndham Hotel
Washington, DC--September 7, Summer School Museum and Archives
San Francisco, CA--September 23, Palace Hotel
Austin, TX --September 29, Holiday Inn South
Minneapolis, MN--October 6, Thunderbird Hotel

Sidebar:

In 1850, fifty million buffalo ranged the prairie ecosystem. One hundred percent of all plant and animal species were present without the "benefit" of fences, federal subsidies, elaborate irrigation systems or powerful pesticides. Today, a century and a half later, the natural balance looks quite different. 45.5 million cattle live in this same ecosystem, now teeming with irrigation systems, combines and chemical additives. The Great Plains have been stripped of their biological diversity. This biome, which covers more than any other area in North America, has suffered a massive loss of life.

There is an economic crisis today on the Great Plains, a direct result of this ecological crisis. It is the most simple of realities. It effects small rural towns, farmers and Indians. It fundamentally impacts all of America and the future of America--in terms of what we eat and what we will pass on to our children. The 1970's revolutionized the landscape of the Great Plains with the crush of industrialized agriculture. Today over 270 million acres of public land in the American West is leased by cattleman at a fee per acre which is below the market value for land, and that land is ecologically dying.

The last comprehensive study of federal rangeland in the region indicates that only 15% is in good condition; 85% of that rangeland has less than 50% of it's vegetation. Along with vegetation we are losing the topsoil in the region--nearly one third of the prime topsoil is gone. In most regions of the Great Plains, the top soil has dropped from 21 inches to 6 inches. Add to this the problem of drawdown of the Oglalla Aquifer, the large underground reserve of water which underlies the Great Plains. Between 1959 and 1975, farmers in the region pumped more than 27 billion gallons a day from the aquifer, far more than can be naturally replenished. Drawdown rates today drop the aquifer by four feet per year while the recharge rate of this reservoir is estimated to be one half inches a year.

Today, twenty percent of nationally irrigated cropland is serviced by the Oglalla, yet hydrologists suggest that the aquifer will be depleted in thirty years. These statistics, along with the buffalo slaughter at Yellowstone, are indicators of a way life that is unsustainable. The promise of the White Buffalo calf represents a way of life on the other side of the spectrum. A few years ago, the White Buffalo calf was born, an event prophesized for generations and of immense significance to buffalo cultures, signifying the re-birth of the Buffalo Nation. This birth and the concurrent revitalization of buffalo cultures pierces the ecologically destructive way of life on the Great Plains with hope. Today, over 41 tribes are members of the Intertribal Bison Cooperative.

Numerous grassroots efforts are underway in communities throughout the region to restore buffalo, and non-Indian people ranging from the wealthy to the most modest of subsistence farmers, are returning the buffalo to the plains. Support for this rebirth is central to the ecological future of America; that is to say, the ecological and cultural transformation of the heartland of America--from industrialized agriculture and a natural resource management policy based on the eradication of species and on fear--to a future based on sustainability. The buffalo are at the center of this dialogue. The tragedy of the present-day buffalo slaughter could catalyze involvement in the process of recovering our futures. We hope you will join us in this effort by writing a letter to the National Park Service opposing the killing of buffalo.