Two women protest bison slaughter at Yellowstone

March 26, 2008. Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park - Two West Yellowstone women, Miriam Wasser, 20, and Cat Simonidis, 22, locked themselves together around a post inside the Mammoth Visitor's Center in Yellowstone National Park at approximately 10:30 this morning to call attention to the Park Service's slaughter of nearly 1,000 bison since February 8.  Upon discovering the women, Yellowstone officials closed the visitor's center to members of the public and the media, including reporters from CNN, CBS, and an independent film maker.  The women were extricated, arrested, and taken to the Mammoth jail at approximately 12:30 this afternoon.

In spite of receiving thousands of calls, letters, and emails from concerned citizens opposed to the bison slaughter, Yellowstone National Park remains intent on capturing and killing bison.  As the women staged their action, Yellowstone Rangers captured between 30 and 50 bison a few miles away.  Between February 8 and March 26, Park rangers have captured more than 1200 bison on the north side of Yellowstone National Park.  While the government's official reason for the slaughter is to prevent the spread of brucellosis from wild bison to cattle, no such transmission has ever been documented.

In a statement Miriam Wasser explained her motivations: "Faulty brucellosis science and politically motivated carrying capacity figures used in the plan are no excuse for the hazing, capturing, and slaughtering of the last genetically intact, free-roaming bison population in the United States. This issue is black and white: the Park Service is meant to protect and preserve wildlife in National Parks, not indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of buffalo, or compromise their wildness by quarantining and holding them in pens. I am doing this to illuminate the wrongful actions of the Park Service, actions which must STOP!"

The women sent a letter to Yellowstone Superintendent Suzanne Lewis asking the Park Service to withdraw from the Interagency Bison Management Plan and to protect, rather than slaughter, the bison the agency is entrusted with protecting. 

3,208 wild American bison have been killed or otherwise removed from the remaining wild population since 2000 under actions carried out under the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) as well as state and treaty hunts. The IBMP is a joint state-federal plan that prohibits wild bison from migrating to lands outside of Yellowstone's boundaries. Wild American bison are a migratory species native to vast expanses of North America and are ecologically extinct everywhere in the United States outside of Yellowstone National Park.

Buffalo Field Campaign strongly opposes the Interagency Bison Management Plan and maintains that wild bison should be allowed to naturally and fully recover themselves throughout their historic native range, especially on public lands.

Buffalo Field Campaign is the only group working in the field, every day, to stop the slaughter of the wild American buffalo.  Volunteers defend the buffalo and their native habitat and advocate for their lasting protection. Buffalo Field Campaign has proposed real alternatives to the current mismanagement of American bison that can be viewed at http://www.buffalofield
campaign.org/actnow/solutions.html. For more information, video clips and photos visit: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org.

This website regularly posts news from the field updates on what is happening in Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding area.  Here is the latest update from the field.

One of the things you notice, once you've gone on a few patrols, is
how different one buffalo can be from the next.  The mature cow
digging with her head for grass in a meadow formed by the oxbow in
the Madison River has horns that curve sharply inward.  The old bull
scratching his back on the lodgepole pine tree in the saddle of Horse Butte has a certain and unmistakable swagger to his gait.  These differences of character and appearance also manifest themselves in the behavior of bison groups and family units.  Some groups graze back and forth along the river between the park boundary and the Butte. Others seem to prefer the south facing slopes of Horse Butte itself.  Still others strike off together in search of new territory.

Yesterday a group of 19 buffalo crossed the ice near the Narrows and made their way toward highway 287, which leads to the lower Madison Valley where grass is abundant and the snow less deep.  After crossing the ice, the group headed west and bedded down on the frozen shorelines of Hebgen Lake, not far from Buffalo Field Campaign Headquarters.  Later in the afternoon this group broke into three smaller groups.  Seven bison started heading back across the ice to Horse Butte and were soon followed by a group of six.  A third group lagged about a half hour behind.  The leader of the group of seven, noticing that the third group was so far behind, turned around.  The rest of the bison in her group followed and they and the lagging group soon joined up in the highway by the Happy Hour Bar. 

Since February 8, 825 individual buffalo have been captured by the
Park Service and the Department of Livestock.  715 of these buffalo
have already been slaughtered and 110 are currently being held in the Stephen's Creek trap awaiting shipment to the slaughterhouse.
Including those killed in this year's hunt and those being held in
the trap, 990 bison have been removed from the Yellowstone population since November 15.  In the past seven days alone, 164 bison have been captured and 209 sent to slaughter.

It is easy, when the numbers climb so high, to forget that each
stands for a living, breathing buffalo and that each is a member of a
greater family unit, or group.  It is easy, when tallying the grim
figures, to get temporarily lost in statistics and forget that each
of the bison removed is a bison robbed from the landscape, a bison
that will never again walk through the snowy fields along the
Madison, never wallow in the Hayden Valley or kick up it's hind legs
and spar with other ornery bulls during the rut, never bring a smile
to the face or lighten the heart of a Park visitor who spends a
blessed sunset in his presence.

BFC's presence ensures that the buffalo's stories are told.  Were we
not here to document and share, through words and images, what is
happening the government would be the only source of information and the slaughtered buffalo would be just another statistic.  As we have for the past 11 years, BFC patrols will remain in the field
documenting every action against the buffalo and working hard in the
policy arena for the permanent protection of wild bison and their
habitat.  View our video of Tuesday's capture operation on Horse
Butte on the top of BFC's home page: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org.

We will continue to be here to share the buffalo's story day in and
day out, but we won't succeed without your help.  Please read on for
actions you can take to help stop the slaughter and, if you are able,
please support Buffalo Field Campaign with a donation today.  Send a check to the address at the bottom of this update or make a secure online donation by clicking here:
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1807.

for the Buffalo,

Dan Brister
Buffalo Field Campaign

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* Gardiner Report

There are lots of buffalo moving all over this enormous landscape,
but the cattle industry refuses to share with native inhabitants.
Since last week's update, 145 more buffalo have been shipped to
slaughter over here, and hazing has been a constant nuisance on
Yellowstone's landscape.  Not only are buffalo persistently molested,
but elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, coyotes, and many other
wildlife species are repeatedly displaced by the Park's actions.
It's ironic how the Park takes the position of "do as I say, not as I
do" because any citizen caught even appearing to harass wildlife
would be fined, if not arrested, while the government causes chaos on the landscape, harassing the wildlife they tell us to respect, and
they get away with it scot-free.  Harassing wildlife in national
parks is a crime, unless, of course, you're the Park Service catering
to cattle interests over wildlife.

The past few mornings we have watched the empty livestock trailers
arrive at the trap to load up America's last wild buffalo and ship
them to slaughter like cattle from a feedlot.  Federal and state
agents escort the trailers carrying the sacred buffalo so that an
industry that perpetuates an invasive species can maintain control of
the land. On Sunday, however, the buffalo got one in.  We were
watching a group of eleven bulls who were hoofing it quickly out of
the park and had made it onto Church Universal & Triumphant property in what seemed like minutes.  These bulls were on an ancient mission, heading out of the high country for the vast, grasslands of the Paradise Valley.  But they were cut short by three Park wranglers on horseback and hazed to the southern edge of the Stephens Creek bison trap.  During this haze, an amazing thing happened; from our perch over a mile away, we heard a big bang and the next thing we knew, buffalo were walking out of the trap!  A group of about twenty-four buffalo managed to escape their prison!  We cheered for them as we realized they had busted out, rendering that holding pen inoperable; so not only did those buffalo escape, but the eleven bulls that were hazed were not captured either.  Later that day we questioned a Park Ranger who said that a big cow buffalo had been pushing at the gate, and, sure enough, she broke through.  She set her family group free for a time.  Such victories mean so much during this time.

On that same day while watching the trap, we saw a lot of agents on the catwalk of the corral portion.  This is where buffalo are separated by age and sex and held before being loaded onto livestock trailers in the early morning hours and taken to slaughter.  While we were watching through our spotting scope, we saw a DOL pickup truck leave and head up a back road behind the trap.  In the back of the truck was a dead buffalo.  We questioned the Park about this, and they admitted that a larger bull had gored a smaller bull so badly that the young one had to be killed.  Had BFC not been watching, no one would probably ever know about this.  Buffalo in the wild, even during the rut, rarely hurt each other and almost never to the point of death.  But when they are confined and ripped from their social communities, they go mad with fear and aggravation, and in their panicked state they can hurt each other fatally.

From the Front Lines in Gardiner,

Arlo, Lobo, Stephany and Steve
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org