Yellowstone Rounds Up Bison for Slaughter
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PRESS RELEASE
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| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | |
| Date: | January 12, 2006 |
| Contact: | Tim Stevens, NPCA Yellowstone Program Manager, 406-222-1567 (office) |
Yellowstone Rounds Up Bison for Slaughter
NPCA’s statement follows:
NPCA is dismayed that this capture is taking place inside our nation’s first national park, and that as many as 200 bison may be shipped to slaughter. Bison should not be treated like livestock, especially in our nation’s first national park. It is critical that we respect this icon of the West, which is also the icon of our National Park System. Clearly, the bison management plan currently in place is not working and must be corrected.
Yellowstone National Park is not an island. Bison that wander outside the park’s invisible boundaries are merely trying to access their winter habitat outside the park, which is currently not being made available to them. We won’t resolve this decades-old problem until bison are allowed to access available habitat outside the park.
NPCA is calling for the following immediate actions:
o The Bison Management Plan must be adjusted to allow bison to access available winter range outside Yellowstone National Park.
o State and federal agencies must act now to provide additional winter habitat for bison outside Yellowstone.
o Agencies and other stakeholders must come to resolution with the difficult and longstanding problems related to livestock and bison. Specifically, they must commit to resolving access to critical winter range on the Church Universal and Triumphant’s lands just north of Yellowstone. The American public has already invested $13 million in a land exchange and easement plan to make these lands available to wildlife, but the parties have failed to reach an agreement to accommodate bison.
