Yellowstone National Park recently announced that they intend to remove — mostly kill — nearly 1,400 of the country’s last continuously wild, migratory buffalo. That’s 25% of the population.
The mission of the National Park Service (NPS) is to “preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources” of the National Park System for this and future generations. Capturing buffalo for slaughter and quarantine (domestication), and encouraging excessive “hunting” outside park boundaries is in stark contrast to that mission and should be considered illegal. The park betrays their mission by betraying the buffalo.
Wild buffalo are ecologically extinct throughout their native range and the Yellowstone herds are currently being considered for Endangered Species Act protection by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Yet every year, going against public opinion and ecological soundness, Yellowstone officials play a fatalistic numbers game with these endangered buffalo.
Yellowstone had a chance to end capture-for-slaughter when they released their new bison management plan. Out of three alternatives, one would have put a halt on shipping buffalo to slaughterhouses and would have allowed for natural regulation. This alternative — Alternative 3 — was supported by 75% of the people and organizations who participated in the public process.
Instead, they chose Alternative 2, which keeps buffalo slaughter in place, and greenwashes it by calling it the “Tribal Food Transfer Program”. Huh? It’s slaughter. It also increases the quarantine (domestication) program, which also has a new pretty name, the “Bison Conservation Transfer Program”. A lot of people wrongly believe that quarantine is an alternative to slaughter. The fact is, many buffalo who go through that domestication program are slaughtered in the process or die from human handling.
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