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Bison slaughter continues despite protests, prayers
March 7, 1997
Web posted at: 5:15 a.m. ESTFrom Correspondent Don Knapp
GARDINER, Mo ntana (CNN) -- The big, shaggy carcasses of buffalo continue to dot the Montana countryside despite government and Native American protests.
On Thursday, a prayer was said outside Yellowstone National Park, asking for an end to the slaughter of animals in the nation's last free-roaming bison herd.
Yet even as Native American medicine men passed a sacred buffalo pipe and prayed for the killings to end, Montana state riflemen gunned down another dozen animals, bringing this years bison d eath toll well above 1,000.
1.4M/38 sec. QuickTime movie or 3.7M/38 sec. large frame QuickTime movie (Courtesy Mike Mease Cold Mountain Cold River)
" We demand that the slaughter stop," said Joseph Kicking Horse, one of several Native Americans who came from reservations in South Dakota to lead the two-hour ceremony just inside the northern border of the park.
R anchers fear infection
About 1,000 bison have been killed or rounded up for slaughter over the past fe w months when they roamed outside of the park in search of food. Ranchers fear the bison will spread brucellosis -- which causes cows to abort their calves -- to livestock grazing near the park.
Just outside Yellowstones boundary in Gardiner, r etired rancher Al Jensen complained to Montana riflemen, asking that the shootings close to his house stop.
"I think we should have at least been notified," Jensen told the riflemen as another two bison hit the ground.
Jensen told CNN the bison killings have many in Gardiner emotionally distressed.
In a letter to Montana's governor, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt called for an end to the shootings. Babbitt said bison should be allowed to graze on federal lands outside the park without being shot.
But under the terms of a court-ordered bison manageme nt plan, the park service must keep bison within park boundaries. Until mid-February, rangers captured bison that wandered out and sent them to slaughter. Now, the riflemen are doing the slaughtering.
Native Americans want to take Yellowstones excess bison to start herds on Indian lands but federal and state agency can't seem to agree on a plan to make that happen. < /P>
Yellowstone's herd, once on the brink of extinction, numbered about 3,000 animals going into this winter. But shooting, capture, slaughter and wintry weather have cut the herd down to 1,700, the fewest bison in a herd since the mid-70s.
Bison herds across the American West numbered in the millions in the last century before being hunted nearly to extinction.
Related stories:
- Wolves adjust to Yellowstone faster than expected - February 24, 1997
- Yellowstone bison roam into killing fields - February 18, 1997
- Big fights over the environment loom in Congress - February 15 , 1997
Related sites:
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- National Park Service
- National Parks and Conservation Association
- The State of Montana homepage
- Yellowstone National Park (NPS)
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