Yellowstone bison: The road to slaughter starts at home

Kathleen Stachowski   Other Nations

A young wild bison, separated from family, forlorn and frightened, is confined in a sorting pen at Yellowstone National Park’s capture facility. Click for photo credit & info.

(Please see 3/10/16 update in comments section.)

The specter of death hovers over the world’s first national park. Approximately 150 wild bison have been rounded up within the boundaries of their ostensible refuge, Yellowstone National Park, and are being held in a capture facility–also located within park boundaries. They number among those who will be killed and those already killed this season–as many as 900–and they’re slated for shipment to slaughter–perhaps as soon as the week of March 7th. However, before they make that final migration, they’ll be further terrorized. Watch what transpires (see video) when these massive, wild animals of wide open spaces are confined in small capture pens and squeeze chutes: witness their terror; see how they injure themselves and their herd mates–observe the gaping wounds and the indignities endured before they’re crammed into livestock carriers for the terrifying ride to industrialized death. 

Yellowstone wildlife sent to slaughter; calling all buffalo warriors

Kathleen Stachowski    Other Nations

Dear Americans:

You’re busy, I know. You’re busy working and playing and doing a million crazy, diverse things that Americans do in our big, crazy, diverse country. That’s just who we are, and that’s what makes us awesome.

But right now, I’m going to cherry-pick a few things we share. We’re nuts about wildlife–amiright?!? In 2011, a whopping 71.8 million of us–that was 30% of the U.S. adult population–identified as dedicated wildlife watchers in a once-every-five-years national Census survey. We spent a bundle–$54.9 billion–on wildlife watching that year.

According to the same report, 12.3 million of us visited parks and other natural areas to view wildlife (pg. 36). And in 2012, a National Parks Conservation Association poll found that “95 percent of voters see protecting and supporting the National Parks as an appropriate role for the federal government.” In one survey question, protecting natural habitats, plants and wildlife was ranked the top value of six possibilities.  

Of bison and betrayal

Perfectly formed–just weeks from birth–a bison calf fetus still attached to the womb is discarded by treaty hunters and left with mom’s gut pile just north of Yellowstone. Buffalo Field Campaign photo; click image.

Kathleen Stachowski   Other Nations

Anyone who’s ever carried a wild bison’s heart into a governor’s office belongs to a small and select club. James St. Goddard, a Blackfeet spiritual leader from Montana, is the latest inductee, and–for all I know–the only member. Mr. St. Goddard appeared at the state capitol earlier this month to protest the latest twist in the ongoing injustice that passes for wild bison management in Montana: Tribal people, hunting under treaty rights, are conducting springtime hunts that kill pregnant bison carrying fully-formed fetuses. Dead moms mean dead babies–discarded along with mom’s gut pile. 

Volunteer Opportunity:Protecting Bison from Those Who Want Them Dead

David Cassuto

The bison herd in Yellowstone Park is protected from hunters.  Until the animals leave the park — which they are sometimes wont to do (bison have no pockets in which to carry a map).  As soon as the animals step over the park boundary they become prey for hunters abetted by the livestock industry who disguise their bloodlust behind disingenuous talk of brucellosis.

I just learned of an organization called the Buffalo Field Campaign, which works to protect the bison from those who think it the height of sport to shoot large, slow-moving herbivores.  And, if you have some time you wouldn’t mind spending in one of the world’s most spectacular places, the animals could use your help as well.  A little info on one of the coolest volunteer opportunities in the history of ever: