Deal avoids slaughter of bison

HELENA – The National Park Service and the state of Montana agreed Friday to truck a renegade group of bison into Yellowstone National Park if they resist the latest hazing efforts – an effort aimed at preventing the slaughter of week-old bison calves.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer announced the plan with Suzanne Lewis, superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. Schweitzer said it was hammered out with the help of U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

The plan would preclude sending the cows and calves to slaughter – an issue that had brought intense scrutiny from bison advocates.

“A pardon has been granted,” Schweitzer said.

The agreement received mixed reaction from both sides of the debate: ranchers who want the bison off their summer feed ground and worry they will transmit disease to their livestock and those who want free range for the Yellowstone animals.

About 300 bison, including 100 calves born this spring, have been roaming on summer cattle grazing lands near West Yellowstone in recent weeks, despite several hazing attempts. On Thursday and Friday, state agents on horses and in a helicopter pushed them back into the park.

About 280 were hazed back in on Thursday, and another 35 were pushed back into the park on Friday.

The hazing came after the Montana Livestock Department postponed a plan to take them to slaughter.

Schweitzer said the park service agreed to bend its rules and allow them to truck the bison deep into the park should they come back out. He called it a “middle ground” agreement.

“This is unprecedented that the bison were getting hazed back into the park and not staying there,” the governor said. “The park has never agreed to do this before, but we have not ever been in this situation before.”

Schweitzer said early reports, however, showed the latest hazing effort may work. Many of the bison, hazed seven miles into the park, appeared to be heading deeper into Yellowstone.

If the bison come out, however, they will be loaded into trucks and released in a capture facility near Gardiner near the park’s northern border. The bison would be coaxed from there back into a different region of the park.

“I think we took a step in the right direction,” Lewis said at a news conference with Schweitzer.

Lewis said more discussions are needed on managing the bison.

“Clearly, finding places for bison on the landscape outside the park remains a big goal,” she said.