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- By Native News Online Staff
Yellowstone National Park's Senior Bison Biologist, Chris Geremia, informed Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC) Campaign Coordinator, Mike Mease, that Yellowstone has trapped a group of 200–210 buffalo at Stephens Creek near Gardiner, Montana. The buffalo began their annual migration into the Gardiner Basin last week, and the park started capturing groups of approximately 60 on Tuesday, March 4th, continuing through the morning of March 6th (58). These are the first buffalo to migrate into the basin this season.
This practice goes back years. Last year, BFC Board Member James Holt commented: “Luring and trapping Buffalo inside Yellowstone Park is a decades-long practice that continues because of Montana’s stance to not permit a self-sustaining wild Buffalo population in the state. Wild Buffalo herds should be thriving on millions of acres of National public trust lands but for the capitulation of the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service to Montana’s plan of managing wild buffalo for extinction.”
BFC Board Vice President and Tribal Sovereignty & Indigenous Lifeways Program Director, Dallas Gudgell (Yankton Dakota) states that BFC is looking for solutions as the current and decades old Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) continues to fail the Buffalo, tribal people, and community members.
"BFC believes that the best solution is bring tribal leaders to the decision making management table and in the form of Tribal Co-management. It's time to bring Indigenous voices in to help determine how to restore and conserve wild migratory Buffalo and exercise treaty rights. It is time to allow the Buffalo to find their own tolerance zones and then protect those habitats as was done Horse Butte," Gudgell said.
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