Wild bison battle reaches Congress

In the last century, mostly Western European men eradicated this country's dominant herbivore and replaced it with a nutritionally inferior African herbivore ill-suited to this land and climate - the cow. Its proliferation continues to degrade and destroy the fragile ecosystems that evolved with the bison for millions of years.

There is a movement to restore bison to the Great Plains and help it thrive around the country. It rolls like quiet thunder. This week, there was a clap on the Hill.

The hazing and slaughter of the country's meager, last surviving wild herd of buffalo were a hot topic in Washington, DC this week. On Tuesday, the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands held an oversight hearing on Yellowstone National Park Bison management plan.

From Environmental News Service, J.R. Pegg - The fate of the Yellowstone bison herd took center stage at a House committee hearing on Tuesday, with emotions running high over a controversial management plan that allows federal and state officials to kill bison in order to protect cattle from the disease brucellosis.

[my two cents -- That's the claim at the crux of the bison war, but it doesn't hold up. There has never been a recorded base of such infection in the wild. Brucellosis can only be transmitted by calving females; it happened just once, in captivity. The real issue is money and natural resources, of course: the cattle industry's manifest destiny over our country's grasslands.]

House Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall said the plan allows the needless slaugter of "an American icon."

"The slaughter of bison is not required in order to manage the threat of disease. Slaughter is not management," Rahall said. "It is an approach from a bygone era and has no place in a time of rapid scientific and economic progress."

From the Buffalo Field Campaign - (The room held an) all-star cast of the many players involved in the buffalo's current story, including villains, heroes and the ... fence-sitters. Sadly, the Native American voice was again left out. Congressional champions are calling much-needed attention to the mismanagement of Yellowstone bison, while the cattle interests keep showing their greed for grass and ignorance of the meaning and importance of wildness.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported on their undergoing investigation of the Interagency Bison Management Plan and the land deal with the Church Universal & Triumphant (CUT). CUT, cited on this cult investigation site, is the largest cattle producer in the bison's way, and it owns less than 300 cows! So long as cattle graze these lands, said GAO, no bison will be able to access even the wildlife conservation easement lands within their critical winter range.

The Humane Society of the U.S. testified that the United States hosts 100 million cattle. In their height of glory, wild bison numbered 30-40 million, most experts agree.

Photos from ENS