[Editor's Note: As you might recall, Animal Rights
Online's staff journalist, PrkStRangr@aol.com, is with the activist
group Buffalo Nations just outside Yellowstone National Park. This is
his last article before he leaves Montana.]
Thank you, readers, for bearing with me during this
series about the slaughter of the bison of Yellowstone, and forgive me
if I seem long winded today, but this is the last piece I will write
from the encampment of Buffalo Nations, a group trying to protect the
bison from the bullets of the state of Montana.
I don't know how much good I have actually done for the
bison during my two week tour of duty with this activist group. The
Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) hasn't killed any bison yet this
winter. I like to believe the patrols by Buffalo Nations, and our
constant monitoring of the buffalo, act as deterrents to DOL activity.
Perhaps the knowledge I have gained and the articles I
plan to write for magazines and the speeches I plan to give are the best
efforts I can make. And in those I will keep repeating - please visit
this website:
Buffalo Nations
www.wildrockies.org/buffalo
Read the information and write a letter of complaint to
the state and federal agencies whose addresses are given there.
I have learned a little bit more about the slaughter of
the buffalo, but there are still a few things I don't understand. I
don't understand why, with all the local opposition, the Montana
government continues to move ahead with their bison eradication
programs. I don't understand why the U.S. Forest Service and the
National Park Service, two agencies charged with the protection of our
wild lands and wildlife, have handed over "management" of the bison to
the cattle industry of Montana. YOU, as a U.S. citizen, are part owner
of one of the world's last wild bison herds. OUR two thousand buffalo of
Yellowstone National Park are being stolen, the meat sold, the skulls
and hides auctioned and the profits kept by the state of Montana. Now
Montana has the gall to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture for half
a million dollars a year for the next ten years of OUR tax money to help
them operate a new bison capture and kill facility. There are already
two of these facilities, I guess that's not good enough. (Your comments
to the Forest Service on this new facility must be in by Jan. 13.
Please read this webpage and write or email a letter -
www.wildrockies.org/buffalo/politico/eacomment.html
You can help prevent future bison deaths)
In the past winters when the agents of the Montana
Department of Livestock were shooting bison with rifles, the cruelty was
more obvious, the media more attentive, the public more offended. As the
killing becomes more institutionalized and moves behind the doors of
slaughterhouses, the focus of the public moves to other issues.
The Montana DOL recently spent $15,000 in a public
relations campaign to make themselves look good. A number of times in
the past two months they have chased bison back into Yellowstone Park
using snowmobiles and explosive shotgun rounds. The DOL says that
through these actions they have "saved" the lives of 500 buffalo that
they would have otherwise had to shoot. Actually, these "500" were a
small group that the DOL chased back into the park over and over on ten
different days. By continually chasing them and making them use energy
they need to survive the winter, and by preventing them from finding the
food they are seeking on public forest land outside Yellowstone Park,
the DOL is increasing the chances that these bison will die this winter.
As my time here in Montana with Buffalo Nations draws to
a close, I pray for their diligence in protecting the buffalo. I hope
none of these volunteers are injured. I hope that if any are pushed to
acts of civil disobedience, they have good cause and receive fair
justice. And of course, I pray for the buffalo.
-PrkStRangr@aol.com
, Animal Rights Online
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