Buffalo
Field Campaign
February 2018
This court decision moves bison back into queue for full and fair consideration under the Endangered Species Act..... “This is huge that the Court recognized the importance of science,” says Michael Harris, an attorney with Friends of Animals who argued the case. “It sends a signal to the Fish and Wildlife Service that they cannot manipulate the science to serve political interests, like cattle ranchers.”
In a fantastic victory, a federal judge ruled yesterday that the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service illegally denied Endangered Species Act
protections for the Yellowstone National Park bison population. The ruling
overturns the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s negative 90-day finding,
which concluded that there was not substantial information supporting the
need to protect the bison under the Endangered Species Act. In 2016 the
bison was officially designated as the National Mammal of the United States.
Only about 5,000 bison remain in the Yellowstone herds which constitute the
only wild, genetically pure bison to continuously occupy their native range
in the United States.
“This is a huge victory,” said Buffalo Field Campaign Executive Director Ken
Cole. “This is a long battle but we won a significant round for the buffalo
today.”
State and federal agencies have been killing bison in and around Yellowstone
National Park in an effort to reduce the imperiled population and cater to
unfounded fears of transmission risk to local livestock operations of
brucellosis, a non-native disease brought to the region by livestock,.
However, a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences found that of
all the instances of brucellosis transmission from wildlife to domestic
cattle, not one single incident was attributable to bison.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service made a political decision to suppress and
ignore science in order to deny the Yellowstone bison the protection they
deserve,” said Josh Osher, Montana director for Western Watersheds Project.
“The administration is clearly bowing to the influence of the livestock
industry and its agenda to minimize bison populations and their natural
migrations, despite their status as the national mammal.”
The court ruled that the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service improperly ignored an
important scientific study that concluded there are two separate and
genetically distinct herds of bison - the Central Interior herd and the
Northern herd - in Yellowstone National Park. The current plan treats bison
as a single herd, failing to provide safeguards to maintain both herds as
distinct and isolated units. Currently, the Central Interior herd may
already be too small to maintain its viability from a genetic standpoint.
“This is huge that the Court recognized the importance of science,” says
Michael Harris, an attorney with Friends of Animals who argued the case. “It
sends a signal to the Fish and Wildlife Service that they cannot manipulate
the science to serve political interests, like cattle ranchers.”
In his ruling, the judge stated, “If two pieces of scientific evidence
conflict, the Service must credit the supporting evidence unless that
evidence is unreliable, irrelevant, or otherwise unreasonable to credit.”
“This moves bison back into queue for full and fair consideration under the
Endangered Species Act,” said Buffalo Field Campaign Executive Director Ken
Cole. “That’s so important for these small subpopulations who are at grave
risk of blinking out under current management.”
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