Week Ten: Restoring the American Bison to its Rightful Range

1. How would you prioritize the reintroduction of the American Bison?

This is a complicated question. Back to nature always sounds really good to me, but times have changed; the planet has changed. I wasn't sure how to approach this question at all. I read through the articles in our packet and found that I had a lingering question: beyond symbolism and majesty, what role did the bison have in the ecosystem? Rather than spend lots of time googling to find this answer, I did something old fashioned -- I called someone, specifically my father-in-law Gene, who is Wyoming born and bred.

At left, A buffalo just outside of Yellowstone National Park, in Teton County, taken in 2004.


Gene has been a hunting guide for decades in the areas bordering Yellowstone Park and knows those woods well. He also has been a cattle rancher, and so has a particular bias. I have been an animal lover and was a vegetarian and / or vegan for over twenty years. I've been in that wilderness with him, riding horses and on pack trips. I'm kind of quiet and he's quite a talker. When I met him my head and heart were full of ideas that I'd read about, but he has actually lived it -- lived off the land directly for his whole life. It's interesting to hear his viewpoint and I often think that if the cattle ranchers and hunters sat down with the park rangers and conservationists, much progress could be made toward re-establishing a healthy ecosystem.

Me and Gene.

I asked Gene what he knew about the bison around Yellowstone. Here's what he said, more or less (after my conversation with him, I fact-checked some of what he said on the Internet and have placed my fact-check comments next to his comments):

That there are about 6,000 bison in Yellowstone and the surrounding Teton County, and that Ted Turner has a bunch on his ranches in the area. (Both are true. Ted Turner, in fact, has about 50,000 head of Bison -- the largest private herd in the world.)

Bison don't respect fences and compete with the ranchers. If it's a dry year the bison won't just stand there and starve, they will knock fences down and keep going until they find some green grass to eat.

There is a brucellosis problem which is kind of a crock of shit. Cows can become carriers of the disease, but can still remain healthy and produce calves. However, if you sell these calves and they are found to be carrying brucellosis you can no longer sell the cattle as "producing cattle" but only for meat. The disease doesn't really hurt the cattle, and cannot be transmitted to humans, so it is not of real concern. Brucellosis is a problem for the rancher because it reduces the value of his cattle (since you aren't allowed to produce more cattle from an infected animal) and therefore creates more animosity toward the bison. (Actually, humans can get brucellosis, but it is not from eating infected meat; it is from drinking infected goat's milk, primarily; also, the disease does impact the cattle -- it causes them to have more spontaneous abortions).

If the bison population gets too large for the Yellowstone area, they will go into Idaho. Idaho doesn't have a lot of fences like Wyoming because they are doing more farming in Idaho versus cattle ranching. The buffalo will then trample the farmers fields in Idaho, and then the farmers will start shooting the bison.

The success in breeding programs and raising them as ranch animals has proven that the herd won't go extinct, so we shouldn't worry about having to increase their numbers so much. What do we need more buffalo for, anyway?

Then I asked him well, what purpose do you think they served when there were millions of buffalo? He told me:

After the buffalo were gone the grass was starting to diminish and no one could figure out why because buffalo eat grass, and now the buffalo were gone, so you'd think the grass would be more plentiful. But there were no animals tromping the grass seed into the ground, so the grass was all dying. The buffalo migrations helped to scatter the seed and they mashed the seed into the ground. Then the Great Plains began to turn into a dustbowl because no other animal was serving this function. The elk were also hunted out of the low country. People in the late 1800s and early 1900s would hunt them for their ivory teeth and just leave their bodies there. If you have nothing to do all day but hunt, you can kill quite a few elk in a day. So the elk got smart and moved to the high country, where they could see you coming. But all the elk left the low country too. Now the Great Plains have wild game (antelope), are being farmed, or have cattle on them. The cattle serve the function that the buffalo once served, of spreading the grass seed and mashing it into the earth. And the Great Plains have shrunk. You don't need the buffalo anymore. The human population is too big; there are too many people and there is not enough land. Look at a population map. There's no room for buffalo out there.

At left, a Wyoming calf, also taken in 2004.

So that made a lot of sense to me, actually. I'm not saying forget the buffalo, or they're not necessary, but the problem is a lot more complicated than just trying to control some cattle ranchers. Who eats that meat, anyway? Most of us do, that's who. And if you're eating meat, where do you expect it to come from? Gene always points out that environmentalists are always wanting to re-introduce wild species into his backyard, but never into their own. That they think of places like Wyoming and Montana as just a vast wilderness. He always says, "Why don't they release wolves and grizzlies into Golden Gate Park?"

Just as the ecosystem of our country is interconnected so are our habits. If we want to eat meat, it has to be raised somewhere. If it's being raised somewhere, that's taking up traditional habitat that wild animals used to use. And the cattle ranchers are expected to just deal with the buffalo, the wolves, etc. We need to realize how we are all impacting this planet, and come up with a plan together that makes the most sense for the health of us all. We need to sit down and listen to each other, and respect the wisdom and knowledge of one another.

By the way, I looked up his story about the bison's role in the ecosystem. According to the US Fish and Wildlife:

"Bison were historically an integral component of the North American prairie ecosystem. Migrating bison provided essential functions, such as grazing and other disturbances that, together with fire, drove key ecological processes on the prairie. The decimation of the historic bison herds across the continent in the late 19th century removed this component from the prairie ecosystem. As the Service works to restore and conserve prairie habitats throughout the National Wildlife Refuge System, the agency has identified wild bison as a species that can and will play a vital role in this effort."

Another interesting fact about the Yellowstone bison: In the United States, only one wild bison population has continuously occupied their native range since prehistoric time: the Yellowstone bison.

2. How would you assess the "New pill promises to reduce breast cancer risk"?

Well, that's kind of an empty promise and quite misleading. The article doesn't identify exactly what this new pill is except to say that it is a "new group of compounds that include a drug known as mifepristone." Mifepristone is basically RU-486, the abortion pill. I have no ethical problem with the abortion pill, and realize that the dosage of RU-486 is much higher than what they will put into this new contraceptive cocktail, but what are the side effects, and what is this motivation to receive such glowing PR as to promise erradicating breast cancer? To date, mifepristone has not been approved for any additional uses other than to induce abortion (and that article was written in 2006). The article also doesn't mention that "No long-term studies to evaluate the carcenogenic potential of mifepristone have been performed" nor does it mention that the drug is a steroid.

I'm guessing that the drug companies were pushing this "anti-breast cancer" angle because anti-abortion people were protesting the drug due to its use in chemical abortions.