Judge: Yellowstone bison slaughter can proceed

Source: AP

Judge: Yellowstone bison slaughter can proceed

BILLINGS, Mont. -- A judge says he will not stop the slaughter of potentially hundreds of wild bison from Yellowstone National Park that had attempted to migrate into Montana.

U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell in Helena issued a 72-page ruling Monday in which he denied a request from wildlife advocates to stop the slaughter.

More than 500 bison are being held in corrals along the border of the snowed-in park after trying to leave for food at lower elevations. Park officials plan to send an undetermined number to slaughter under a federal-state agreement meant to protect Montana livestock against the reproductive disease brucellosis.

Lovell wrote that while the slaughter of bison may be "distasteful," it is a "time-honored" method of dealing with the disease. Opponents say they will appeal the ruling.

Read more: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_17385568?source=rss

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The "bagmen on the bench" -- worthless, all -- continue apace...

:grr:

The Bison should get first priority. Who do we humans think we are that we should be allowed to kill a native species that has as much or more right to the land as we do? Perhaps instead of slaughtering bison to make room for humans we should slaughter humans to make room for Bison. Either is morally equivalent.

The ecosystem can only support X number of bison? Thinning the herd is desirable and if you're going to cull the heard you take the weakest animals.

In the long run it's better for the herd

If the bison were allowed to roam the territory that they previously had before the Europeans came , there would be plenty of room for them and the ecosystem could support them just fine. The biggest threat to the ecosystem is humans, not the bison.

The fact remains we are where we are and the bison need to be managed

back to the "old country".

give it up they were here first. get your ass back to England

Hummer drivers leave first and take their teeny peenies with them.

The big pickup drivers--out next unless you have a work need.

People with multiple homes--back to Europe with you (or to Asia, Africa, Antarctica, whatever).

Uh-oh, meateaters are going to be higher on the list than the vegans.

Vegan and walking? You just might get to stay and help recycle all the unneeded concrete and pavement, provided you've learned to live in an adobe home instead of something lined with Brazilian rainforest old growth timber.



:rofl:

Humans continue to be amazingly selfish, stupid, and short-sighted.

Let's just pave everything and be done with it.:crazy:

And I for one am damned tired of tax-subsidized cattle barons deciding what lives, and what dies, in the American West.

:rofl:

where do I sign up?

A natural eco-system or one manipulated by and for humans?

In the long run, we're killing ourselves.

and we won't care

n/t

I eat meat, I hunt (occasionally). That chicken I ate for lunch didn't commit suicide to get on my plate.

I'm not going to lose any sleep over sluaghtering a buffalo

:shrug:

Yet... a natural ecosystem or a man made one (that being my original question)? You do realize there is a precise and relevant difference between the two, and that applications from the one are not neccesarily the same for the other, yes (e.g., natural forest versus tree farms)?

Thus, application of the theories taken from a natural ecosystem do not *necessarily* hold the same validity when applied to a man-made eco-system.


"and we won't care..."
I think I can safely reply, "speak for yourself, kemosahbee..."

we figure dead people don't care

Then we have to thin the herds. The herds that once roamed most of the plains who like the American Indian were run from their land so it could be commercialized.

always easy to judge a situation you don't have much to do with, isn't it?

and so are the bison and if it's them or me, it's me.

Funny ,you have a lot of opinions about how those of us that actually live here should run our lives

Isn't there a moral equivalency here? Why do you have more right to the land than the bison do? Answer is, you don't.

It's a new day every time he blinks.

Again, like it or not there is a finite amount of range to support the buffalo, unless you want us all to move back East of the Blue Ridge Mountains, some of them have to be culled or all of them will suffer

nevertheless I guarantee, wherever you live, life forms were killed and displaced.

It's so easy to see a small group of ranchers as some kind of villains when you don't have any connection to them or their history and livelihoods, much less to the local environment they exist in.

Would you be willing to let some infected wildlife into your home? Say rats carrying fleas infected with plague? Oh those aren't cool big mammals that attract tourists, right.

Brucelosis is a devastating livestock disease that has been carefully eradicated from domestic livestock herds. Why should neighbors to the park have to risk having their animals infected? There are property rights involved, but again that sort of thing matters little when it isn't "your" property.

According to this map, Bison are not native to where I live.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bison_original_range_map.svg

You avoided my question about letting infected wildlife onto your property (or into your home or work environment). Bottom line, my original point was that it is easy for someone who doesn't live or make a living in the area to pontificate and judge those who do, NOT whether bison were native to your particular location.

But since you went on the tangent, your map DOES shows range into NE Nevada, and if you read my post I did say "nevertheless I guarantee, wherever you live, life forms were killed and displaced." Again you avoided the point that it is easy to ignore your own impact while demonizing others.

and just for kicks I happen to know there are plenty of archeological sites not shown on your map at all, especially in my area. (to be fair to you, scientific consensus on bison distribution has not been achieved) Ironically, bison are actually migrants from the old world along with mammoths and paleoindians, they didn't originate here.

one little article just for you: https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/ojs/index.php/wnan/article/viewFile/1374/1420

I don't think it matters where they came from eons ago. There were millions of them in North America when the Europeans arrived, and then we proceeded to systematically slaughter them to the verge of extinction. That slaughter was just as unconscionable as the genocide that the Europeans carried out against Native Americans. So it seems that the least we can do now is to allow what few bison remain to roam where they want to.

And as far as I'm concerned, the large multinational agribusiness conglomerates that control cattle ranching can go to hell. I won't shed even one tear for them if some of their cattle get infected with brucellosis. If we were talking about small ranchers scratching a living off from the land, that might be different. But we are not.

We can quibble over whether or not bison once lived at my exact location. But it really doesn't matter. I am displacing no wildlife. The property where I live is not fenced in and any and all wildlife are allowed to freely use that property as they see fit. I have seen coyotes, deer and possums on this property, and there have probably been others. I don't look upon it as my allowing animals to cross "my" land. Quite the contrary, it is the animals who are allowing me to use "their" land since they were here first.

and make sure they're ok w/ you using "their" land.

Do you use mouse traps? Insecticide? Wear leather? Wool? Eat meat? Fish? Some wild animal somewhere lost its natural habitat to the farm that raised the fruits and vegetables that you eat.

Like I said "Get your ass back to England" and learn to live as a gatherer so you don't disturb the animals

than you obviously are.

I really have no idea what your point is. Welcome to DU, I guess.

but I extend food status to animals and that's about it.

A better question might be does he give a damn?

Lets see, rancher money and influence balanced against nature means that as usual, greed wins out once again. Pissed off beyond words right now.

I really, really want to go someday. When the kids get old enough I want to do that drive out there thing. I love watching documentaries that show yellowstone. The bison are so incredibly beautiful. I am glad that there is still one place where they can roam free. I also like eating buffalo. I can understand why people who depend on raising cattle don't want the cattle to get contaminated with bovine TB. That makes perfect sense. And because the reality is that the range is limited, it makes sense to me to cull the heard. Wolves were reintroduced to yellow stone. They are also beautiful, and I'm glad that they have a place in the lower 48. Ranchers had a hard time with that too. But the wolves eat the bison. They cull out the weaker bison. Some wolves eat some, some people eat some. We are the top of the food chain. We just have to be smarter than we've ever been before in managing that, because we are running out of error room. But this isn't going to eliminate the herd. This won't be the end of bison in yellowstone.

There has never been a documented case of brucellosis transmission between buffalo and domestic cattle under natural conditions. In Grand Teton National Park, where vaccinated cattle and brucellosis exposed buffalo have been commingling for decades, no transmission has ever occurred. The chances of transmission between wild buffalo and vaccinated domestic cattle have been characterized as “very low”.

Greed, Arrogance and Stupidity.....GASsy Americans at it again.

:shrug:

It's only slaughter if they are eaten IMO.

(That may not be etymologically correct, but it's my opinion.)

...the charged language leaves me feeling uncertain...

and this is top of the heap.

n/t

Not a single case of brucellosis has ever been transmitted from a bison to cattle. It is common though, for cattle to give bison brucellosis. These lying Cattlemen's Associations are no better than the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association of Johnson County War infamy.

Thank you for your post...