Bison Dispatch #1

Transcript

AMY: Hey this is Amy Martin with some big news about the bison at Yellowstone National Park. We devoted the whole first season of Threshold to the story of bison in the United States, and right now another important chapter in that long saga is unfolding.

But before I share this latest news, I’m just going to do a quick reminder of the background. The Yellowstone bison are the largest wild bison herd in the world. And it’s kind of a miracle that they are here at all.

Before Europeans arrived, there were more than 50 million wild bison all over North America. By 1901, only 23 free-roaming bison remained in the United States, all protected inside Yellowstone National Park. The bison that live in the park now—around 5,000 animals—are the ancestors of that group of 23.

If you listened to the first season of Threshold—or if you’re just familiar with the chorus of “Home on the Range”—you might remember that one of the key things about bison is that they like to roam. They’re made to roam, actually. Bison, or buffalo as they’re sometimes called, are migratory animals. They evolved to move in herds across the prairie, grazing, raising their calves, feasting relatively non-stop when the grass they depend on is available, and then burning the fat stored in their bodies to power them through the long cold winters. Bison are really good at being bison—if they are allowed to be bison. And that means being able to move.

That’s where things get tricky. Although the herd inside Yellowstone National Park has managed to persist all this time, their natural instincts to roam have been severely curtailed. Once the animals cross the boundaries of the national park, they step into a quagmire of complicated human issues. The simplest way to sum it all up is that some people want the bison to be able to roam freely in and out of Yellowstone National Park, and some people do not.

So that’s the background. Here’s the big news: Yellowstone National Park recently released a new plan for managing the bison herd. It’s in draft form, and it maps out three alternatives for how to manage the herd in the future. Before it gets finalized, the public has a chance to read it and weigh in on which path is best. The window for public comment is open right now, and it closes September 25th. That means there’s basically a month left to learn about the park’s draft bison management plan, and share your opinion about it, if you’re so inclined. Moments like this don’t come around all that often: this is a rare chance to have some influence on the fate of this herd.

To learn more about the plan and what it could mean for the future of bison, I reached out to Morgan Warthin, chief of public affairs at Yellowstone National Park.

AMY: So the park recently released a draft basin management plan. My first question is why is this happening now? What triggered the need for a new bison management plan?

MORGAN: Yes, so we have initiated a new plan because of changed circumstances and new scientific information about bison management. So we felt like this was a great opportunity to focus on creating a contemporary plan that looks at those change circumstances.

AMY: And the plan that you've been working off of. When was that implemented? Was it 2000?

MORGAN: Yeah. Yes, so it's dated. The plan is.

AMY: For folks who maybe haven't listened to season one of Threshold or aren't following this closely, Why do we need a management plan at all? Why can't bison just be wild and do whatever they want to do in Yellowstone or wherever they are?

MORGAN: It's a great question. I mean, all our wildlife need to be managed in some manner. Bison are no different. Bison are a little bit more complicated, though, just because they migrate and they migrate long distances. So typically in the winter months they will migrate into the state of Montana. So right in the what we refer to as the client base and as such, they need to be managed because they are large animals, because their numbers are growing and because there's only a certain amount of tolerance for bison in the state of Montana. So we work cooperatively with other federal agencies and tribes to focus on a ecologically sustainable wild population of bison. But also really important to the National Park Service is to reduce the transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle, which is of great concern to the state of Montana.

AMY: So I want to come back to the brucellosis stuff in in a little bit. But before we go down that path, I'm curious with this upcoming plan, why does the National Park, which has its own authority over park matters, why do you need to have a plan that is agreed upon by anyone outside of the park? Why can't you just make your own plan and say, Here we go.

MORGAN: So great question. In essence, this will be Yellowstone National Park's plan that said that we really have no control over the management of bison once they leave the park. So, for instance, hunting of bison outside of Yellowstone National Park. So we also acknowledge in this plan the importance of working with our interagency Bison Management Plan partners and really providing opportunities for them as cooperating agencies to comment on this plan because they are critical partners to us in the overall management of Yellowstone Bison. Mm hmm.

AMY: Okay. So this plan will be able to go into effect whether or not the governor of Montana agrees to it, whether or not the Montana Department of Livestock agrees to it, like you're working to come up with a plan you can all agree on, but it's not contingent upon their approval. Is that right?

MORGAN: Well, we are certainly striving for their input on an agreement as best as best we can. We outlined three different alternatives that initiated conversations that we had and we will continue to have with other cooperating agencies such as the Forest Service, especially Custer, Gallatin National Forest and the state of Montana, but also tribes.

AMY: Mm hmm. And just for folks who might not be familiar with the area, the reason why there's sort of this focus on cooperating with some of the agencies in Montana in particular versus maybe less emphasis on Wyoming is that the bison tend to migrate north out of the park, correct?

MORGAN: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. There's very few bison that migrate out of Yellowstone Park into the state of Wyoming. The majority of Yellowstone bison migrate into Montana, and that's via the Gardiner Basin. They'll also migrate not as many as far as the numbers go out of the western side of the park around West Yellowstone. Mm hmm.

AMY: Did you have a big bison migration? Winter This past winter?

MORGAN: Oh, was extraordinary. Is absolutely extraordinary. We had not seen really ever the vast majority of bison within Yellowstone migrate out of the park and into the Gardiner Basin over the course of the winter. So there were times where there was a thousand plus. He said within the Gardner base. And that would be between Mammoth Hot Springs all the way down through the Gardner base and even a little bit more. It was absolutely extraordinary. Wow.

AMY: And how did the local community tolerate that? Because I mean, I know people in Gardner are very used to bison wandering around, but that's a lot of bison.

MORGAN: So it was a lot of bison. And they are I mean, they are iconic. They're majestic animals. They are also big, very large. And they migrate in family units. But what we found by and large was from a public safety and private property standpoint, there was very few concerns. I think it bespeaks the success of the Interagency Bison Management Plan and the cooperating partners that were on the ground focused on doing whatever possible to ensure that bison were doing their their traditional migratory patterns, but also ensuring private property was protected and public safety.

[00:06:04] AMY: And were there any documented transmissions of brucellosis from bison to cattle, even in this, like highly dense year of migration?

MORGAN: No, no. There's never been a documented case of the transfer of brucellosis from bison to cattle. And what we understand now is that it's really elk that now are the primary transmitter of brucellosis to cattle, not bison. So we are we are working with those new circumstances.

AMY: We’re going to jump out of my conversation with Morgan for a minute because that last bit she said there, the new circumstances, is important to understanding what’s happening with the plan. Some of the initial premises behind the management of bison, particularly about the transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle as Morgan just said, have been found to be incorrect or have changed in the last twenty years.

And the plan that was released this month reflects that. It’s an environmental impact statement - essentially an analysis of the impacts of different management strategies. The plan presents three options. There are a lot of details for each one but I’m going to try to condense them down to the essentials:

Option one is to largely keep doing what has been done for the last 20 years. Keep the herd at around 3000 to 5000 animals using a combination of public and tribal hunting, sending some animals to slaughter, and transferring others to tribal lands. So you can think: option one, status quo.

Option two would put more emphasis on the transfer of animals to tribal lands and tribal hunting outside the park. This option would cap the number of animals at 6000. It would also likely reduce the number of bison shipped to slaughter as the transfer to tribes and hunting increases.

The third option marks a significant policy change: the park would stop sending bison to slaughter as a regular part of management. Instead, this option relies on natural selection, public and tribal hunting, and the transfer of bison to tribal lands to manage the size of the herd. The park service would still reserve the right to slaughter bison, but it would be more like a tool of last resort rather than a regular part of operations. If this alternative is chosen, bison would be treated more like elk, which roam freely in and out of the park, get hunted outside of the park, and are actually the only animal that has been found to have transmitted brucellosis to cattle in the wild. Option three would likely result in many more bison, potentially raising the number of animals to 7000 or more.

All three scenarios have measures in place to limit the size of the herd in the park—what varies is how those limitations are carried out, and the target number of the herd. In all cases, the national park service is seeking to increase tribal hunting and the transfer of live animals to tribal lands.

Okay, back to my conversation with Morgan…

MORGAN: Doing environmental impact statements. They take they take time. They take thought. Our commitment is to do this well, to do it to the best of our ability to do it right.

AMY: Just really big picture. This is the largest wild bison herd in the world, correct?

MORGAN: That's right. Yeah. Which is why it's so significant. We look at currently the bison population in Yellowstone as one of the last longest standing remaining wild herds of bison to exist. And we're just a couple dozen here in the early 1900s. It's an extraordinary success story of bringing an iconic wild animal back from the brink of extinction.

AMY: And so in some ways, what this plan is asking the American people is we used to have tens of millions of bison in this country. Can we tolerate 6000, 7000 now for the next little while?

MORGAN: Yeah. Can we can we tolerate them, whether, as you say, whether it's 6000 or 7000? But how do we do that? How can we do that safely? Keeping private property in mind, keeping the the small, very small chance of brucellosis transmission to cattle in mind, which is something very important to the National Park Service. Keeping all of those factors in mind, how can we manage Yellowstone National Park Bison under a contemporary plan based on new science, changed circumstances. And in today's day and age. We have some ideas, and we would like to know what people think about it.

AMY: This is a chance for people around the country to weigh in on a plan that will affect the fate of this herd and of these animals for a long time like this is you don't do a new management plan every year, every five years even. It's been over 20 years. And so this is a pivot point where people have a chance to really impact the future of this herd. Is that is that accurate or is that overly dramatic?

MORGAN: It is accurate. It can be dramatic, but but it's accurate. The Interagency Bison Management plan, as you say, that was two decades ago when it was signed. And now it's an opportunity for us to to revise it, to think about the next 20 years. We will take all of the comments that we receive, study them, think through options, opportunities for improvement. And then our intent is to release the final environmental impact statement sometime in 20, 24 hour and goal is to have a record of decision, which will be the overarching document which will guide management actions for bison management into the future.

AMY: So to recap - this is a big deal for the Yellowstone bison. And you are encouraged to have a say in what happens with the herd. These three proposed options for bison management open for public comment from now through September 25, 2023. As part of the public comment period, Yellowstone has organized two virtual information sessions on August 28th and 29th. We’ll put the details in the show notes and on our website so you can participate.

And in addition to the webinars, a really good way to get fully up to speed on the issues around the Yellowstone bison is to listen - or relisten - to season one of Threshold. We’ll also continue to share with you what happens with the Yellowstone bison as this story develops.

And we also want to hear from you. What questions do you have about bison, bison science, bison history, and bison management? Send your questions to us at outreach@thresholdpodcast.org and we’ll try to answer as many as we can in an upcoming dispatch.

Thanks to Travis Yost for the use of his music, and thanks to Sam Moore and Erika Janik for help producing this episode. Visit thresholdpodcast.org for more.