Rising Toll Of Yellowstone Bison Killed In Montana Attracts Global Outrage
Op-Ed: With one-third of herd gone, Jaedin Medicine Elk—Northern Cheyenne—calls out the slaughter of America's official national land mammal on Yellowstone's front doorstep
It's already been a grim winter for members of the most famous and most beloved bison population in the world. Yellowstone bison have faced a firing line from indigenous and other hunters when they have crossed outside the invisible national park boundary into Montana near Gardiner. Many wildlife biologists fear hundreds more could die because severe winters tend to take their hardest toll on weakened wildlife in April. Photo courtesy Jacob W. Frank/NPS
By Jaedin Medicine Elk
Wildlife advocate and co-founder of Roam Free Nation
On Saturday, March 18, Yellowstone National Park released the latest report of bison slaughter and removal operations on the Interagency Bison Management Plan website. The report shows that the slaughter of Yellowstone’s bison continues, including the killing of pregnant females who are just weeks away from giving birth.
As of Saturday, March 18, 1,814 buffalo were killed or otherwise removed from the population. That is 30 percent of the entire population of Yellowstone buffalo, which was at 6,000 in August of last year.
Unless Yellowstone takes action now, this will be the most buffalo taken in a season since the deadly slaughters of the late 1800’s. The firing-line style “hunt” at the boundary of Yellowstone has taken the lives of 1,067 buffalo. At least 349 of these were adult females, and nearly every one of those females will have been pregnant. That’s 349 calves that will never be born.
"The firing-line style 'hunt' at the boundary of Yellowstone has taken the lives of 1,067 buffalo. At least 349 of these were adult females, and nearly every one of those females will have been pregnant. That’s 349 calves that will never be born."
When there’s thirty hunters there from ten different tribes, it turns into a competition to see who can get a buffalo, causing hunters to start firing into family groups hoping they kill a buffalo. It seems the new "relationship" is hunting them to near-extinction because our treaty rights are more important than the well-being of a strong buffalo population.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Warning: below is documentary video footage provided courtesy of Yellowstone Voices showing what the scene of Yellowstone bison carcasses has looked like this winter just north of the park and it includes rivulets of snowmelt running red with bison blood).
The billboards put up by The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Roam Free Nation continue to draw attention to the hunt – there are now five billboards across Montana with more on the way. Our message: “There is no hunt. It’s slaughter” will now reach people in Helena, Billings, Belgrade, and Livingston, Montana.
Yellowstone claims they have no control over what happens to buffalo once they leave the park, and they have been trying to pass the blame for the unprecedented slaughter. But Yellowstone has trapped 781 buffalo at the Stephens Creek Capture Facility inside the national park.
Of these, 88 were shipped to slaughter (including 70 adult females, most likely pregnant); 282 have been sentenced to a life of domestication in the quarantine program, never to be wild again; and only 34 have been released. Yellowstone continues to hold 374 for “release or slaughter”—so they cannot claim they have no control over their fate.
These dire numbers get even worse when the natural winter kill is taken into account. Yellowstone estimates that 9 out of every 100 adult bison die over the winter on an average year, and with a winter as harsh as this one has been, those numbers can be expected to rise.
The state of Montana needs to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the impact of this bison slaughter on grizzlies, since winterkill bison carrion are an important food source for grizzlies, especially since grizzlies’ other main food sources, whitebark pine nuts and Yellowstone cutthroat trout have both been decimated.
The “hunt” has been, and continues to be, an irresponsible slaughter that disregards the very survival of the population. The fact that Yellowstone has captured, slaughtered, and consigned to quarantine another huge group of buffalo only compounds the cost to the herds.
How can those doing the bulk of the killing say that they want more buffalo on a larger landscape?
How can Yellowstone say the park could host 10,000 plus buffalo while they contribute to removing 30 percent of the herd?
When does it end? When the buffalo are gone?
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About Jaedin Medicine Elk
Jaedin Christopher Medicine Elk, co-founder of the bison advocacy group, Roam Free Nation, is Northern Cheyenne (Tsis tsis'tas), a Sundancer and Sacred Pipe Carrier from a traditional Buffalo Culture family. He was born and raised in southeast Montana and other than spending a few years in Colorado and North Dakota, has lived in Montana his whole life. Jaedin was mostly raised by his grandmother, Rosalie Bird Woman, who is one of the few who speak and teach the Northern Cheyenne language to the youth today. Jaedin has spent many years standing in defense of his relatives, the last wild, migratory buffalo of Yellowstone country.
