My buffalo, your buffalo
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
By Henry Sweets
When I heard that 1,600 bison were killed this winter, mostly by employees of the government, my American blood was boiling.
I have seen old photographs of men shooting bison for sport from a train and Hollywood scenes where bloody bodies of bison are left to wither in the sun.
That was an old America - wasteful and ignorant.
Our new, sustainable nation of catch and release fishing, green energy development and holistic households knows that natural resources need to be protected. It knows that America can do better than killing our icons of freedom that roam in a cartographic box of symbolic American wilderness, Yellowstone National Park.
In 2000, an Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) for the five agencies in the Greater Yellowstone area was set up with two main objectives: to maintain a free-roaming herd of bison and to protect Montana’s livestock industry from the disease brucellosis, which could cost Montana ranchers millions of dollars statewide.
So, an “adaptive management plan” - the IBMP - was established, where problems were assessed, management practices developed and the outcomes of those practices reviewed in order to develop a new, better system for handling the bison population.
One tool the policy allows for: killing buffalo leaving the park.
At the end of 2007, a Government Accountability Office review said the IBMP “does not have clearly defined, measurable objectives, and the partner agencies share no common view of the objectives.”
The winter slaughter bore on.
Despite the best efforts of neo-hippies in bajas and dreadlocks trying to save the bison from slaughter, hundreds of the animals were killed when they left the park for greener pastures. The meat, hides and horns were given to area Native American tribes.
Phase II of the IBMP plan, in which 100 brucellosis-free bison can roam out of the park, has not yet been reached, five years after its anticipated completion date.
There are myriad interests, and myriad solutions, but instead of an evolving, complex web of reasoning, the management plan is just a big mess.
The ranchers’ God-given right to that land is clear to them, just as the dreadlocked, Indiana man believes in his right to have buffalo ranging again in the American west. The funny thing is, all American dreams rely on a system that cheated Native people out of a lifestyle that didn’t conceive of property rights at all.
Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics “This land is your land, this land is my land,” in 1940, and America adopted it like Yogi the Bear, Jellystone and other symbols of American wilderness.
Am I disgusted with the Montana Department of Livestock for finally killing a bunch of buffalo that threaten to do millions of dollars of damage to their industry? No. Or the dreadlocked transplants, who try to “shepherd” the bison away from their death, am I mad at them? No.
I am disgusted with the way our country’s native populations have been treated, and how the government offers tribes consolation prizes like bison meat, some of it diseased, and continues to turn its back to their plights.
Real change will come when people arm themselves with information, share it with each other and communicate about each stakeholder’s interest. Until then, and afterward, bison will die each winter, and our silly illusions of Americanism with them. It is up to the country’s citizens to decide how many will die, and how proud we can be of our country’s true character.
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My buffalo, your buffalo | Planet JH News Article: Editorial
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