Yellowstone bison drive planned through this week

To hell with private property rights, to hell with wildlife, we must protect cattle that aren’t even here.

Hazing bison inside Yellowstone National Park © Ken Cole
Hazing bison inside Yellowstone National Park on Madison River ©Ken Cole

The ridiculous annual event of hazing bison during their calving season is underway even though this year the bison are likely to come back out of the Park because the green-up of grass hasn’t started there due to late season snowstorms.

Each year the residents of the West Yellowstone area have to endure this fiasco on behalf of a few ranchers who whine and cry that their cattle might get brucellosis from bison when they don’t even bring them to the area a until after the buffalo have all calved. This year, due to the late green-up, it will likely be even later.

On numerous occasions I have witnessed Montana’s helicopters chasing buffalo deep into the Park even beyond the border of Wyoming in front of bewildered tourists. Last year, while hazing herds of newborn calves and their mothers off of private property where there never will be cattle again, Buffalo Field Campaign filmed a calf that had broken its leg in the malay of the hazing operation. These kinds of incidents are a common occurrence and there is no justification for it.

This war against wildlife is escalating, there is now proposed legislation in Montana which would hand over elk management to these clowns. It’s time to be outraged.

The lies and deceit by the livestock industry and the landed noble elite surrounding this issue resemble the treatment of the Native Americans. The bison are kept on a reservation or slaughtered if they get in the way of the sacred cow.  It is the culture of death, a culture you subsidize.

Yellowstone bison drive planned through this week.
By Matthew Brown – The Associated Press

Comments

  1. Ralph Maughan Avatar

    The only purpose of all this is in my opinion to show us who is boss in Montana.

    1. mikarooni Avatar
      mikarooni

      That’s absolutely correct. In fact, most environmental arguments are less about the environment than about exercising and thereby reinforcing would be feudal powers and it’s not just the rich and powerful who want to see them exercised. I went to undergrad with a fellow who was much older and a relatively famous/infamous socialist. I asked him once how, if the current system is so flawed and a more egalitarian system would offer so many advantages to the working majority, why do so many of the working class so vigorously defend the current system. His answer was that, under the current system, the vast majority of the working class privately delude themselves with fantasies that they are among the very rare undiscovered “special ones” who will one day be discovered and magically get to be “oppressors” themselves. I laughed at the time and still cringe at his stereotypical viewpoint, but have come to see a grain of truth in what he said. The country, not just Montana, is full of “Walter Mitty” types who identify with the DOL, the imagined cowboys, and the tough talking GOPers, despite the facts that 1) they will never have or make more than a tiny fraction of what the real power at the GOP end of the spectrum has and makes; 2) wandering around on a dirt bike, ATV, or motorcycle once in a while or even owning one or two penned up horses doesn’t make you a cowboy or any real sort of outdoor adventurer; it just makes you a wannabe with delusions; and 3) even the “cowboys” that these dreamers fantasize about are just hired help, mostly living in trailer parks and working for the real owners of the ranches and manipulators of the DOL who are mostly absentee investors in faraway cities. Ultimately, the Marlboro Man was actually just a chain-smoking actor, living in LA, who eventually died of lung cancer.

    2. JB Avatar
      JB

      mik:

      Your post reminded me of Frederick Remington’s “Fall of the Cowboy”. The cause of the “fall” was the fence, that rendered the cowboy less useful, and his lifestyle, much less interesting. It is ironic to me that Remington’s depiction of the destruction of the cowboy way of life is lost on most folks now, who view such images through nostalgia-fogged glasses.

      http://hoocher.com/Frederic_Remington/The_Fall_of_the_Cowboy_1895.jpg

  2. Virginia Avatar
    Virginia

    I watched Gov. Brian Schweitzer (sp) give Rachel Maddow the old charm last night. He is such a phony and I wish the people who love him would look into what his policies about the wildlife in Montana have been, including the buffalo and the wolves. I guess I will write to Rachel and tell her to do some of her research on the gov.

  3. IzabelaM Avatar
    IzabelaM

    I am reading a report written by Jim McDonald about his experience from hazing just this week. I am shaken and very sad….Ralph, maybe you can check with Jim and see if he wants to post a link here. People across America need to know. Very moving account of horrible events we civilized people allow to happen each year.

  4. IzabelaM Avatar
    IzabelaM

    Jim,
    Sorry I misspelled your name. Jim Macdonald it is.

Author

Ken Cole is a 5th generation Idahoan, an avid fly fisherman, wildlife enthusiast, and photographer. He is the interim Idaho Director for Western Watersheds Project.

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