UPDATE: According to KTVQ, local landowners did on Monday ask District Court Judge John McKeon to issue a temporary restraining order against the transport of these bison to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. They report that as of 5:15 Monday night, the Judge had not ruled. The landowners are accusing the state of signing the agreement and loading up the bison without public notice.
The following article is from the Associated Press:
Sixty-four bison from Yellowstone National Park were due to arrive at northeast Montana’s Fort Peck Reservation on Monday under a long-stalled initiative to repopulate parts of the West with the iconic, genetically pure animals, a tribal official said.
Tribal and state officials signed an agreement late Friday allowing the transfer to take place, said Robert Magnan with the Fort Peck Fish and Game Department.
The date of the shipment was kept quiet until it was underway to avoid a court injunction, he said. A group of northeast Montana landowners and property groups filed a lawsuit in state district court in January seeking to stop the transfer.
Several prior attempts to relocate the animals failed because of opposition from cattle producers and difficulty finding public or tribal land suitable for the bison.
State wildlife officials have said the relocation of the Yellowstone bison may help answer the question of whether the species can be reintroduced to some public lands in Montana where they once roamed freely. Overhunting in the 19th century wiped out vast herds of millions of bison that once roamed across most of North America.
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Monday that the relocation of bison to Fort Peck was a first step in efforts to bring the animals back across a larger landscape.
“This is where we’re going to establish the beachhead of genetically pure bison that will be available as their numbers grow to go to other reservations and other public lands all across the West,” Schweitzer said.
About half of the animals heading to Fort Peck will possibly be relocated later this year to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in central Montana. Fences for those animals have not yet been completed.
The animals have been confined to quarantine just north of the park for several years.
They were captured leaving the park during their winter migration and tested extensively to make sure they were free of brucellosis. That disease, which can cause pregnant animals to abort their young, was for many years the primary argument for preventing Yellowstone bison from roaming freely outside the park.
But critics of the relocation have lingering worries about bison competing with cattle for rangeland.
The 64 bison and their offspring will remain inside a fenced compound on the reservation and should not cause any problems for the neighbors of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, Magnan said.
The tribes already have about 200 bison in a commercial herd that are used for meat and hunting. But those animals are not genetically pure like the Yellowstone bison.
“One of the main things we’re trying to do is preserve the genetic integrity of these animals,” Magnan said. “The cultural links from those genetics will be the closest to the bison of our ancestors.”
A sixty-fifth bison that was scheduled to be transferred Monday recently died after getting gored by another bison, Schweitzer said.
Source: Associated Press
Posted by Haylie Shipp
