The following is a press release from the Montana Farm Bureau Federation:
Recent bison scoping hearings by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) brought about skepticism from Montana Farm Bureau Federation (MFBF) members who participated in the process. The meetings, held across the state, were to establish what action the state should take in managing the bison through an Environmental Impact Statement. Proposed actions include maintaining the status quo of no bison to having free-roaming bison in the state.
“Although FWP has reported attendance has been balanced between for and against free-roaming bison, the truth is the vast majority of people who have attended these meetings are not happy about having wild buffalo crushing their fences, eating their hay and bringing in disease,” notes MFBF Vice President of Governmental Affairs John Youngberg.
Farm Bureau members who attended the meetings agreed. MFBF District 7 Director Jim Bowman attended in Glasgow. “The general feeling among most of the people at the Glasgow meeting was introducing these bison is an affront to private property rights,” Bowman said. “Landowners are already feeding deer, elk and other wildlife, and having to feed free-roaming bison would absolutely create an impossible situation.”
The Saco rancher explained hunting on private land would be affected as well, “Some landowners have said if bison are permitted to roam freely, they would no longer allow any hunting on their land primarily for liability reasons. It would certainly drive a wedge between hunters and landowners,” he said. “Most landowners don’t have a problem if someone is putting buffalo on his private land and taking care of them. A real concern is FWP wants to introduce them, but then doesn’t want to have any responsibility taking care of them. Any costs associated with these bison would be at the taxpayers’ expense. A lot of people don’t realize that.”
Bowman said very few attendees at the Glasgow meeting were pro-bison. Ronda Johnston from Melville, who attended the Billings meeting, believed two-thirds of the attendees were opposed to bison introduction.
“It was interesting that even the people who at first thought it would be good to have ‘wild’ bison didn’t realize that these animals would be free-roaming, meaning they could wander all over the state just like deer and elk do,” said Johnston, who serves as District 4 Director, MFBF. “We had a conversation about people in town having a hard enough time with deer—what about having buffalo tromping through your yard, rubbing on your house, stomping through your garden, trashing your sprinkler system, wandering across the golf course and endangering your children? Interestingly, several people didn’t realize there are already buffalo in Montana not only in Yellowstone National Park, but on private ranches. We had the discussion from the animal health perspective about the brucellosis threat with wild bison calving on the same ground as cows.”
Youngberg pointed out that much of the literature handed out by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is contradictory. “In one part, it says buffalo are genetically pure, and in another section, it’s indicated they will breed with cows,” he said. “The latter is significant since all of the buffalo in Yellowstone National Park came from domestic herds, mostly in the Dakotas. Random genetic tests for most domestic bison indicate some bovine DNA in their family tree.”
Source: Montana Farm Bureau Federation
Posted by Haylie Shipp
