by Karl Puckett, Great Falls Tribune
More than 100 Yellowstone National Park bison will begin a long journey Thursday to Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribal lands in northern Montana, where they will join an existing cultural herd recently reintroduced to the area.
The 139 brucellosis-free bison will be trucked more than 400 mile from a ranch west of Bozeman to Fort Peck.
“We’ve got 13,000 acres set aside for them,” said Robert Magnan, director of the Fort Peck Fish and Game Department.
Magnan, reached in Billings during his drive to the ranch, said it will be heart warming to see the bison returned to plains where they once roamed in large numbers.
He’s making the trip to ensure that the transfer of the animals goes smoothly. Green Ranch hired a trucking company to move the animals, he said.
Trucks loaded with bison were expected to depart the Green Ranch late Wednesday-early Thursday and arrive at the Fort Peck buffalo pasture 19 miles north of the intersection of U.S. Highway 2 and Highway 13 between Wolf Point and Poplar at about 10 a.m. Thursday, Magnan said.
The wild bison were part of a quarantine feasibility study conducted by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at a facility near Corwin Springs north of Yellowstone National Park.
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Source: Great Falls Tribune
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