The following is portion of an article from the Billings Gazette:
GARDINER — Joe Sperano Sr. doesn’t blame the bison for the torn-down fencing or the irrigation pipes that have been bent in the past few weeks.
“I’m not an anti-wildlife guy,” he said while standing in his driveway Wednesday. “I live in the wrong place for that.”
What angers Sperano is that landowners along the Yellowstone River, north of this national park gateway town, haven’t had a say in a newly revised bison management plan that allows the animals to roam more freely in the Gardiner Basin. The basin is a corridor along the river, which is where Sperano has lived for the past 35 years.
“Seems like everyone has a say in this except for the stakeholders,” he said. “They just keep sticking it to us.”
“They” is a coalition of federal and state agencies and Indian tribes involved in bison management.
Sperano’s problem will be short-lived this spring, as the Montana Department of Livestock began pushing bison back into the park on April 15.
“It’s been pretty much a daily activity,” said Steve Merritt of the DOL. “They just keep coming back out and we keep pushing them back in.”
To read the remainder of this article and see the associated pictures, visit the Billings Gazette website.
Source: Billings Gazette
Posted by Haylie Shipp
