NADIA WHITE Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Sunday, March 14, 2004 12:00 am
GARDINER, Mont. - In the spring, on the open range and low drainages north of Gardiner and the tangled riparian areas near West Yellowstone, buffalo are routinely hazed back into the park. Sometimes, the same bison are pushed back multiple times. It is like trying to hold back the spring tide.
Near Gardiner, most hazing is done on horseback. Near West Yellowstone, snowmobiles and aircraft are used more commonly in the harsh winter conditions.
Critics of the practice complain the hazing stresses the animals, forcing them to consume critical energy stores at the end of long, lean winters. State and federal wildlife managers say it is their best tool for saving bison lives.
"Hazing is the first option," Cheryl Matthews, spokeswoman for Yellowstone National Park says. Under the Interagency Bison Management Plan, the ultimate solution is one that bothers everyone close to the buffalo: Bison that prove unhazable and continue to leave the park are shot.
Some hazes do move bison several miles, running at least some of the time, sometimes in deep snow.
"It puts an incredible amount of stress on the animals," Mike Mease of the Buffalo Field Campaign says. "Just standing up in the snow increases the energy they use by 35 percent," he contends.
But stress is better than death, officials in charge of coordinating hazing operations say, and the image of hazers as bloodthirsty killers bothers those who work with the bison every day.
"You never read, 'The DOL saved 300 buffalo today by hazing them back into the park.' You never read that," says Rob Tierney, bison program specialist for the Montana Department of Livestock.
This year, three bison have been shot in the field; 307 have been captured in a trap near Gardiner; 18 were
captured near West Yellowstone. In all, 152 bison have been sent to slaughter, all but seven of those tested positive for exposure to brucellosis.
Last year, testing was not done and all 231 bison hazed into the trap were sent to slaughter; none were killed in the field near Gardiner. Near West Yellowstone, 12 were shipped to slaughter and one was killed in the field.
The Interagency Bison Management Plan governs the way five agencies with different missions coordinate buffalo management actions. Two state agencies: the Montana departments of Livestock, and Wildlife and Parks; and three federal agencies: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Interior's Yellowstone National Park are partners under the plan.
The hazing operations go on year round, intended to keep buffalo from mingling with cattle or damaging private property. But spring is when hunger and wanderlust combine to put the most buffalo on the move.
Spring comes earlier in Gardiner than in the famously snowy West Yellowstone. Hazing bison occurs almost every day. In the first three days of last week, the riders mounted up and hazed bison five times.
A lone buffalo who had taken to grazing on private property was hazed six separate times before being hazed out of view and shot. (See related story.) Other hazing operations involved two small groups of bulls and a large haze of almost 200 buffalo.
In West Yellowstone during the same period, no hazing was reported and just three bulls were reported outside the park.