BUFFALO BETRAYED BY OFFICIAL CRUELTY AND INDIFFERENCE
Massive Slaughter Makes Bison Logo for Federal Agency “Misleading Advertising”
 
Washington, DC — Although it is the official symbol for the U.S.
Department of Interior, the American bison is treated worse than any
other species of wildlife in the national park system, according to
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the
Buffalo Field Campaign.  This year, more than one in five members
of the nation’s largest remaining “free-roaming” herd, located within
Yellowstone National Park, will be killed – by slaughter, hazing and
maiming – as a result of federal action.
 
Despite the official policy to “protect and maintain a wild, free
roaming population of Yellowstone bison,” the grim reality is that no
other native wildlife is subjected to official eradication efforts on
the scale that is occurring within Yellowstone.  While most of the
bison deaths are deliberate (such as shipping animals to commercial
slaughterhouses), others, such as gorings from crowding too many bison
into inadequate corrals, are purposeless and preventable.
 
“Chipmunks in New York’s Central Park get more consideration and
protection than the bison in Yellowstone,” stated PEER Executive
Director Jeff Ruch, calling Interior’s bison management policy “a
universally acknowledged travesty.  The fact that Interior uses
the bison as its official symbol adds the insult of misleading
advertising to the injury of mass mayhem.”

According to Stephany Seay of the bison advocacy group Buffalo Field
Campaign, “Park Rangers have no right wearing buffalo on their badges
as they haze, capture and slaughter the very buffalo they're entrusted
with protecting, America’s last wild herd.”
 
Under Interior’s bison management policy, so far this year—
 
•    849 park bison have been sent to slaughter by the park, including scores of calves;

•    Nearly 90 wild bison calves have been sent by the
Park Service to a state-federal bison quarantine facility where they
will suffer domestication and more than half will be slaughtered;

•    Several more bison died while being “hazed” into
holding areas.  This January, for example, nearly fifty bison were
driven onto thin ice, fourteen fell through and two drowned. In another
incident, six bison died from overheating after a botched netting
operation associated with the brucellosis program; and;

•    Bison are injured and killed from wounds due to
cramming testy animals into corrals not designed for buffalo. 
Bison are slashed, gored and trampled as they are run into pens with
sharp corners, blind stops and exposed metal edges.

During the brutal Yellowstone winter, the park’s bison seek to migrate
out of the park in search of food. But because the Interior Department
has not secured access to winter range for the bison, hundreds are
captured on their trek while the rest are chased back into the
park.  Altogether, park officials captured 938 bison out of an
estimated 4,900 in the park.  This past month, Yellowstone crammed
400 bison into a corral with a maximum capacity of 200.

Despite the stream of injuries to the animals, the park has spent no
money to expand or fix the inadequate holding facilities but the
federal government has spent more than $180,000 this year to capture
bison and receives millions more to implement the interagency agreement
with Montana to prevent bison from coming into contact with cattle. The
Interagency Bison Management Plan costs U.S. taxpayers $3 million each
year, funds that would be more wisely spent on the acquisition of
winter range along with cattle-based risk management efforts.

At the request of Yellowstone Park’s own employees who are appalled by
what one calls “biological malpractice,” PEER and the Buffalo Field
Campaign’s have started a drive to remove the bison as the official
seal for the Interior Department and are enlisting public involvement
in suggesting a substitute symbol for the agency.