G
George Wuerthner
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I recently received an announcement from several conservation organizations about Montana’s decision to dismiss its bison suit against Yellowstone Park and their support for Yellowstone Park’s current bison management plan. More on this below.
Winter in Yellowstone is harsh. Winter is one of the evolutionary selective factors that have kept Yellowstone’s bison “wild.” Photo by George Wuerthner
The annoucement signed by Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Park County Environmental Council, and the National Parks Conservation Association, celebrated the state’s decision.
Several other groups, including Western Watershed Project (WWP) and Buffalo Field Campaign did not endorse the NPS bison plan and opposed the state’s legal arguments.
While all these organizations including WWP, BFC and some tribes all assert they support the expansion and restoration of wild bison in Montana and elsewhere. Their support of tribal hunting and capture/transfer programs has the opposite result, basically limiting bison populations and preventing the animals from colonizing public lands outside of the park, effectively doing exactly what Montana and ranchers want to happen–keep wild bison from roaming outside of Yellowstone or being used to restore them to other federal lands like the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuges and Missouri Breaks National Monument in Montana
REASONS STATE WANTS TO LIMIT BISON OUTSIDE OF YELLOWSTONE
Montana objected to Yellowstone National Park’s bison management plan, arguing, among other things, that its upper population limit for park bison was too high. The state has long opposed free-ranging bison because of concerns about transmission of brucellosis, a disease that causes abortion in cattle, from bison to livestock. Thus far, all instances of brucellosis transmission from wildlife to cattle have involved elk. And yet, the state does not object to the movement of elk out of Yellowstone Park but singles out bison.
Yellowstone bison carry brucellosis, a disease that can cause cattle to abort. Ranchers want to keep bison confined to Yellowstone Park, fearing transmission of the disease to their domestic animals. Photo by George Wuerthner
There are reasons for this that I won’t go into here, but one factor is that bison and cattle have nearly identical dietary tendencies. The livestock industry does not want to see bison grazing on public lands because they fear it might lead to the elimination of cattle use of grazing allotments.
WHY THE NPS BISON PLAN ULTIMATELY IS DEGRADING PARK BISON WILDNESS
The state’s dismissal allows the Park Service’s Bison Management Plan to go forward. This plan, which I objected to, would seek to maintain park bison at 5,000 animals. To maintain this population objective, the NPS bison plan relies on the slaughter of Yellowstone bison by tribal hunters, as well as shipment of Yellowstone bison to various Indian Reservations.
Native hunters with a bison killed just north of Yellowstone Park’s border. Photo by George Wuerthner
In their press release, the groups emphasized that they supported the NPS plan because they claim it recognized the significant role of bison in maintaining healthy ecosystems. The plan also provided for increased Tribal hunting opportunities outside the Park to honor treaty rights, enhanced tools to provide meat and hides to Tribes, and enhancements to the Bison Conservation Transfer Program.
The problem is that the NPS plan fails to protect bison in multiple ways.
Yellowstone bison are the least domesticated in the West and of international heritage. Photo George Wuerthner
YELLOWSTONE BISON UNIQUE AND OF INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE
First, Yellowstone bison are not just any bison. They are the least domesticated and most wild bison in the lower 48 states. They have international significance. Yet the NPS plan, supported by all these organizations, continues the ongoing domestication of Yellowstone bison through NPS support for non-selective hunting by tribes and transfer of bison to reservations, with serious ecosystem and genetic implications for the bison. Transferring public property—namely bison—to tribes results in a privatization of public resources.
Let me address each of these issues.
Yellowstone bison walking through the Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance to Yellowstone by Gardiner, Montana. Photo by George Wuerthner
The Yellowstone bison are unique in that since they were first given protection in Yellowstone, except for a few early years when they were fed in the winter months, they have almost continuously been subject to natural selective processes.
Most bison in the West are domesticated. Bison on a private ranch near Bozeman. Photo by George Wuerthner
Nearly all other bison in the West are domesticated. Domesticated animals include all tribal herds, state and other national park herds, and bison held on private ranches, including the American Prairie Reserve. Essentially, all other bison are treated like domesticated livestock.
Domesticated bison are fed in the winter. They are usually fenced and thus unable to move freely. They are often vaccinated. They are protected from predators. In many herds, people selectively remove aggressive male bison. And of course, these domesticated bison, when they die, do not return to the ecosystem to feed other wildlife.
A group of coyotes feed on a bison carcass. Wild bison feed other wildlife. Most domestic bison feed humans. Photo by George Wuerthner
Yellowstone bison, on the other hand, face greater natural selection, including starvation, drought, predators, accidents (drowning in rivers), and, at least within the Park, freedom to migrate. Unfortunately, the so-called NPS “science-based bison plan” celebrated by these conservation organizations compromises all these factors.
The problem with the NPS bison management plan is that it’s based less on science and more on political and cultural ideas. First, the limitation of bison to 5,000 animals is not based on science at all. It’s a political compromise to assuage the state’s objections. The NPS’s own biologists suggest that Yellowstone could support up to 10,000 bison.
The last bison in Yellowstone were under threat from poachers. The US was sent to Yellowstone to stop the killing. The remaining bison suffered from a genetic bottleneck. Photo NPS
HOW THE NPS BISON PLAN HARMS BISON ECOLOGICAL ROLE AND EVOLUTION
Why is this important? Because Yellowstone’s bison have gone through several genetic bottlenecks. The founding population was about 25 bison, an minimal number of animals. Plus, bison are tournament breeders, where one bull can breed 15–20 females, which further limits genetic diversity. Even with 5,000 animals, most of the breeding is done by a very small number of bull bison.
Various genetic authorities I contacted agreed that more bison would be better for the long-term health of the herd. When I asked what number would be appropriate, one biologist even said there is no upper limit. Meaning we really need far more bison in the Yellowstone Ecosystem to maintain a healthy herd.
The removal of bison for any reason is damaging to the wildness of bison and to the ecosystem, an inconvenient truth, and harms the long-term health of the park bison.
The number one ecological adaptation of bison is mobility. But when bison are killed at the Park border, we are selectively removing animals with that tendency, and thus reducing their wildness and genetic fitness.
For instance, when managers remove or kill bison that tend to move toward the park border, they selectively remove the animals most likely to migrate. This removes these animals from the gene pool. Over time, the population will lose its natural tendency to migrate, as it has in domestic livestock.
Second, removing individuals from the park bison population interferes with natural selection. Instead of predators, drought, disease, injury, and other selective factors picking the winners and losers in the herd, the NPS, tribes, and apparently these so-called “conservation” groups support human selection.
Removal of bison from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has serious ecological impacts. Bison are food for many other species like the grizzly bear, wolves, ravens, coyotes, and others. Photo by George Wuerthner
Third, by interfering with natural selection, the NPS plan as currently written reduces the number of bison that would succumb to predators and other factors, thus being available to other wildlife such as grizzlies, wolves, ravens, golden eagles, coyotes, and other park wildlife. For a grizzly sow with cubs coming out of hibernation, finding a bison carcass killed over the winter is like winning the lottery. It can mean the difference between successful reproduction and losing cubs.
Fourth, to the degree that bison grazing is a significant influence on park vegetation, fewer bison means less influence. (There is controversy about bison grazing impacts which I won’t go into here—but suffice to say bison are a major player in plant community response).
The NPS plan (supported by all these so-called conservation organizations) interferes with the age structure and sex composition of the bison herd.
All of these influences are ignored by the “support” by conservation organizations for the NPS bison plan. The NPS bison management plan interfers with natural evolutionary processes.
TRIBAL HUNTING AND TRANSFERS OF ANIMALS TO RESERVATION LIMITS BISON POPULATION
The other problem with the endorsement of the NPS plan by these groups is that it results in exactly the outcome the state and ranchers want–population limits on bison and precluding bison expansion outside of the park.
The Final EIS bison plan suggests: “The NPS has committed to continue fulfilling its trust responsibilities (USDOI and USDA 2021) to American Indian Tribes by sustaining a large population of bison that supports hunter harvests outside the park and restoring more brucellosis-free bison to tribal lands.”
There is no legal obligation for Yellowstone to sustain park bison so that Indian shooters can shoot them. There is insufficient space to explain why the tribal assertions about “treaty rights” may not apply to public lands near Gardiner, but tribal interpretations and presumed hunting rights regarding the specific Gardiner Basin landscape remain ambiguous; more detail is available here.
Yellowstone bison deserve a better future than being a political pawn. Photo by George Wuerthner
No matter what the tribes want, the Park’s Public Trust Obligation is to advocate for what is best for the Park’s bison by preserving our collective heritage of wild bison.
The NPS plan relies on tribal hunting, capture, and transfer programs to meet the 5,000-bison goal. This is both anti-scientific and harms the bison’s ecological and genetic integrity. Bison are not threatened with immediate extinction. But the NPS management plan and slaughter by tribal entities and others threaten the “wildness” and long-term genetic variability of Yellowstone’s bison.
One of bison’s major ecological adaptations is migration. Over thousands of years, wild bison survived by moving. They moved to avoid deep snow, drought, predators, and forage loss from wildfires.
Bison near Gardiner, Montana.
While Yellowstone bison can move freely in the Park, when they reach the northern border by Gardiner, they are either captured by the NPS and held in the Stephen Creek capture facility until they are exported or slaughtered and sent to Indian tribes.
HOW THE NPS PLAN DOMESTICATES WILD BISON
First, these bison ultimately end up as domesticated animals. Every tribal herd is fenced and managed, continuing the decline of bison as wild animals. Some are even available for non-tribal members to kill by paying a fee (Blackfeet and Fort Peck tribes, among others, allow hunting of tribal herds).
Second, there is a legitimate question about whether it’s appropriate to take Yellowstone bison, which belong to all citizens (including, I might add, Indian people) and privatize them. Would these conservation groups support cutting and selling the Park’s trees to tribal sawmills, or mowing hay ultimately transported from the Park to sell, to support tribal cattle or bison herds?
As for the transfer of live bison to augment reservation bison herds, there is no need to use the most internationally important bison to supplement tribal herds. Numerous other sources of domesticated bison are available from state and federal herds, as well as through purchases from private entities. I’m all for tribal herds, but we shouldn’t be taking the last wild bison from Yellowstone to build private herds.
The other problem with these organizations is that they rely on misinterpretation of treaty rights. Basically, they accept the tribal interpretation of treaties, instead of reading them carefully.
In many years, far more bison are killed by tribal hunters who wait to slaughter the animals as they move beyond the protection of the Park. For instance, in 2023, tribal hunters slaughtered more than 1200 bison, and as many as 1770 bison were removed from the Park for slaughter or transfer, all with the tacit or even implicit support of these so-called conservation groups. (Thanks, “Defenders” of Wildlife, for defending bison slaughter—same to the rest of these organizations).
Hunter approaches bison north of Yellowstone to shoot them. Photo by George Wuerthner
TREATIES ISSUES
These tribal bison slaughters are supported by these conservation groups based on treaties and the desire to allow tribes to maintain cultural traditions.
I reviewed all the treaties, and in my opinion, no tribes have treaty rights to kill bison north of Gardiner. The issue is nuanced because many treaties allow some off-reservation hunting, but none are valid in this area. I have challenged every one of these groups to show me the treaties that grant so-called treaty rights, but none have responded.
The killing of Yellowstone bison is based on a flawed interpretation of treaties. I cannot go into details here, but tribes assert that treaties give them the “right” to slaughter Yellowstone’s bison. But a careful reading of those treaties and legal interpretations raises questions about the presumed treaty authority to butcher internationally significant Yellowstone bison herds.
The tribal conference acknowledged that tribal treaties and aboriginal connections retain rights to hunt, gather, and fish on unclaimed or ceded land—but neglected to note that no tribe has CEDED LANDS by the North Entrance of Yellowstone by Gardiner. You can read more on the Herrera Vs. Wyoming case, which describes off-reservation hunting on “ceded lands.”
Map showing “ceded” lands. Note the large white area north of Yellowstone Park where no tribe has treaty-ceded lands.
Tribes try to side-step this by asserting that treaties allow them to hunt in the “usual and accustomed” locations. But this applies only to Columbia River tribes, and court decisions limit it to off-reservation fishing sites. It also requires tribes to show they had exclusive use of the sites for an “extended period of time.”
No tribe can show it hunted bison near Gardiner for exclusive use for an extended period.
Finally, the 1855 treaty with the Blackfeet and several other tribes had a 99-year termination, meaning those treaty terms no longer apply. See my article here for more details about court rulings and treaty wording.
Even if the treaties tentatively give tribes the right to slaughter Yellowstone bison (which I believe they do not), there is a court decision that suggests treaty rights can be nullified in the name of conservation concerns. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas opined in a decision regarding tribal fishing of salmon and steelhead: “Rights can be controlled by the need to conserve a species; and the time may come when the life of a steelhead is so precarious in a particular stream that all fishing should be banned until the species regains assurance of survival.” Douglas intended this principle to apply to all wildlife.
Even if treaties give tribes the legal right to kill bison (which I suggest is not accurate) by Gardiner, Montana, the slaughter harms bison. These same organizations oppose the killing of wolves in Montana and eslewhere around the West. The fact that wolf killing is legal hasn’t stopped these groups from opposing wolf trapping and hunting–except if it’s done by tribes like the annual slaughter of wolves by the Colville tribe in Washington.
PUTTING HUAMAN CULTURAL INTERESTS AHEAD OF BISON ECOLOGICAL INTERESTS
If these conservation groups were truly interested in the welfare of the Park bison and the health of the Yellowstone ecosystem, they could argue in court that killing or transferring Yellowstone’s bison (again, internationally significant herds) threatens the long-term conservation of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and, specifically, wild bison.
I also challenged the NPS during the comment period on their bison management plan to document that there were legitimate treaty rights to hunt outside the Park. The NPS ignored my request and said it was outside the scope of the management plan, even though they directly say they rely on tribal hunting to maintain the non-scientific 5,000 population objective.
I have to cut Yellowstone some slack because their bison management plan was completed under the Biden administration with Sec. Of Interior Deb Haaland and NPS director Chuck Sams—both Native American and advocates for the tribes rather than for what was best for ecosystems as a whole. My sources in the Park Service tell me that their views influenced the overall direction of the bison management plan.
The above policy isn’t based on science. It’s based on the idea that somehow, when tribal people kill bison or bison are removed from the Park to meet tribal desires, it’s OK because it maintains their cultural traditions or religious beliefs. But cultural traditions are not “science.”
Remains of bison killed by tribal hunters just north of the Yellowstone Park border. The above conservation groups support this slaughter. Photo by Yellowstone Voices.
The second justification that slaughtering Yellowstone bison maintains “cultural traditions” is an equally weak and loathsome excuse for slaughter. If anyone were to witness how these so-called “hunts” are implemented, most people would find them despicable.
Hunters often chase bison, surround them, and gun them down at close range. They wound many. They use pickup trucks, All-Terrain Vehicles, modern rifles, scopes, and even winches to reach, surround, or move bison toward hunters and process the animals afterward.
The only “cultural tradition” being maintained is killing. Apparently, these modern accommodations are all part of the tribes’ Traditional Ecological Knowledge. (I can’t help but be a bit cynical here.)
There were many cultural traditions that tribes (and American society) once practiced, including slavery and torture of enemies. We no longer find such “traditions” acceptable. Likewise, the “hunts” as practiced today are just as abhorrent.
To see what these “hunts” are like, go to Yellowstone Voices to see videos of these slaughters. Ask yourself if this is a tradition you wish to support.
Beyond that issue, most tribes participating in these hunts have their own tribal bison herds. If killing bison is so essential to maintaining cultural traditions, they could shoot bison on their reservations, or they could pay to shoot bison on private ranches and other locations where killing domesticated bison is authorized and permitted.
Killing the last vestiges of wild bison is not acceptable.
Tribal people killed bison for food and skins for teepees, but bison hides became a major trade item which enabled them to obtain guns, ammos, metal pots and even horses.
TRIBAL HUNTING HELPED TO EXTRIPATE BISON ACROSS THE WEST
One final note: the idea that Indians were natural-born “environmentalists” is not supported by historical fact. Once tribes obtained horses and guns, bison herds throughout the West were decimated by tribal hunting.
Indeed, by the time large-scale commercial bison hunting began in the 1870s with the coming of the railroads, which permitted the easy shipment of bison hides, bison had been extirpated from about half of the West where they existed in 1820. The remaining herds were fragmented and small, making their final extinction possible. This extirpation resulted from tribal hunting, facilitated by the horse.
The horse was like a new technology to which the bison had no adaptation. With the adoption of the horse, tribal people became “super predators” and sometimes killed thousands of bison at a time.
BIOCENTRAL VS ANTHROPOCENIC VALUES
All these environmental groups suffer from what I have seen throughout the conservation movement: a tendency toward anthropocentric values that put cultural values ahead of biocentric and long-term ecological values. In the past, many of these same groups advocated for species and ecosystem integrity. Biological values dominated. Today, most of these organizations are compromised by their willingness to ignore the harm tribes have done on many fronts, including management of wild bison.
I must put in a qualifier here. Tribes and tribal members are no different than the larger society. Some tribal people support ecological values. Some tribes promote ecosystem health. And some tribes promote economic interests over ecological values. Like the larger society, you can have both tendencies within a single tribe or individual, depending on the issue. While tribes may participate in the Yellowstone bison slaughter, individual tribal members may oppose it.
The killing or removal of Yellowstone wild bison is not in the long-term interest of the ecosystem or the bison. It’s a great disappointment to me that so many conservation groups are unwilling to fight for the restoration of “wild” bison, not just the domesticated variety. In essence, the support of tribal killing and transfer and unnatural limits on bison numbers is creating “hatchery bison” in the same way that hatchery production of fish has decimated wild salmon and trout.
Bison should be permitted to utilize any public land outside of Yellowstone. Expanding Yellowstone Park’s boundaries would provide better protection for the entire ecosystem as well as bison. Photo by George Wuerthner
EXPAND YELLOWSTONE TO CREATE A GREATER YELLOWSTONE ECOSYSTEM NATIONAL PARK
One solution would be to expand Yellowstone National Park to encompass a Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Park. A long-term goal should be an expanded park where hunting is not permitted, and a larger bison population can be sustained. The current status quo only guarantees the long-term degradation of both bison and the Yellowstone regional ecosystem.
Bison bull. Yellowstone’s wild bison deserve better than being treated as political fodder or to be sacrificed to allay guilt over past treatment of tribal people. Photo by George Wuerthner
Yellowstone bison are part of America’s heritage. The Yellowstone bison do not belong to the tribes, the state of Montana, or even the NPS. Wildlife is held in trust as part of the Public Trust Doctrine. Ironically, bison face increasing threat from well-meaning people who treat the national domain as political chips of the social justice movement. Let’s put bison ecological justice before cultural interests.
I contacted Earth Justice, Defenders of Wildlife, Park County Environmental Council, National Parks Conservation Association, and Greater Yellowstone Coalition to ask why they supported tribal hunting outside the Park and to request any treaty evidence that legitimizes tribal hunting just north of the park border. I got no response from any of them.
To support free-roaming bison organizations, please join Montana Wild Bison Restoration Coalition, Roam Free Nation, Yellowstone Voices, Alliance For The Wild Rockies, and Gallatin Wildlife Association. As an aside, I am board president of the Montana Wild Bison Restoration Council.
Winter in Yellowstone is harsh. Winter is one of the evolutionary selective factors that have kept Yellowstone’s bison “wild.” Photo by George Wuerthner
The annoucement signed by Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Park County Environmental Council, and the National Parks Conservation Association, celebrated the state’s decision.
Several other groups, including Western Watershed Project (WWP) and Buffalo Field Campaign did not endorse the NPS bison plan and opposed the state’s legal arguments.
While all these organizations including WWP, BFC and some tribes all assert they support the expansion and restoration of wild bison in Montana and elsewhere. Their support of tribal hunting and capture/transfer programs has the opposite result, basically limiting bison populations and preventing the animals from colonizing public lands outside of the park, effectively doing exactly what Montana and ranchers want to happen–keep wild bison from roaming outside of Yellowstone or being used to restore them to other federal lands like the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuges and Missouri Breaks National Monument in Montana
REASONS STATE WANTS TO LIMIT BISON OUTSIDE OF YELLOWSTONE
Montana objected to Yellowstone National Park’s bison management plan, arguing, among other things, that its upper population limit for park bison was too high. The state has long opposed free-ranging bison because of concerns about transmission of brucellosis, a disease that causes abortion in cattle, from bison to livestock. Thus far, all instances of brucellosis transmission from wildlife to cattle have involved elk. And yet, the state does not object to the movement of elk out of Yellowstone Park but singles out bison.
Yellowstone bison carry brucellosis, a disease that can cause cattle to abort. Ranchers want to keep bison confined to Yellowstone Park, fearing transmission of the disease to their domestic animals. Photo by George Wuerthner
There are reasons for this that I won’t go into here, but one factor is that bison and cattle have nearly identical dietary tendencies. The livestock industry does not want to see bison grazing on public lands because they fear it might lead to the elimination of cattle use of grazing allotments.
WHY THE NPS BISON PLAN ULTIMATELY IS DEGRADING PARK BISON WILDNESS
The state’s dismissal allows the Park Service’s Bison Management Plan to go forward. This plan, which I objected to, would seek to maintain park bison at 5,000 animals. To maintain this population objective, the NPS bison plan relies on the slaughter of Yellowstone bison by tribal hunters, as well as shipment of Yellowstone bison to various Indian Reservations.
Native hunters with a bison killed just north of Yellowstone Park’s border. Photo by George Wuerthner
In their press release, the groups emphasized that they supported the NPS plan because they claim it recognized the significant role of bison in maintaining healthy ecosystems. The plan also provided for increased Tribal hunting opportunities outside the Park to honor treaty rights, enhanced tools to provide meat and hides to Tribes, and enhancements to the Bison Conservation Transfer Program.
The problem is that the NPS plan fails to protect bison in multiple ways.
Yellowstone bison are the least domesticated in the West and of international heritage. Photo George Wuerthner
YELLOWSTONE BISON UNIQUE AND OF INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE
First, Yellowstone bison are not just any bison. They are the least domesticated and most wild bison in the lower 48 states. They have international significance. Yet the NPS plan, supported by all these organizations, continues the ongoing domestication of Yellowstone bison through NPS support for non-selective hunting by tribes and transfer of bison to reservations, with serious ecosystem and genetic implications for the bison. Transferring public property—namely bison—to tribes results in a privatization of public resources.
Let me address each of these issues.
Yellowstone bison walking through the Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance to Yellowstone by Gardiner, Montana. Photo by George Wuerthner
The Yellowstone bison are unique in that since they were first given protection in Yellowstone, except for a few early years when they were fed in the winter months, they have almost continuously been subject to natural selective processes.
Most bison in the West are domesticated. Bison on a private ranch near Bozeman. Photo by George Wuerthner
Nearly all other bison in the West are domesticated. Domesticated animals include all tribal herds, state and other national park herds, and bison held on private ranches, including the American Prairie Reserve. Essentially, all other bison are treated like domesticated livestock.
Domesticated bison are fed in the winter. They are usually fenced and thus unable to move freely. They are often vaccinated. They are protected from predators. In many herds, people selectively remove aggressive male bison. And of course, these domesticated bison, when they die, do not return to the ecosystem to feed other wildlife.
A group of coyotes feed on a bison carcass. Wild bison feed other wildlife. Most domestic bison feed humans. Photo by George Wuerthner
Yellowstone bison, on the other hand, face greater natural selection, including starvation, drought, predators, accidents (drowning in rivers), and, at least within the Park, freedom to migrate. Unfortunately, the so-called NPS “science-based bison plan” celebrated by these conservation organizations compromises all these factors.
The problem with the NPS bison management plan is that it’s based less on science and more on political and cultural ideas. First, the limitation of bison to 5,000 animals is not based on science at all. It’s a political compromise to assuage the state’s objections. The NPS’s own biologists suggest that Yellowstone could support up to 10,000 bison.
The last bison in Yellowstone were under threat from poachers. The US was sent to Yellowstone to stop the killing. The remaining bison suffered from a genetic bottleneck. Photo NPS
HOW THE NPS BISON PLAN HARMS BISON ECOLOGICAL ROLE AND EVOLUTION
Why is this important? Because Yellowstone’s bison have gone through several genetic bottlenecks. The founding population was about 25 bison, an minimal number of animals. Plus, bison are tournament breeders, where one bull can breed 15–20 females, which further limits genetic diversity. Even with 5,000 animals, most of the breeding is done by a very small number of bull bison.
Various genetic authorities I contacted agreed that more bison would be better for the long-term health of the herd. When I asked what number would be appropriate, one biologist even said there is no upper limit. Meaning we really need far more bison in the Yellowstone Ecosystem to maintain a healthy herd.
The removal of bison for any reason is damaging to the wildness of bison and to the ecosystem, an inconvenient truth, and harms the long-term health of the park bison.
The number one ecological adaptation of bison is mobility. But when bison are killed at the Park border, we are selectively removing animals with that tendency, and thus reducing their wildness and genetic fitness.
For instance, when managers remove or kill bison that tend to move toward the park border, they selectively remove the animals most likely to migrate. This removes these animals from the gene pool. Over time, the population will lose its natural tendency to migrate, as it has in domestic livestock.
Second, removing individuals from the park bison population interferes with natural selection. Instead of predators, drought, disease, injury, and other selective factors picking the winners and losers in the herd, the NPS, tribes, and apparently these so-called “conservation” groups support human selection.
Removal of bison from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has serious ecological impacts. Bison are food for many other species like the grizzly bear, wolves, ravens, coyotes, and others. Photo by George Wuerthner
Third, by interfering with natural selection, the NPS plan as currently written reduces the number of bison that would succumb to predators and other factors, thus being available to other wildlife such as grizzlies, wolves, ravens, golden eagles, coyotes, and other park wildlife. For a grizzly sow with cubs coming out of hibernation, finding a bison carcass killed over the winter is like winning the lottery. It can mean the difference between successful reproduction and losing cubs.
Fourth, to the degree that bison grazing is a significant influence on park vegetation, fewer bison means less influence. (There is controversy about bison grazing impacts which I won’t go into here—but suffice to say bison are a major player in plant community response).
The NPS plan (supported by all these so-called conservation organizations) interferes with the age structure and sex composition of the bison herd.
All of these influences are ignored by the “support” by conservation organizations for the NPS bison plan. The NPS bison management plan interfers with natural evolutionary processes.
TRIBAL HUNTING AND TRANSFERS OF ANIMALS TO RESERVATION LIMITS BISON POPULATION
The other problem with the endorsement of the NPS plan by these groups is that it results in exactly the outcome the state and ranchers want–population limits on bison and precluding bison expansion outside of the park.
The Final EIS bison plan suggests: “The NPS has committed to continue fulfilling its trust responsibilities (USDOI and USDA 2021) to American Indian Tribes by sustaining a large population of bison that supports hunter harvests outside the park and restoring more brucellosis-free bison to tribal lands.”
There is no legal obligation for Yellowstone to sustain park bison so that Indian shooters can shoot them. There is insufficient space to explain why the tribal assertions about “treaty rights” may not apply to public lands near Gardiner, but tribal interpretations and presumed hunting rights regarding the specific Gardiner Basin landscape remain ambiguous; more detail is available here.
Yellowstone bison deserve a better future than being a political pawn. Photo by George Wuerthner
No matter what the tribes want, the Park’s Public Trust Obligation is to advocate for what is best for the Park’s bison by preserving our collective heritage of wild bison.
The NPS plan relies on tribal hunting, capture, and transfer programs to meet the 5,000-bison goal. This is both anti-scientific and harms the bison’s ecological and genetic integrity. Bison are not threatened with immediate extinction. But the NPS management plan and slaughter by tribal entities and others threaten the “wildness” and long-term genetic variability of Yellowstone’s bison.
One of bison’s major ecological adaptations is migration. Over thousands of years, wild bison survived by moving. They moved to avoid deep snow, drought, predators, and forage loss from wildfires.
Bison near Gardiner, Montana.
While Yellowstone bison can move freely in the Park, when they reach the northern border by Gardiner, they are either captured by the NPS and held in the Stephen Creek capture facility until they are exported or slaughtered and sent to Indian tribes.
HOW THE NPS PLAN DOMESTICATES WILD BISON
First, these bison ultimately end up as domesticated animals. Every tribal herd is fenced and managed, continuing the decline of bison as wild animals. Some are even available for non-tribal members to kill by paying a fee (Blackfeet and Fort Peck tribes, among others, allow hunting of tribal herds).
Second, there is a legitimate question about whether it’s appropriate to take Yellowstone bison, which belong to all citizens (including, I might add, Indian people) and privatize them. Would these conservation groups support cutting and selling the Park’s trees to tribal sawmills, or mowing hay ultimately transported from the Park to sell, to support tribal cattle or bison herds?
As for the transfer of live bison to augment reservation bison herds, there is no need to use the most internationally important bison to supplement tribal herds. Numerous other sources of domesticated bison are available from state and federal herds, as well as through purchases from private entities. I’m all for tribal herds, but we shouldn’t be taking the last wild bison from Yellowstone to build private herds.
The other problem with these organizations is that they rely on misinterpretation of treaty rights. Basically, they accept the tribal interpretation of treaties, instead of reading them carefully.
In many years, far more bison are killed by tribal hunters who wait to slaughter the animals as they move beyond the protection of the Park. For instance, in 2023, tribal hunters slaughtered more than 1200 bison, and as many as 1770 bison were removed from the Park for slaughter or transfer, all with the tacit or even implicit support of these so-called conservation groups. (Thanks, “Defenders” of Wildlife, for defending bison slaughter—same to the rest of these organizations).
Hunter approaches bison north of Yellowstone to shoot them. Photo by George Wuerthner
TREATIES ISSUES
These tribal bison slaughters are supported by these conservation groups based on treaties and the desire to allow tribes to maintain cultural traditions.
I reviewed all the treaties, and in my opinion, no tribes have treaty rights to kill bison north of Gardiner. The issue is nuanced because many treaties allow some off-reservation hunting, but none are valid in this area. I have challenged every one of these groups to show me the treaties that grant so-called treaty rights, but none have responded.
The killing of Yellowstone bison is based on a flawed interpretation of treaties. I cannot go into details here, but tribes assert that treaties give them the “right” to slaughter Yellowstone’s bison. But a careful reading of those treaties and legal interpretations raises questions about the presumed treaty authority to butcher internationally significant Yellowstone bison herds.
The tribal conference acknowledged that tribal treaties and aboriginal connections retain rights to hunt, gather, and fish on unclaimed or ceded land—but neglected to note that no tribe has CEDED LANDS by the North Entrance of Yellowstone by Gardiner. You can read more on the Herrera Vs. Wyoming case, which describes off-reservation hunting on “ceded lands.”
Map showing “ceded” lands. Note the large white area north of Yellowstone Park where no tribe has treaty-ceded lands.
Tribes try to side-step this by asserting that treaties allow them to hunt in the “usual and accustomed” locations. But this applies only to Columbia River tribes, and court decisions limit it to off-reservation fishing sites. It also requires tribes to show they had exclusive use of the sites for an “extended period of time.”
No tribe can show it hunted bison near Gardiner for exclusive use for an extended period.
Finally, the 1855 treaty with the Blackfeet and several other tribes had a 99-year termination, meaning those treaty terms no longer apply. See my article here for more details about court rulings and treaty wording.
Even if the treaties tentatively give tribes the right to slaughter Yellowstone bison (which I believe they do not), there is a court decision that suggests treaty rights can be nullified in the name of conservation concerns. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas opined in a decision regarding tribal fishing of salmon and steelhead: “Rights can be controlled by the need to conserve a species; and the time may come when the life of a steelhead is so precarious in a particular stream that all fishing should be banned until the species regains assurance of survival.” Douglas intended this principle to apply to all wildlife.
Even if treaties give tribes the legal right to kill bison (which I suggest is not accurate) by Gardiner, Montana, the slaughter harms bison. These same organizations oppose the killing of wolves in Montana and eslewhere around the West. The fact that wolf killing is legal hasn’t stopped these groups from opposing wolf trapping and hunting–except if it’s done by tribes like the annual slaughter of wolves by the Colville tribe in Washington.
PUTTING HUAMAN CULTURAL INTERESTS AHEAD OF BISON ECOLOGICAL INTERESTS
If these conservation groups were truly interested in the welfare of the Park bison and the health of the Yellowstone ecosystem, they could argue in court that killing or transferring Yellowstone’s bison (again, internationally significant herds) threatens the long-term conservation of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and, specifically, wild bison.
I also challenged the NPS during the comment period on their bison management plan to document that there were legitimate treaty rights to hunt outside the Park. The NPS ignored my request and said it was outside the scope of the management plan, even though they directly say they rely on tribal hunting to maintain the non-scientific 5,000 population objective.
I have to cut Yellowstone some slack because their bison management plan was completed under the Biden administration with Sec. Of Interior Deb Haaland and NPS director Chuck Sams—both Native American and advocates for the tribes rather than for what was best for ecosystems as a whole. My sources in the Park Service tell me that their views influenced the overall direction of the bison management plan.
The above policy isn’t based on science. It’s based on the idea that somehow, when tribal people kill bison or bison are removed from the Park to meet tribal desires, it’s OK because it maintains their cultural traditions or religious beliefs. But cultural traditions are not “science.”
Remains of bison killed by tribal hunters just north of the Yellowstone Park border. The above conservation groups support this slaughter. Photo by Yellowstone Voices.
The second justification that slaughtering Yellowstone bison maintains “cultural traditions” is an equally weak and loathsome excuse for slaughter. If anyone were to witness how these so-called “hunts” are implemented, most people would find them despicable.
Hunters often chase bison, surround them, and gun them down at close range. They wound many. They use pickup trucks, All-Terrain Vehicles, modern rifles, scopes, and even winches to reach, surround, or move bison toward hunters and process the animals afterward.
The only “cultural tradition” being maintained is killing. Apparently, these modern accommodations are all part of the tribes’ Traditional Ecological Knowledge. (I can’t help but be a bit cynical here.)
There were many cultural traditions that tribes (and American society) once practiced, including slavery and torture of enemies. We no longer find such “traditions” acceptable. Likewise, the “hunts” as practiced today are just as abhorrent.
To see what these “hunts” are like, go to Yellowstone Voices to see videos of these slaughters. Ask yourself if this is a tradition you wish to support.
Beyond that issue, most tribes participating in these hunts have their own tribal bison herds. If killing bison is so essential to maintaining cultural traditions, they could shoot bison on their reservations, or they could pay to shoot bison on private ranches and other locations where killing domesticated bison is authorized and permitted.
Killing the last vestiges of wild bison is not acceptable.
Tribal people killed bison for food and skins for teepees, but bison hides became a major trade item which enabled them to obtain guns, ammos, metal pots and even horses.
TRIBAL HUNTING HELPED TO EXTRIPATE BISON ACROSS THE WEST
One final note: the idea that Indians were natural-born “environmentalists” is not supported by historical fact. Once tribes obtained horses and guns, bison herds throughout the West were decimated by tribal hunting.
Indeed, by the time large-scale commercial bison hunting began in the 1870s with the coming of the railroads, which permitted the easy shipment of bison hides, bison had been extirpated from about half of the West where they existed in 1820. The remaining herds were fragmented and small, making their final extinction possible. This extirpation resulted from tribal hunting, facilitated by the horse.
The horse was like a new technology to which the bison had no adaptation. With the adoption of the horse, tribal people became “super predators” and sometimes killed thousands of bison at a time.
BIOCENTRAL VS ANTHROPOCENIC VALUES
All these environmental groups suffer from what I have seen throughout the conservation movement: a tendency toward anthropocentric values that put cultural values ahead of biocentric and long-term ecological values. In the past, many of these same groups advocated for species and ecosystem integrity. Biological values dominated. Today, most of these organizations are compromised by their willingness to ignore the harm tribes have done on many fronts, including management of wild bison.
I must put in a qualifier here. Tribes and tribal members are no different than the larger society. Some tribal people support ecological values. Some tribes promote ecosystem health. And some tribes promote economic interests over ecological values. Like the larger society, you can have both tendencies within a single tribe or individual, depending on the issue. While tribes may participate in the Yellowstone bison slaughter, individual tribal members may oppose it.
The killing or removal of Yellowstone wild bison is not in the long-term interest of the ecosystem or the bison. It’s a great disappointment to me that so many conservation groups are unwilling to fight for the restoration of “wild” bison, not just the domesticated variety. In essence, the support of tribal killing and transfer and unnatural limits on bison numbers is creating “hatchery bison” in the same way that hatchery production of fish has decimated wild salmon and trout.
Bison should be permitted to utilize any public land outside of Yellowstone. Expanding Yellowstone Park’s boundaries would provide better protection for the entire ecosystem as well as bison. Photo by George Wuerthner
EXPAND YELLOWSTONE TO CREATE A GREATER YELLOWSTONE ECOSYSTEM NATIONAL PARK
One solution would be to expand Yellowstone National Park to encompass a Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Park. A long-term goal should be an expanded park where hunting is not permitted, and a larger bison population can be sustained. The current status quo only guarantees the long-term degradation of both bison and the Yellowstone regional ecosystem.
Bison bull. Yellowstone’s wild bison deserve better than being treated as political fodder or to be sacrificed to allay guilt over past treatment of tribal people. Photo by George Wuerthner
Yellowstone bison are part of America’s heritage. The Yellowstone bison do not belong to the tribes, the state of Montana, or even the NPS. Wildlife is held in trust as part of the Public Trust Doctrine. Ironically, bison face increasing threat from well-meaning people who treat the national domain as political chips of the social justice movement. Let’s put bison ecological justice before cultural interests.
I contacted Earth Justice, Defenders of Wildlife, Park County Environmental Council, National Parks Conservation Association, and Greater Yellowstone Coalition to ask why they supported tribal hunting outside the Park and to request any treaty evidence that legitimizes tribal hunting just north of the park border. I got no response from any of them.
To support free-roaming bison organizations, please join Montana Wild Bison Restoration Coalition, Roam Free Nation, Yellowstone Voices, Alliance For The Wild Rockies, and Gallatin Wildlife Association. As an aside, I am board president of the Montana Wild Bison Restoration Council.