Stop Capture & Slaughter of Wild Buffalo

Karen Lyons Kalmenson

Please click HERE to sign and send letter,  or send individually below

Background | Source Buffalo Field Campaign

Yellowstone National Park officials and other Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) entities are aiming to kill hundreds of wild buffalo this winter through hunting, slaughter, or both. Over 200 wild buffalo have already been killed in state and treaty hunts, yet Yellowstone intends for hundreds more of America’s last wild buffalo to be permanently removed from the population.  When buffalo are captured within Yellowstone National Park’s Stephens Creek bison trap, they will suffer captivity, sorting and separation from their families, horrors of being tested and handled by humans, and transport to USDA-APHIS-run research prisons and slaughter facilities.

Yellowstone says they want to “even the sex ratio” of wild buffalo, stating that a “skewed sex ratio” has resulted from years of capture and slaughter operations.  Now in response to these earlier crimes against buffalo, Yellowstone plans to kill more cow than bull buffalo, some of them just weeks away from giving birth.  In other words, the government is saying they will slaughter more buffalo to mitigate the impact of slaughtering so many buffalo. Talk about playing God in Yellowstone.

Up to sixty-three young buffalo would be handed over to USDA-APHIS for use in their experiments with GonaCon, a chemical pesticide birth control.  APHIS claims this research is about brucellosis, but in reality, it is a population control experiment.

Yellowstone National Park threatens the buffalo’s immediate survival and evolutionary potential and are are absolutely contrary to their mission to preserve and protect plant and animal species unimpaired for present and future generations.  The wild bison of the Yellowstone ecosystem are America’s last continuously wild herds and number fewer than 4,200.  Wild bison are ecologically extinct throughout their native range.

TAKE ACTION 

Using the sample letter HERE, or in your own words, tell Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk that you absolutely oppose any capture or slaughter of wild buffalo, and that you oppose them handing wild buffalo over to USDA-APHIS for birth control or any other experiments.  Yellowstone is mandated by law to protect wild bison, not cater to Montana’s cattle politics, which are driving these unjust and unnecessary actions against the gentle giants.  Tell Superintendent Wenk to stop being a puppet for Montana livestock interests, pull out of the draconian Interagency Bison Management Plan, and to stand up for the wildlife that the American people have placed in Yellowstone’s care.  Wild bison are a natural, national treasure, the prehistoric and rightful roamers of North America, and we will not stand by and allow Yellowstone or Montana’s cattle industry to jeopardize their future for any reason.

WHOM TO CONTACT

Alternately to using this sample letter, you can contact Superintendent Wenk directly at:

Daniel Wenk, Superintendent
Yellowstone National Park
P.O. Box 168
Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190-0168
(307) 344-2002 phone
(307) 344-2014 fax
Dan_Wenk@nps.gov

SUBJECT

Protect Wild Buffalo!  No Capture!

SAMPLE LETTER

Dear Superintendent Wenk,

I am aware of your continued plans to capture, kill or transport to research facilities our wild buffalo, and want you to know that I am strongly opposed to this.

It makes no sense for Yellowstone to undertake the killing of wild buffalo for any reason, and even less sense for you do take these action to further trouble their sex ratio that you feel should be even.  This is totally unnatural, and since your past actions have caused such harm, the best thing you can do for wild bison is to leave them alone.  Your actions are continuously placing wild bison in dire straights.

Nowhere in nature do even sex ratios occur.  You cannot justify or defend taking such action against wild buffalo.

Further, I have written to you repeatedly about my opposition to handing over wild buffalo to USDA-APHIS for their birth control experiments and I state again that, as a tax paying citizen and lover of Yellowstone, implore you to cease such plans.  You are setting a very dangerous precedent here and you are going against the nature of the National Park Service.

I am appalled by your actions towards wild buffalo and urge you make an about face.  Stop bending over backwards for livestock interests and champion wild bison as you are meant to do.  You will never be able to do enough harm to wild buffalo that the livestock industry will quietly go away.  They will always want more killing and more mismanagement of wild buffalo, and you need to take a stand and tell them no.

You can pull out of the Interagency Bison Management Plan and end your role in wild bison abuse.  Montana will likely take other actions, that is for certain.  But you are fooling yourself if you think that your participation and funding of the IBMP has been helping wild buffalo.  You have become one of the larger adversaries of wild bison, and you must instead take the necessary steps to be their friend.

The Organic Act of 1916 that established the National Park Service requires your agency “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” Yellowstone National Park’s maltreatment of America’s last wild buffalo populations runs absolutely contrary to the intent of “this most important provision of law.”

You know that wild bison are ecologically extinct, and you know that Yellowstone harbors the last continuously wild population.  You cannot continue to hide behind the Interagency Bison Management Plan nor the indefensible arguments about brucellosis.

Your participation in the Interagency Bison Management Plan is shameful and I absolutely oppose Yellowstone’s involvement.  You are causing irreparable harm to the buffalo, all to placate the selfish whims of Montana’s livestock industry.  This is not your charge.  You are responsible for protecting wild bison, the American people have entrusted you with this great honor and.

Please protect the wild bison of Yellowstone!  Pull out of the Interagency Bison Management Plan and abandon any and all plans to harass, harm, capture and kill wild bison!

I appreciate receiving a written response from you, and I trust that you will provide a real response to my concerns and not hide behind the language of the Interagency Bison Management Plan.

Thank you for taking the time to consider this urgent appeal.

buffalo in spring

this is MY land
where is my herd
i want it back to
the way it was
before man
ever said
a word

Karen Lyons Kalmenson