December 2005 Moccasin Telegraph

1/31/06

So as the last day of January ’06 wanes, here in the Moccasin Telegraph we have all sorts of late-breaking Gossip, News, and Hot Tips. In fact, I suspect this is the first report from the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee hearing that took place in Bozeman today. Watching deeply entrenched bureaucracy in (in)action is never going to cut it as a spectator sport, but so much has changed in the buffalo wars in such a short period of time this

month that this meeting promised to be interesting.
Alas, ‘twas not to be. Not this morning, anyway, and one of my deeply seated flaws is that I cannot remain awake to the poorly heard drone of scientific discussion and bureaucratese, especially after having returned home late from another such affair in Butte last evening. That one was more interesting, perhaps, but more on that later.
The public comment period at the GYIBC hearing today was scheduled last, and so I assumed it was safe to run home and tend to business for a bit. I returned to town after a buffalo sold and sundry inquiries tended to find things had wound down and in fact just ended, but I’m told that as these affairs go it bordered on high drama!
The players in this thing are Yellowstone Park, APHIS (the Federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service), the Forest Service, the departments of wildlife and livestock for the three states (MT, ID, WY), and a few other scientists and such. Now realize these are secondhand reports, although deemed reliable, but apparently APHIS showed a “never before seen” video about bison history in Yellowstone, although there must have been more to it than that as the Park representatives promptly replied that the views espoused were most certainly not theirs! And then my Gallatin Wildlife Association cohort Jim Wisman noted that he had seen this air on the local PBS channel!! He silenced doubt on this matter by noting he had it recorded. At that point other agency types acquiesced that yes, this was so, which is about as humorous as these meetings get.
I’m told there was no humor whatsoever expressed after the Buffalo Field Campaign showed a short video of fourteen bison struggling for their lives after having fallen through the ice of Hebgen during an extremely ill-advised MT Dept. of Livestock hazing operation.
Several people have questioned me about what “hazing” means, and not a few comedians have brought up college fraternity hazings, kegstands, and other improprieties. In this case, though, hazing is a more aggressive and accurate word for herding. A most improper herding, to say the least.
Perhaps more than any single event in the long history of conflict with the “Yellowstone” bison, those bison going through the ice of Hebgen Lake tipped the scales in breaking the bureaucratic gridlock that has mired this situation for the last decade or so. Briefly, the new public bison hunt had been going fairly smoothly, to everyone’s relief. The first session of the hunt was over (or nearly so) and there was a brief interval before the second half began. I have heard conflicting reports as to the origins of the debacle, so I’ll just tell you both stories and you can make up your own mind. At the meeting in Butte last evening Region 3 FWP head Pat Flowers was questioned, and said those bison were crowding the tolerance zone, and concern was they’d head down the Madison and “there’d be no stopping them”. So he temporarily postponed the public hunt so the Dept. of Livestock could haze them back toward the Park. Buffalo Field Campaign member Josh Osher told me those bison were well within the tolerance zone, but were close to the “monitoring” zone boundary. Josh also said there are natural geographic boundaries (cliffs, etc.) that made it unlikely they’d wander further, and they had been hanging in the area for a few days. The canyon does narrow dramatically by the dam at the mouth of Hegben, and continues so for several miles past Quake Lake before opening into the Madison Valley, so I have a little trouble with the idea those buffalo were poised for a break that would bring Montana’s cattle industry to ruin. Especially since there aren’t any susceptible cattle for forty to fifty miles!
Pat said fences caused them to have to haze these bison on a roundabout route, and at one point the bison made a break down a drainage and went out onto the ice of Hebgen.
There was prior apprehension about this matter, and Hal Harper (Governor Schweitzer’s Chief Policy Advisor) told me DOL had dismissed his concern over ice thickness with a laugh, saying “it’s the dead of winter!” Indeed it is, but those bison were bunched up (instead of single file as in their normal movements) and went through the ice, where they were left to swim for their lives for nearly two hours before a “rescue” was mounted. Two drowned. The Buffalo Field Campaign recorded the event, and the images and video can be viewed on their website. Those images are horrifying, and when they ran in newspapers around the country public sentiment overwhelmingly turned against the powers that be in this thing.
Against all odds, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle published one of the better accounts I’ve read.
Since then, there have been numerous articles, op-eds, and letters to the editor in a wide variety of publications, including to my surprise quite a few agricultural periodicals. Perhaps one of the more significant local ones ran recently in the Billings Gazette, calling for bison

habitat north of Yellowstone. Since the Gazette is ostensibly the voice of eastern MT, a bastion of the cattle industry, this is a significant thing.
A letter of my own articulates the basics of a common-sense solution, , as well as pokes holes in the “quarantine” boondoggle.
At least in terms of circulation, by far and away the biggest coverage of the issue is in the New York Times, , which to our delight contains a link right here to Cowboy Heaven Consulting! My only disclaimer is that I wish the article hadn’t taken such an anti-ranching tone. It’s counterproductive, and a strong point of our suggestions here in southwest Montana are that they’re a good thing for stockmen, as well as wildlife enthusiasts. Those terms are far from mutually exclusive, you know…
The significant result of all this is Governor Schweitzer recognizes it’s time for some modifications and updates to the Interagency Bison Management Plan, and we’re going to be looking at expanded habitat for wild bison north of Yellowstone. Naturally, the agencies that have quite a multi-million dollar cottage industry going aren’t happy about this. It appears that ordinary citizen involvement has dramatically changed the equation, though, and there were some deflated folks walking around after the hearing today. We were extremely glad to see Hal Harper there, as we’ve been urging administration officials to attend these hearings & see what goes on for some time. Until now, it was DOL/APHIS running the show with an iron fist, but there was nary a peep from DOL today. A lot of their power sank with those buffalo.
It would also appear that Governor Schweitzer doesn’t mind mixing it up with APHIS a bit, and we also heard complaints from Idaho and Wyoming today about APHIS heavy-handedness. APHIS is full steam ahead with the bison quarantine program, though, and at the Bozeman hearing when we were protesting the lack of opportunity for public comment I brought up a recent conversation I’d had with Jack Atcheson, Sr. when he said they couldn’t get hearings on these sorts of things in Butte.
A brief bit of background… If you get involved in wildlife issues in Montana, it doesn’t take too long to discover that the Butte sportsmen’s groups carry a lot of clout. Not a few FWP staffers are from Butte, and one may speculate at length about Butte’s interesting political history and power, but the fact is on wildlife issues, what Butte wants tends to happen. So sure enough, when FWP/APHIS decided to hold another public hearing, where is it scheduled but Butte?
This is where the story gets a little weird, though. Since I’d basically asked for this meeting, I figured I’d better go, and made contact with several members of the Skyline Sportsmen’s group. It was the first they’d heard about the meeting, and when I checked with a couple of Montana Standard reporters it was news to them also!
So last evening, sundry FWP/APHIS/DOL staffers were at the Red Lion Inn in Butte for this 6:00 public meeting, and there was no one there. I suspect this was a relief, and I don’t

doubt suitable comments of their own for me were being thought up. Pat told me they’d decided they’d stick around till 7:15. But hey, the FWP website said the meeting was at 7:00, and sure enough as the hour drew nigh the Butte-icians began to arrive. Pat started the hearing off by stating that I’d requested it, and so here we were. A dubious honor, perhaps, but then Skyline president Leroy Mehring pointed out that if it weren’t for me, no one in Butte would have known the meeting was even taking place!
So one the one hand I’m gratified, yes, but an alternate scenario occurred to me today. The GYIBC meeting was scheduled for Bozeman today, and a lot of agency types were coming in for that. APHIS did seem to be disproportionately represented last night, for a meeting in Butte of all places, with no publicity. ??? Not to mention, Steve Torbitt with the National Wildlife Federation was imported, it appears, to testify in favor of the quarantine proposal, and also at the GYIBC hearing today that they could do no wrong.
Could airline connections to Butte have anything to do with this matter? Inquiring minds wonder…
It’s a moot point, as testimony was overwhelming that unless we see some of these bison managed as public wildlife in Montana, forget about support for agency boondoggles. After the GYIBC hearing today, after Hal Harper and I shared a laugh about the Governor’s fearlessness costing him sleep, I again pointed out that these agency folks can continue to do their thing (well, not all their things, not DOL) as we certainly don’t want to stop them from spending money, but we also need to see these bison on the landscape as public wildlife, including hunting.
It’s going to happen, folks. Negotiations are underway with the Church Universal and Triumphant for an easement, and the Interagency Bison Management Plan is going to be opened up for modification, and the times, they are a’changing.
That’s how it quite often works, in many things. When change comes, it comes rapidly. Gets to be kind of fun, eh?

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