Sorry. My bad…

Fortunately, I’m in no sense short of material. Au contraire, it’s more a matter of grabbing a few moments to write it down. And so here we find ourselves at what’s getting to be late (for a guy my age) on the pre-Memorial Day Friday night, and I’m thinking that what’s in order is something along the lines of a diary of the last 24 hours or so, because they have damn sure not been dull! Hey, I wound up on TV and in the newspaper, for one thing…

So how about "A Day in the Life" here in the New West? The Beatles got it right, all those years ago; "Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, made my way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up, I noticed I was late…"

That’s pretty much now it’s gone lately. I wake up about 3:30 AM, to my chagrin, and in spite of semi-conscious effort to go back to sleep start thinking about everything I need to accomplish that day. But then I do in fact slip back into dreamland and rally about 6:00 to a cup of Yellowstone Coffee Company’s high octane "Buffalo Blend".

Yes, I am a bison enthusiast, but at that point caffeine is of primary import, which is fortuitous because shortly thereafter the phone starts ringing and I have (e)mail from folks who want to come to Montana and return home with a bison for the freezer. In fact, yesterday morning I sold four buffalo, including a mature bull recently gone AWOL from the Snowcrest Ranch south of Alder. That is cool on multiple levels; not least that it almost pays for my grass/alfalfa seed which is part of another project du jour; seeding a heinously depleted field (check my prior columns for an explanation of our recently assumed stewardship of a neighboring farm) into something that might actually build organic matter, instead of continuing to mine it via small grain production with no inputs such as fertilizer, as has been the plan (or lack thereof) for about 70 years or so on the Rockpile Ranch! My wife says that’s a bad name for what I normally call "Cliff’s", but then she hasn’t driven our 1952 tractor some 200 miles through a near-continuous obstacle course of rocks in the last month. Hah! The New West, indeed…

But hey, I’m not complaining. Much... OK, I do find it annoying that I have a hard time actually getting out onto the tractor until normally mid-afternoon. It’s Bill Gates’ fault, (not the least of my grievances with him) but overall I suppose it’s a positive. Actually, perhaps I should bring this up with your pal and mine Al Gore, as during the latter stages of my previous incarnation as a full-time Montana Hi-Line farmer/Bozeman wild game processor, the fantastic opportunity to interact with like-minded folks worldwide via his invention of the internet routinely occupied my early morning hours. Seriously, would you rather correspond with a fascinating variety of folks via a new technology that renders distance moot, or rush out to the field so you can lose money even quicker? Well, yeah… likewise.

So anyway, yesterday I actually got underway seeding about 11:00 AM, which is not all that bad under New West standards and had about 25 acres left out of a 39 acre field, which would have been eminently achievable were it not for a meeting in Ennis last evening about the recently elevated brucellosis levels in the Madison elk herd. Now this was not your typical humdrum bureaucratic yawner about some nebulous esoteria, but (IMO) a vital wildlife issue with ramifications for not only ranchers with disease-susceptible livestock but sportsmen who are dismayed that APHIS (the Federal Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service) could routinely start slaughtering literally all the wildlife in the Greater Yellowstone Area. And no, I exaggerate not.

What is at issue here (among other things) is a recent Memorandum of Understanding between the members of the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee. Our concern is a perceived shift from management to eradication of the disease, primarily espoused by APHIS, although the Montana Dept. of Livestock is fully on board also. The Dept. of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks is also a member of the GYIBC, and we sense mixed enthusiasm within that agency for this new eradication paradigm. On the one hand, they stand to benefit from a substantial infusion of APHIS money, and I certainly have no problem with the research that will result. However, there is potential for this to lead to a massive capture/test/slaughter pogrom for elk, similar to what DOL/APHIS uses on bison. That is a troubling prospect to say the least; one Montana sportsmen would "furiously oppose".

Eradication of brucellosis is certainly a worthy goal, but its achievability is questionable at best. At this point, the primary source of the disease are the elk feedgrounds in Wyoming, where infection rates approach 50% (versus 6.9% currently in the Madison elk herd). Of course, those feedgrounds are not only an incubator for brucellosis, but also tuberculosis, chronic wasting disease, and who knows what else! As FWP biologist Kurt Alt noted at the Ennis hearing; until something changes with the Wyoming situation brucellosis eradication remains an impossibility.

At the recent GYIBC meeting in Jackson, consensus was not reached on the Memorandum of Understanding. It’s been passed along to the Governors of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming for their signatures, and we would urge Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer to carefully consider the long-range implications of this eradication mindset before signing off on it. When I questioned Montana State Veterinarian Tom Lindfield at the Ennis hearing about potential capture/test/slaughter programs for elk, he dismissed the concern and said there are no current plans to that end. I’ve read the MOU, though, and it clearly leads in that direction. If it walks like a duck…

As Kurt Alt stressed, although the Madison infection rates have seen recent substantial increases, we’re nowhere near the rates of Wyoming and what we’re really talking about here is common-sense risk management. Fortunately, the actual risk of cattle becoming infected from elk is slight, because there are virtually no traditional cow-calf ranching operations in the upper Madison. Most of those ranches have been purchased by wealthy folks who value wildlife and are not particularly enamored with losing money on cattle. Some of them lease their lands for seasonal livestock grazing, and employ sound management practices such as running yearlings (or horses) instead of disease-susceptible breeding age cows. Or, if one must run cow/calf pairs then vaccination and delaying turnout until mid to late June (approximately 30 days after the elk/bison calving season) reduces the already slight risk to miniscule proportions.

What we feel makes sense is establishing a Regional Brucellosis Management Area in the Greater Yellowstone Area. It seems the height of lunacy to jeopardize the brucellosis-free status of the overwhelming majority of Montana stockmen over a relative handful of seasonally grazed cattle in the GYA. As I’ve mentioned before, DOL’s failure to encourage responsible livestock practices in the GYA strikes me as reckless and irresponsible, and the "unsafe sex" analogy is most apt.

After the Ennis hearing I was discussing some of these ideas with one of the potentially most affected ranchers, who runs cow/calf pairs on public land in Antelope Basin. He was absolutely unenthused about the Regional Management Area idea, since he operates in the affected area and would consider the slightly stricter management protocols a burden. Also, he said we can’t get rid of the Wyoming feedgrounds, since they were originally established to keep elk off rancher’s private lands. We both shook our heads at this ironic Catch-22 situation. We’re perpetuating the primary reservoir of what is arguably the most significant livestock disease risk extant, in order to protect ranchers from that disease. And yes, it’s that sort of convoluted logic that could lead us to a massive capture/test/slaughter pogrom for elk in Montana!

Post-hearing interviews with the KXLF TV and Bozeman Daily Chronicle reporters, some good old Montana-style visiting with ranchers and agency folks, followed by the drive back to Bozeman and a midnight collapse into bed ended the day, and you know what? I wouldn’t have traded a moment of it for anything! Well… I would potentially consider offers for the moments of watching my Depression-era harrows fall apart in the endless rocks, but overall… I love it and feel incredibly lucky to live here and do what I do.

Sweet dreams…