Posted on 10/07/2011 5:26:35 AM PDT by SJackson
DEER LODGE — Ranchers and landowners on Wednesday packed the Powell County Community Center, just a few miles from what has become ground zero in the debate over whether there is a place for wild bison on Montana's landscape.
If those who spoke in the first of three public hearings on a proposal to relocate Yellowstone National Park bison was any indication, the answer is an emphatic no. Dozens of people from this southwestern Montana community where cattle is king told state wildlife officials they were against the plan. None was in favor of it.
"This is not the 1800s. We have ranchers and farmers who need their hay lands, their grain fields, their stock yards protected. And you are putting them in danger," said Powell County resident Bill Mattice. "Stay out of the buffalo business!"
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has proposed temporarily relocating dozens of bison to the Spotted Dog Wildlife Management Area or three other possible sites across the state.
Wildlife officials say the bison are disease-free after spending years in quarantine as part of a U.S. government program. But that hasn't convinced those concerned that the wild animals could transmit disease to their cattle and damage their fields.
The debate, which has grown sharper this year as FWP developed its plans, is now centered on the public hearings on the draft environmental assessment of the relocation proposal that the agency released last month.
The meeting became contentious before it even really began.
Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_28debc10-f013-11e0-8012-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1a68XYr7a
The Mexican drug cartels would complain to Holder about that.
Be interested to talk to you about that.
I’m not very familiar with the forests heading north toward Great Falls and Helena, and even less so with those farther west and north.
But I live near and hunt and fish in the very areas burned by the great fires between Bozeman and Billings. And the burned areas now hold great expanses of gray, spidery dead trees.
While the areas even up toward Bozeman that I’m talking about are thick and dense-—but RED.
Now perhaps those wide swaths of red trees were somehow killed by the heat of fires, or something, without having actually been burned or scorched.
I have always believed, maybe on too little evidence, that it is pine beetle.
You sound like you know what you are talking about and I appreciate the responses.
Whitey - I agree, that Galen guy is an ignorant idiot! As I understand the problem from having become aware of it years ago, Yellowstone herds are frequently infected with brucellosis that may cause spontaneous miscarriage of bovine fetuses. (Elk can carry the disease also.) Any cattle exposed to this disease cannot be exported beyond Montana’s borders by federal regulation. This the death knell to any rancher in Montana looking to earn a profit ranching.
Along comes the Montana legislature passing a law that ANY Yellowstone bison having abandoned the park to wander into non-park lands in the state of Montana may be immediately exterminated in order to protect/ensure the health of adjacent cattle herds and the livelihood of their citizens. That legislation was necessary and indeed commendable!!
You notice that Ted Turner (the mouth from the South) is very quiet on this subject because he recognizes the risk and wouldn’t want other ranchers killing his bison that break their fences had they become infected!
JC
You really should use the /s tag.
Imagine something which will tear down a conventional barbed wire fence at will, while you are trying to graze your herds on your pasture, not only chase your cattle out, but eat their grass...
Just for starters, if they don't infect your herd with Brucellosis.
No problemo, right? (/s)
In western ND, too.
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