Deal will let the buffalo roam

Montana and federal officials announced a deal Thursday to let some bison migrate through a private ranch bordering Yellowstone National Park. It would allow a small number of the animals to avoid slaughter under a disease control program that has claimed more than 3,000 bison since 2000.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer and park Superintendent Suzanne Lewis said the ranch’s owners, the Church Universal and Triumphant, agreed to sell their grazing rights and initially allow 25 bison to pass through the property. The deal, estimated at $2.8 million, would give the bison access to more than 5,000 acres of federal land outside the park.

Despite criticism from the livestock industry and bison advocates, Lewis characterized the deal as breaking an eight-year impasse on one of the National Park Service’s most divisive wildlife issues.

“Until today, bison were never allowed to use that space,” she said.

All other bison leaving the park during the winter migration still would be subject to slaughter. Since last fall, a record 1,601 bison have been killed to prevent the spread of the disease brucellosis, which can cause cows to abort their calves.

Bison advocates noted most of the killings would still have occurred even if the deal had been in place, since only a small number of bison would have been allowed through the ranch.

“Sixteen hundred dead American buffalo later, they give us this lip service,” said Stephany Seay of the activist group Buffalo Field Campaign. “This will do nothing to stop the slaughter and just means 25 wild bison will be run through the typical gauntlet.”

Livestock industry representatives also weighed in against the deal, saying it did not directly address the core problem of brucellosis. Errol Rice with the Montana Stockgrowers Assn. said the park service needed to put more effort into a vaccine.

But Schweitzer said the deal was the best option on an issue that has vexed the state and the Park Service for more than a decade. He added that it removed the possibility of a brucellosis transmission to the 150 cow-calf pairs the church had owned at the Royal Teton Ranch.

“For every person in the region concerned about the bison, there are those in the cattle industry who think we’re too easy on them,” the governor said.