Deal signed, bison going to Fort Peck
<p>FILE - in this March 17, 2011, file photo, a free bison roams around the outside of a pen enclosing bison in Gardiner, Mont., in Yellowstone National Park. Late Monday afternoon, March 19, 2012, 64 bison from Yellowstone National Park were due to arrive at northeast Montana’s Fort Peck Reservation under a long-stalled relocation initiative to repopulate parts of the West with the iconic, genetically pure animals, a tribal official said. Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Monday the bison shipment was a first step in efforts to bring the animals back across a larger landscape. (A…
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Sixty-four bison from Yellowstone National Park are due to arrive on northeast Montana's Fort Peck Indian Reservation on Monday under a long-stalled initiative to repopulate parts of the West with the iconic animals.
Robert Magnan with the Fort Peck Fish and Game Department says tribal and state officials signed an agreement late Friday allowing the transfer to take place.
Magnan says the date of the shipment was kept quiet until it was underway to avoid a court injunction. A group of northeastern Montana landowners and property groups have sued to stop the transfer.
The bison have been quarantined for several years to ensure they are free of the disease brucellosis. But critics of the animals' relocation have lingering concerns about bison competing with cattle for rangeland.
Several prior attempts to relocate the animals failed because of opposition from cattle producers and difficulty finding public or tribal land suitable for the bison.
State wildlife officials have said the relocation of the Yellowstone bison may help answer the question of whether the species can be reintroduced to some public lands in Montana where they once roamed freely. Overhunting wiped out vast herds of bison that once roamed across most of North America.
The animals have been confined to quarantine just north of the park for several years. They were captured leaving the park during their winter migration and tested extensively to make sure they were free of brucellosis. That disease, which can cause pregnant animals to abort their young, was for many years the primary argument for preventing Yellowstone bison from roaming freely outside the park.
But critics of the relocation have lingering worries about bison competing with cattle for rangeland.
The 65 bison and their offspring will remain inside a fenced compound on the reservation and should not cause any problems for the neighbors of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, Magnan said.
The tribes already have about 200 bison in a commercial herd that are used for meat and hunting. But those animals are not genetically pure like the Yellowstone bison.
"One of the main things we're trying to do is preserve the genetic integrity of these animals," Magnan said. "The cultural links from those genetics will be the closest to the bison of our ancestors."