Tribal Rhetoric Bison Realities
Tribal Slaughter Belies The Reality of Dead Bison
Tribal bison carnage near Yellowstone NP border last winter.
Last week, 11 tribes gathered in Fort Hall, Idaho, to discuss “stewardship” of Yellowstone bison. Representative tribes included Shoshone, Ute, Crow, Arapahoe, Northern Cheyenne, Cree, Nez Perce, and Lakota/Dakota. According to the Buffalo Field Campaign announcement, the tribes all supported the “sacredness” of Yellowstone’s bison and efforts to protect their “relatives.”
I encourage people to view this stream of blood video to see the tribe’s sacred attitude.
Tribal members loading dead bison into pick up trucks, “preserving their cultural traditions”. Photo George Wuerthner
The tribes asserted the “right” of bison to roam freely, but all their policies and actions have the opposite effect.
Unfortunately, tribal entities and their advocates like the Buffalo Field Campaign put their human self-interest before that of the bison. They display anthropocentric behavior instead of biocentric practices.
Last winter, tribal members slaughtered more than 1100 Yellowstone bison, not to mention other wildlife like elk and bighorn. Is this how you demonstrate “sacredness”?
Tribal advocates are more concerned about tribal presumed “rights” than the rights and welfare of Yellowstone’s bison. Remember that Yellowstone’s bison are the least domesticated of any bison in the U.S. They are of international significance. For this reason, they have been petitioned for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The killing of Yellowstone bison has numerous ecological impacts that tribal groups and their supporters, the Buffalo Field Campaign, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, and National Parks and Conservation, among many other organizations, ignore.
Unlike natural predators, which primarily take the weak and young, tribal hunters slaughter entire family groups of bison that wander from the protective borders of Yellowstone Park.
The removal of bison from the park’s ecosystem is taking food from the mouths of the Greater Yellowstone’s Ecosystem wildlife. Grizzlies, wolves, coyotes, and other wildlife feed on dead bison.
Coyotes feeding on dead bison. By removal of large numbers of bison through tribal hunting, fewer bison will succumb to starvation, disease or other evolutionary factors thus eliminating an important source of food for ecosystem wildlife. Photo George Wuerthner
One could even argue that removing large numbers of bison harms grizzly bear recovery. A sow grizzly with cubs finding one dead bison carcass is like winning the lottery.
Plus, by reducing the population of Yellowstone’s bison, tribal hunters interfere with natural evolutionary processes that influence bison survival, such as harsh winters, starvation, native predation, and other evolutionary factors that would operate on bison populations.
They are also removing the ecological influence of bison herds on Yellowstone’s vegetation.
Mobility is a major evolutionary adaptation of bison for survival–tribal hunting by killng bison removes the bison most likely to migrate. Photo George Wuerthner
Mobility is the bison’s more important evolutionary trait for survival, and tribal hunters are killing the animals most likely to migrate, removing that evolutionary trait from the population.
All of these factors are turning wild bison into “hatchery bison.”
Tribal ideas about stewardship are all about their self-interest.
Worse for the bison, the killing of Yellowstone bison is based on a flawed interpretation of treaties. I cannot go into details here, but tribes assert that treaties give them the “right” to slaughter Yellowstone’s bison. But carefully reading those treaties and legal interpretations raises questions about the presumed treaty authority to butcher internationally significant Yellowstone bison herds.
The tribal conference acknowledged that tribal treaties and aboriginal connections retain rights to hunt, gather, and fish on unclaimed or ceded land—but neglected to note that no tribe has CEDED LANDS by the North Entrance of Yellowstone by Gardiner. You can read more on the Herrera Vs. Wyoming case which describes off reservation hunting on “ceded lands.”
Map showing “ceded” lands. Note the big white area north of Yellowstone Park where no tribe has treaty ceded lands.
Tribes try to side-step this by asserting that treaties allow them to hunt in the “usual and accustomed” locations. But this only applies to Columbia River tribes, and count decisions limit this to off-reservation fishing sites. It also requires that tribes be able to show they had exclusive use of the sites for an “extended period of time.”
No tribe can show they have hunted bison near Gardiner for exclusive use and extended periods of time.
Finally, the 1855 treaty with the Blackfeet and several other tribes had a 99-year termination, meaning those treaty terms no longer apply. See my article here for more details about court rulings and treaty wording.https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2023/04/06/tribal-bison-slaughter-illegal/
Heads of slain bison. Photo George Wuerthner
Tribal slaughter implements the state of Montana’s irrational bison policies that treat bison as persona non gratis, saving the state’s livestock industry from the public outrage that would ensue if the state were to slaughter more than a thousand Yellowstone bison.
The tribes suggest in their announcement that they support the “rights of free-roaming wild buffalo.” Still, in slaughtering nearly every bison that leaves Yellowstone Park, they are doing precisely the opposite.
Instead, the selective evolutionary pressures tribes impose on bison is a form of domestication. It thwarts free-roaming by bison and subjects them to numerous artificial selective practices that destroy “wildness” in bison.
Tribal behavior fails to live up to their rhetoric, and the reality for bison is horror.
To support free-roaming bison organizations, please join Montana Wild Bison Restoration Coalition, Roam Free Nation, Yellowstone Voices, and Gallatin Wildlife Association.