Documents detail push to manage Yellowstone bison as cattle
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — In May 2018, Yellowstone National Park’s superintendent was ordered by then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to manage the park’s bison “more actively like cattle on a ranch,” according to a park briefing statement.
About a month later, Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk was removed from his post. Wenk was replaced by current Superintendent Cam Sholly who took over in October 2018.
Before being appointed to lead the Department of Interior, Zinke was Montana’s lone representative in Congress. He left his Interior post at the beginning of 2019.
The revelation of Zinke’s order didn’t surprise Darrell Geist, habitat coordinator for the Buffalo Field Campaign, a nonprofit bison advocacy group.
“These are things we’ve been saying for a long time … that the herd is being managed for the good of the livestock industry and not the public trust,” Geist told the Billings Gazette.
Confirmation of the group’s theory came after a long court fight by BFC seeking the release of documents from the National Park Service through the Freedom of Information Act. In July, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy ruled the NPS must release nine documents in their entirety. Buffalo Field Campaign recently made the documents available online, including the briefing statement.
The group is also suing the Department of Interior for similar documents and hopes to receive the records by this fall.
The Yellowstone briefing statement goes on to say, “Managing Yellowstone bison more intensively like livestock on a ranch would be a set-back for restoration and would likely lead to intense negative publicity, civil disobedience, litigation, and further attempts to list plains bison as threatened pursuant to the Endangered Species Act which would...