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Article 1/06/07 |
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'Holistic'
bison strategy off to good start in ND
Bozeman Daily Chronicle (AP)
1/06/07 |
BISMARCK,
N.D. (AP) - Federal officials have finished moving
125 bison among four states to mark the beginning of a
new genetics-based approach to managing the animals.
None of the animals was harmed while
being moved among wildlife refuges and preserves in North
Dakota, Montana, Nebraska and Iowa, officials said.
''We think this operation went very
well,'' said Matt Kales, a regional spokesman in Denver
for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. ''It's a positive
and important first step toward establishing a more holistic
bison management strategy.''
The strategy treats animals at various
national refuges and preserves as a single unit rather
than separate herds. The goal is more bison with a wilder
genetic makeup that is similar to their Great Plains ancestors,
and fewer bison with cattle genes.
Federal officials announced the plan
in late November, and the animals were moved by the end
of the year.
Thirty-eight bison at North Dakota's
Sullys Hill National Game Preserve considered close to
genetically pure were rounded up and trucked to the Fort
Niobrara refuge in Nebraska, where the herd will have
more room to grow.
Seven bison from the National Bison
Range in northwestern Montana, which has hundreds of the
animals, were then moved to Sullys Hill. Those bison also
have no indication of cattle genes, said Roger Hollevoet,
the Fish and Wildlife manager of the Devils Lake Wetland
Management District. The move went smoothly, despite a
risk of stress and injury to wild animals, he said.
''They were peacefully grazing 10 minutes
after they were dropped off,'' Hollevoet said.
Todd Frerichs, a deputy project leader
at Fort Niobrara, said the Sullys Hill animals also came
through the move healthy.
''We did some health testing on them,
and everything came back good and clean,'' Frerichs said.
''We've got them all together on a smaller pasture, waiting
for fence construction this spring so we can turn them
onto summer range.''
Those bison will have to get used to
more open terrain than they had in North Dakota, while
the new Sullys Hill animals will have to adapt from their
former mountainous home to a grasslands environment.
''They've been pretty comfortable in
their new surroundings,'' Hollevoet said of the new Sullys
Hill herd. ''We don't have to treat them like human beings
... they just adapt on their own.''
Frerichs said the new bison at Niobrara
are being given some hay to supplement their feed. Next
winter, the animals will be on their own to graze on native
grasses, he said.
The bison movement also included the
transfer of 39 animals from the Montana range to the Neal
Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa, where some of
the bison already there had cattle genes. Twentythree
of those bison were given to the Meskwaki tribe in Iowa,
16 to the Spirit Lake tribe in North Dakota and two to
a Polk County, Iowa park for public education purposes,
said refuge manager Nancy Gilbertson.
Visitation at Neal Smith in December
was triple what it normally is during the month, she said.
While the number of bison at Sullys
Hill has been dramatically cut, the herd will be expanded
to at least 25 animals in the next four or five years,
Hollevoet said. New breeding bulls will be brought in
regularly to prevent inbreeding, he said.
The group of bison moved from Montana
includes one breeding bull, one immature bull and five
cows that likely have been bred, Hollevoet said.
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