| Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
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| News
Article 1/30/07 |
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Bison advocates
urge end to seasonal hunt
Bison supporters met in Helena on the same day
state and federal officials celebrated the new Montana
quarter, which features a bison skull on its back.
Bozeman Daily Chronicle
1/30/07 |
HELENA
- Bison advocates met with Gov. Brian Schweitzer's
staff Monday to once again urge him to halt the state's
buffalo hunt and give the animals room to roam outside
Yellowstone National Park.
Their visit came the same day state
and federal officials celebrated the new Montana quarter,
which features a bison skull on its back - an appropriate
symbol, advocates say, given the bison's status in
the state.
"All the buffalo that have
been in the state of Montana are dead now, so they're
all skulls, so it' kind of poetically fitting," Mike
Mease of the Buffalo Field Campaign said. The bison advocacy
group with Schweitzer during the 2005 session not long
after he had taken office and before the bison hunt
was brought back later that year. This time they met with
Schweitzer's policy advisor, Hal Harper. s Joining the
group was Ed Millspaugh of West Yellowstone, who owns
a home in Hebgen Lake Estates Subdivision where bison like
to congregate and hunters sometimes follow them onto private
land.
"We need boundaries to make it
safe for us again from hunters, he said. "That's
basically why I'm here."
The state Legislature banned bison hunting
in 1991 after a series of widely publicized hunts generated
national outcry.
Lawmakers ended the ban in 2003 and
changed the law so that, unlike in the past, hunters were
not escorted to the animals they shot.
The changes haven't been enough to satisfy
Glenn Hockett of the Gallatin Wildlife Association, who
was also at the meeting.
The first hunt went pretty well, he
said, and his group agreed to a limited number of bison tags
with the idea that more habitat for bison would be
coming and the state would work to establish a viable
population of the animals within its borders.
"Instead what we got was more permits
to hunt," Hockett said. "And now we put hunters
in harm's way and we are literally killing every bison that
steps into the state of Montana. That's not wildlife conservation,
that's not something I'm proud to be part of."
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