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Today is National Call-in Day!
Citizens across the country are urged to join friends
at BFC, the Animal Welfare Institute, the Humane Society
of the United States and other wild bison advocates
to rattle the cages of two parties responsible for the
slaughter of America's last wild buffalo: Yellowstone
National Park and the Church Universal & Triumphant.
Make their phones ring off the hook TODAY in the name
of the last wild buffalo!
Who to call today:
1. YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK SUPERINTENDENT
SUZANNE LEWIS
# 307-344-2002 (if you can't get through, use 307-344-2012)
Tell her that the National Park Service is mandated
to protect bison, not slaughter them for the sake of
livestock interests. Tell her that Yellowstone's participation
in the slaughter of the last wild buffalo is shameful
and unacceptable. Tell her that the Park should work
to secure critical habitat for wild buffalo outside
of Park boundaries. Just speak from your heart for the
buffalo and tell her how you feel.
2. CHURCH UNIVERSAL & TRIUMPHANT
(CUT), KATE GORDON, PRESIDENT
# 800-245-5445
Tell CUT to finalize the agreement that was started
in 1999 and to coexist with wild buffalo. Remind CUT
that they took millions from the American people and
that money was exchanged for land to be used by wildlife,
including wild buffalo.
Why these calls are critical: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/media/bisonhunt/bisonhuntvideo/stephens0106.mov
Let's raise our voices together today in defense of
the last wild buffalo! Thank you for participating in
national call-in day! Please spread the word to save
this special herd.
For more information visit http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/actnow/actionalerts.html.
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* Update from the Field
Last Friday, Yellowstone National Park sent the last
of the 672 captured wild buffalo to slaughter. The trap
- located inside the boundaries of Yellowstone - is
empty. Unfortunately, that's just for now. In contrast
to the empty trap, the Corwin Springs bison quarantine
facility is at full capacity with 100 wild baby buffalo
that will never be with their family members again,
will be used in a scientific experiment, and half of
which will be slaughtered. All in the name of the Holy
Cow.
On Tuesday, BFC volunteers traveled to Bozeman, MT to
attend the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis
Committee (GYIBC) meeting. GYIBC representatives are
the architects and executioners of the current buffalo
slaughter and the ongoing threat to the viability of
wildlife in the region. These bureaucrats operate as
if the public voice were only a nuisance to be ignored
as they carry out their draconian plans. Our voices
were not ignored on Tuesday. Buffalo and elk (elk are
now suffering test-and-slaughter programs, too) advocates
filled the chairs before the Committee's table. When
the time for public comments came, we spoke in defense
of the wild. We pointed out that brucellosis is a cattle-borne
disease and the focus should be on cattle, on the disease,
and not on our native wildlife. Josh showed BFC's video
footage from the day the DOL ran the buffalo through
the ice on Hebgen Lake, demonstrating just a fraction
of what their management scheme looks like in reality.
Silence filled the room. The footage is that powerful,
the truth is that profound, the management scheme that
cruel and ugly.
During the meeting, GYIBC representatives from the National
Park Service (NPS) proudly revealed that they have been
cooperating, protecting livestock interests with their
recent capture, slaughter and quarantine of 672 wild
Yellowstone buffalo. They said though the trap is empty,
there are at least 700 buffalo moving north, underway
with their natural migration, heading towards the Park's
boundary - towards lands owned by the Church Universal
& Triumphant (CUT). With numerous hazing operations
underway, they confess capture will begin again soon.
And so will slaughter.
The NPS engages in wild buffalo slaughter for the sake
of a handful of privately-owned cows across Yellowstone's
northern boundary in Montana. These cows graze and ruin
Yellowstone's rich northern range in the Gardiner Basin,
critical winter habitat for wild buffalo, elk, pronghorn,
and also a significant migration corridor for these
and many other wildlife species. Portions of the wild
Yellowstone River - the longest undammed river in the
contiguous United States - is being trampled and defiled
by the CUT ranch cows. The buffalo are being slaughtered
for them. Wild rivers and wild buffalo, it seems, share
a common threat.
Please be sure to join us today - and until the slaughter
stops - in calling the Park Service and CUT (info above)
to urge more habitat for wild buffalo and an end to
their slaughter. As Margaret Mead's famous quote reads:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people
can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that
ever has."
For the Wild,
~Stephany
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* No More Baby Buffalo in Quarantine! Send Comments!
One hundred wild baby buffalo have been hazed, captured,
separated from their mothers and herd members and sent
to prison in the Corwin Springs quarantine facility.
Here they will be raised like livestock, confined and
fed hay, used in a government experiment to "create
a disease-free herd" of buffalo. More than half
will be slaughtered.
The government has plans to expand their quarantine
facility which would enable more wild buffalo calves
to suffer the same fate. It's a joint state-federal
plan designed by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks
(FWP) and USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection
Service (APHIS). These agencies are currently accepting
comments from you through February 13. Please take action
for the wild buffalo calves and express your opposition
to this nefarious plan.
More information, talking points, and contact information
can be found at
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/actnow/actionalerts.html#bisonquarantine.
You can also contact Josh at bfc-advocate@wildrockies.org
with questions.
Please send him a copy of your comments!
Visit our video gallery to see what bison quarantine
looks like: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/media/bisonvideogallery.html
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*BFC Web Site Breaks Records in January!
The BFC would like to thank PlanetMind Internetworks
for hosting our web site on their solar powered server.
25,000 visitors turned to http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org
in January to learn about the plight of the Yellowstone
buffalo and BFC's efforts to bring them lasting protection.
To learn more about Planetmind, please visit: http://www.planetmind.net
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* Last Words
"And one by one, driven to exhaustion, trapped
by fence and horses and bewilderment, under an immaculate
sky the mythic creatures died. They died not in mercy,
not in the majesty which was their due, but as the least
of life, accursed of nature. They died in the dust of
insult and the spittle of lead. There was more here
than profaned the eye or ear or nose or heart. There
was more here than mere destruction. The American soul
itself was involved, its anthropology. We are born with
buffalo blood upon our hands. In the prehistory of us
all, the atavistic beasts appear. They graze the plains
of our subconscious, they trample through our sleep,
and in our dreams we cry out our damnation. We know
what we have done, we violent people. We know that no
species was created to exterminate another, and the
sight of their remnant stirs in us the most profound
lust, the most undying hatred, the most inexpiable guilt.
A living buffalo mocks us.... It is a misbegotten child,
a monster with which we cannot live and which we cannot
live without. Therefore we slay, and slay again, for
while a single buffalo remains, the sin of our fathers,
and hence our own, is imperfect. But the slaughter of
the buffalo is part of something larger. It is as though
the land of Canaan into which we were led was too divine,
and until we have done it every violence, until we have
despoiled and murdered and dirtied every blessing, until
we have erased every reminder of our original rape,
until we have washed our hands of the blood of every
other, we shall be unappeased. It is though we are too
proud to be beholden to [the Creator]. We cannot bear
the goodness of [the Creator]."
~ Glendon Swarthout, from Bless the Beasts & the
Children, a must-read story about a group of cast-away
youth that try to save a herd of buffalo.
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