The spring Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) meeting was on May 14th this year. Surprisingly, just a week or so before the meeting, they announced that it would be held on Zoom only, and would be just three hours long! You had to register a day ahead of time to be allowed to participate in the public comment period, and that, along with the technology required, really impacted the ability of the public to participate in this meeting.
The day began appropriately, with the facilitator asking if any of the tribal partners would like to offer a prayer to open the meeting. This was met with awkward silence, as no one offered, after which the meeting began.
The meeting was a total sham. It was poorly attended, even by the partner agencies, and they rushed through it in an hour and a half – and that included the brief comment period. The ITBC (The Intertribal Buffalo Council) did not show up to the meeting, despite being a IBMP partner, and most of the treaty hunting tribes – the Blackfeet, Crow, Umatilla, Yakima – also did not show. The Shoshone Bannock sent their representative, and he was relegated to speaking during the public comment period. This abbreviated meeting just seems to be part of a trend of the agencies, especially the National Park Service, withholding information from the public.
Should you want to witness the bogus meeting in full, you can see (a poor quality) recording on our YouTube channel. There are also incredibly detailed notes available.
What little information we gathered from the meeting.
Most of the numbers are the same as they reported in late April – because, in continuing the trend of withholding information, we are not getting full hunt numbers at all. The IBMP report just says to contact the tribes individually. We’ll certainly try to do that, but have no real hope of them providing accurate information. The Park is truly full of it, though; they absolutely have those numbers – as they use them as the base of their management decisions – so they are deliberately hiding the truth from the public. We are working on a FOIA request.
The sickening numbers:
- More than 900 of the last wild buffalo were killed or removed from the population this year.
- 768 were shipped to slaughter – including 329 adult females, who all most certainly carried a near-term calf in their wombs. The Park operated the trap well into April.
- 1 calf was killed in the trap.
- 97 buffalo were sentenced to a life of domestication in the quarantine program.
- 5 were killed by state hunters – 1 in West Yellowstone and 4 in Gardiner (including in the backcountry).
- 33 were killed by the Nez Perce (the only tribe to report numbers at the meeting) – 5 on the north side and 28 on the west side – this includes 12 adult females, most certainly pregnant.
- The Park estimates the pre-calving population to be around 4,300 – they will complete a summer census later this year.
- The quarantine numbers were a little unclear, but it sounds like Yellowstone has 165 bison in the quarantine facility, and expects 145-150 to be ready for transfer this year. APHIS seemed to report their quarantine numbers separately, and said that they added 17 new animals to their quarantine program this spring, and they expect 37 cow-calf pairs to be ready for transfer in 2026.
Additional information of note:
- The CSKT are building their own slaughter facility for all the buffalo they’re killing – they expect it to be ready in early 2026.
- The DOL and APHIS brought up concerns of tuberculosis in wild buffalo – the issue was raised when the quarantine program transferred bison to the Mosquito First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada. They did testing for TB on the slaughtered bison this spring and found no evidence of the disease.
- Only the Forest Service representative, Mike Jedra (who is Mary Erickson’s replacement) mentioned the challenges, uncertainties, lost staffing and lost budgets facing federal agencies at this time. It was interesting that it was brought up at all, considering how fearful the Park Service is acting these days.
- The Forest Service mentioned “projects” (i.e. logging) in the Hebgen Lake District as well as the Gardiner District. The Bear Palmer Vegetation Management Project in the Jardine area of Gardiner will soon be looking for public comment. We’ll let you know when there is an opportunity to speak out against destruction of this important habitat.
- The USDA completed delisting of Brucellosis from the select agent list – this removes regulatory restrictions on research and creates opportunities for future research.
And a bit of GOOD news!
The Forest Service Hebgen Lake District Ranger in West Yellowstone, Wendi Urie, spoke of plans to replace the Cougar Creek bridges – both the highway and the snowmobile bridge – and said that there will be a wildlife underpass included in the design! Safe passage infrastructure is sorely needed outside West Yellowstone – that stretch of Highway 191 claims buffalo lives (and countess other animals) every year. Apparently they’ve been talking about this project for a long time, but at the meeting they said construction should start summer of 2026. Take a look at the DOT project page for more information and to submit a comment supporting safe passage for wildlife!
Roam Free Nation Speaks Up
The public comment period was an embarrassment. Only six people spoke. We can only assume that the format of the meeting and the technology required to comment kept people from participating. Kudos to the Gallatin Wildlife Association and the Idaho Conservation League – the ONLY environmental groups aside from Roam Free Nation to advocate for buffalo at the meeting. Thomas Wadsworth of the Shoshone Bannock Fish and Game Enforcement at least spoke up both for more bison on the landscape and to criticize the impact the trapping is having on bison migration. He also expressed disappointment in the rushed online-only meeting.
Roam Free Nation co-founder Jaedin Medicine Elk kept his comments brief, but impactful.
And board member Cindy Rosin expressed her anger and disgust in her comments.
We never expect the IBMP meetings, where the partners at the table are all enemies of wild buffalo, to be impactful or important, and we certainly don’t expect them to actually take public comments made there into account – but we DO expect to at least get full and accurate information on their buffalo mis-management operations. If that isn’t going to happen at these meetings either, it’s no wonder the public couldn’t be bothered to attend.
We know that wins for the buffalo won’t happen around those tables (virtual or otherwise) – they’ll happen when an informed and impassioned public demands change en masse. Please pass on our reports, link to our webpage, share our social media posts, and keep speaking up for wild buffalo.