As of January 22nd, 2023, Roam Free Nation has returned to Gardiner, Montana on the north side of Yellowstone to monitor, document, and give a voice to wild buffalo. Watch this space for regular reports!
RFN Report from Gardiner – 1/22/23
Roam Free Nation is present in the Gardiner Basin, along the northern boundary of Yellowstone National Park. There are hundreds of buffalo in the Basin, many of them in safe zones closed to hunters, but many others around Yellowstone’s Stephens Creek buffalo trap, and still others inside the trap slated for slaughter or domestication (quarantine). Two bulls who were at Beattie Gulch early this evening fell to the bullets of ‘hunters’. They are visible outside my window, truck lights blaring in the dark as they carve away on the remains of two of the country’s last wild buffalo. And those in the safe zones will not remain there, as buffalo are a migratory species. So, the hunters will watch and wait and kill as many as they can when the opportunity strikes.
In Gardiner, more than 120 buffalo have been shot and killed in this slaughter being disguised as a hunt. Far more than that when you count all the near-term calves left in their mother’s gut piles, and those who were wounded and fled back into the Park, later to be shot by park rangers. Countless calves have been orphaned as well, but thankfully, buffalo will adopt. But still, to see these calves mourning and searching for their lost mothers is heartbreaking. Gut piles are all over the place, a dangerous feast for many scavengers who will be poisoned by the lead in the hunters’ bullets.
Ironically, many of the people doing this killing say that they want more buffalo on a larger landscape, but by their very actions, they are preventing wild buffalo from accessing available habitat and having a chance to restore themselves. They are also causing the loss of migratory memory and changing the dynamics of herd behavior. They claim they are “forced” to come kill in this manner, but it is their choice to participate in this extension of government slaughter.
We are staying with friends from Yellowstone Voices, who have a web cam set up to gather footage of the killing fields of Beattie Gulch. If you go to yellowstonevoices.org and scroll down to the second video, you can see for yourself the horrible things that happen daily at Beattie Gulch. This video was taken only yesterday.
We will bring you more news and images and the truth about what is happening to the last wild buffalo as tomorrow morning comes.