Where the Buffalo Roam

    I had never been to Yellowstone or to any national park. Growing up in Idaho the woods were plentiful and there was numerous chances to experience that moment, surrounded by wilderness to get to that spot where you know that nobody else is; to find yourself alone in an area untouched by civilization.
    I headed to montana, drove the six in a half hours past west yellowstone to the buffalo field campaign to meet up with friend and cohort Demmi Netson and to volunteer for a couple of weeks. Around the last stretch, a huge thunderstorm passed over, giant globs of rain hit the windshield reducing visibility to 10 or 15 feet in front of me while huge thunderbolts struck the ground 100 yards away from the road. Just before hebgen lake the storm cleared up and a double rainbow formed in the sky; I arrived at the BFC headquarters safe and sound, met up with Demmi and met the folks at the cabin. The summer is the slowest season at the BFC, volunteers typically coming around mostly for hazing season. The summer was about public outreach to the park's visitors.

The first night I slept sound with wild dreams and the next morning Demmi and I headed into Yellowstone National Park.

I was there to see the buffalo, the last remaining wild herd in America. The buffalo Field campaign is non-profit volunteer run group dedicated to stopping the slaughter of these animals. It was summertime and most of the buffalo were located back in the park. On our way to the campsite we saw a large bull being escorted off the road by a park ranger. 

The Buffalo (bison bison) is the largest land mammal in north america; fullly grown they are typically the size of your average vehicle.  

In the summertime most of the buffalo are located back in the park; you see them by the side of the road with eager tourists from all over America and the world waiting to snap a photo of any they happen to see.
   We headed to the tabling site. After hazing season, the summer volunteers at the BFC do public outreach by tabling inside the park. I asked Demmi what tabling was, "basically it's public outreach to let people know what's going on about the buffalo and the buffalo issue, like getting donations, spreading the word meeting people, trying to you know.. cause a lot of people have no idea about this issue, especially people who are locals or like that  cattle veteran we met that could swing either way that just have no fucking idea what's going on."
    We arrived at the General Store, a common place in yellowstone - a giant parking lot pull out with a big store selling ice cream, chili dogs, souvernirs, shot glass's, hats, cameras, stuffed animals, native american jewerly, soda pop, candy bars, an a whole lot of cheap items that the tourists of the park can consume.
    I met Jim and Amelia, who had been out from the previous day, both sitting behind a table full of information under the hot sun of the yellowstone sky. I bummed jim a cigarrette and sat down behind the table. A old veteran with a chicago bears hat had been staring at us for a considerable ammount of time, before long he walked up to the table.
                          "what are you people doing?"
    "we're with the buffalo field campaign, advocating for america's last wild bison population to be able to reach their natural migratory habitats outside of yellowstone."
       "they're diseased, they spread it to the cattle. They don't belong outside of the park."
"well they can't survive here in the wintertime, there's no food and it's not the environment they want to have there calves. They go outside of the park instinctually every year and get hazed back while there's plenty of public forest land for them to inhabit."
       "you people don't know what you're doing."
"well what would you suggest as a solution?"
      "We should kill them. Thin out their numbers. There's too many in the park."
"well there wouldn't be if they were allowed to go elsewhere."

A Brief History of the Yellowstone Bison: 
    In 1901, after the great buffalo slaughter of the previous century, there was only 23 wild bison left; a small herd found hiding in the safe haven of Yellowstone national park. Once discovered a great effort was made to restore and protect this last heard of the wild buffalo that used to roam America. Today there is an estimated population of 3700 buffalo grazing and wallowing on the grasses and shrubs of Yellowstone national park. Living peacefully in the protected shelters of the park while humbly admired by the millions of tourists that travel there to see them each year.
     Buffalo by nature are a migratory species. Some say 60 million of them used to travel all over north America. The last buffalo, the Yellowstone herd likes to migrate like the rest of them. In the winter and spring they leave the park to find food at lower elevations and migrate to their calving grounds, each spring bringing new members to the ancient herd. They'll typically travel north into Montana, either through west Yellowstone to Horse Butte or through Gardner, a small town at the top entrance of the park.

This is generally how the state of Montana handles the Buffalo that have roamed out of the park.

The Interagency Bison Management plan is made up of five different agencies, the National Park Service, USDA-Forest Service, USDA-Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, Montana Department of Livestock and Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks. Their goal is the management of Bison and Brucellosis in and around Yellowstone park.
 Brucellosis was first detected in the Yellowstone Buffalo herd in 1917. They were exposed to it by domestic cattle that were grazed in the park and held in confinement with the buffalo. The IBMP exists to eradicate brucellosis from the Yellowstone herd and make sure no buffalo transfers it to any cattle outside of the park. This is why when the Buffalo leave Yellowstone and enter national forest or public land they are either hazed back into the park using atv's, horses, and helicopters; rounded up quaranteened and sent to slaughter, or just killed on the spot. Since 1985, there has been 6,927 buffalo killed out of the Yellowstone herd. Most of their bodies either thrown in the dump or given as government commodities to the Food Bank.
 All this is being done to ensure that the buffalo do not transfer bruscellosis to the cattle who graze the lands outside of the park. The problem is that there has never been a single documented case of a buffalo transferring bruscellosis to a cow. Most studies suggest the possibility is "extremely low". All four legged undulants can carry bruscellosis, elks, bears, coyotes, dear, etc who are all allowed to leave the park as they please. The cost to vaccinate cattle from bruscellosis is $1 per head, the cost of the IMBP is 3 million dollars a year, all payed for by us tax dollars.

We continued tabling, which above anything else is probably the best people watching experience I've ever had. The General Store is a pretty large complex, for my best estimate more than 3,000 people stopped by there everyday. So much so, that they were carving away part of the woods to make room for a new parking lot.

Towards the end of the day, Demmi and I took a drive to Mammoth to renew the camping permit. On our way there was a traffic jam, which is commonplace Yellowstone whenever somebody see's something they like, they'll typically just stop their car in most any inconvenient place, jump out with their cameras and hope to snap a pic. It's a park for the animals. The culprit this time was a teenage black bear, the park range stopped our car in front saying, "Ok I'm gonna stop you guys, I think this black bear's trying to cross the road." Black Bears are a little more like dogs in their demeanor and this park range wasted no time in treating it like one.

As the Park Ranger said, "Get! Get Off! Get off the Road!"

Before I entered Yellowstone I made sure to stock up on gasoline and supplies, not knowing how much modern convenience the park had to offer. I soon found out this was unnecessary as most places around the park you can find cheerful ladies like this one filling up for the next big drive.

                    Demmi and I stopped and looked at a map of the park to find our location.

  

Springtime is hazing season for the buffalo. I asked Demmi and Amelia what the hazes were like.

Demmi: "A haze feels like, when I was in one and I almost got trampled by a buffalo and horse rider while hiding in the trees, it was this really invigorating experience because it felt like i was in the middle of an old west movie and a fucking battlezone. So I was afraid but it was also romanticized but I was also knowing this was fucked up and shouldn't be happening."

Amelia: "I've only been in one but it was kind of exhilarating and terrifying and upsetting all the same time, because I'm seeing them do this, and then when I was right in the middle of it when I was filming and they were right there, not only the DOL are screaming for me to get back in the car, but --- and --- were too, because I was right there with a camera and I was like, 'i'm not stopping, I'm not stopping' and they're like ' get in the car! " you know it was just really close, but I was so wrapped up in it. "

Demmi: "people just look at it like this roundup. they call it a buffalo roundup, it's like they're herding cattle.. but it's like no, these are wild animals and theres a lot of fucking more of them than they should take on."

Later that night we heard a Park Ranger was going to be holding a bear seminar at the campsite Amphitheater. Jim and I decided to check it out.

Turns out it was held by the same Park Ranger that earlier had shushed the bear off the road.

After awhile an actual bear decided to show up

This ones a black bear

Jim and the Crowd got really excited.

The next morning Demmi and I woke up and while Amelia and Jim took  the morning tabling shift, we headed to Lamar valley to see some more buffalo

Later on we went back to tabling and dealt with the common questions from people passing by, usually something like, "how far is it to the waterfall?" "is it worth it?" or "Is there a difference between a buffalo and a bison."I asked Amelia and Demmi about memorable tabling experiences.

Amelia: "there's a lot of people that say your 300 years too late, your not gonna accomplish anything,. and to everyone of those people, I'm just kind of like, we actually have. the bfc itself has actually made strides. They just want to say something horrible and then move on. Like the guy, 'your gonna effect them all with bruscellosis.' and then that's when I was like, ' you should probably educate yourself about the issue,' and I tried to hand him a newsletter, and he was like, 'no thanks I already know more than you.' "

Demmi: "unfortunately the most memorable experiences are those negative ones, because occasionally they're humorous, occasionally they just hurt so bad it sticks with you. but I think a lot of memorable experience are those people that normally wouldn't have ever thought of this that leave with this completely different viewpoint or like you know people who are willing to have a conversation, or like little kids that come up."

Amelia: "yes, that's the people who are like 'they're not just slaughtering them, they're not just doing that. " I'm like "ya they still are"  and they're like "there's no way that's happening." they find it unbelievable."


Part III: The Gang Heads to Old Faithful

Old Faithful has existed in my minds eye for as long as I can remember. You see it everywhere, replicated and exemplified in all forms.  

 Before you get to any of the geysers, you hang a right on a overpass and drive through a sea of parking lots, full of cars, trailers, trucks, and caravans. There are several large buildings, gift shops, general stores, visitors center, and the grand old faithful inn; which is actually pretty exquisite. The one defining element is that there a people, thousands of them, everywhere.We pulled up when the geyser had just gone off;

        

The Majority of people who come to Yellowstone never leave the walkways or the roads.

                Their appeared to be a boon of cellphone reception surround the Old Faithful complex.

 Old Faithful isn't the only Geyser, it's just the most reliable one. Beyond it leads a boardwalk viewing of all kinds of geyser's, shapes and sizes. But don't step off the walkway; this actually happened to a little kid visiting the park; more than once.

The Gift Shop at the Inn

The Crowd, waiting for eruption.

Innovative uses for Tripod, as the crowd still anticipates.

Watching America blow it's load.

Back to the Buffalo; 

The Whole issue, in essence, the buffalo are the only animals in Yellowstone that are not allowed to leave the park. They're not allowed to leave because the cattle industry makes millions of dollars a year using the public grasslands that used to be occupied by the buffalo. So when they get cold and hungry, the buffalo take off to these grasslands and are subsequently hazed back into the park and then slaughtered to keep their numbers at an acceptable quotient for the ecosystem.

But it's not hard to imagine buffalo elsewhere, they'd go to national forests, national grasslands, there's plenty of public wilderness in America for them to roam around. America did such a good job of killing off the buffalo that they reduced there population from 60 million to 23; and by some natural grace these 23 survived only to have their offspring become prisoners of the place known as Yellowstone National Park.

The Fact is Yellowstone only wants 3000 buffalo, and that's not enough numbers to continue any species 200 years from now. It's only enough to have mutated inbred offspring until the last wild buffalo finally hits the ground. For whatever reason the United States Government and the Interagency Bison Management Plan doesn't seem to understand that.

It seems the Yellowstone bison are occupying this space between the past the future. And I suppose the cold reality is that unfortunately it is up to us to decide whether we want them around or not.

So why do these people do what they do?

Amelia: "I'm sure a lot of them do not even hate buffalo, they just see it as another day at the office.  It's like, we gotta round em up, move em out. I don't see them as a sinister, dark cloaked Jedi emperors. It's just like, this is what I do, this is my job, this is just how it is. They don't question it. "

Demmi: "I wonder sometimes how they feel while they're doing it; if they ever do start to question it. I'm sure that happens a lot, especially with us out there; these people that strongly feel they're doing the wrong thing. All together it's like, 'well the boss told us there's some buffalo out here and we need to get rid of them.' cause sometimes you see them cut short and do things that are completely illogical cause it's like they just came out and did there job and then left."


note: my views are not necessarily in the same vein as the BFC, to find out more for yourself go to www.buffalofieldcampaign.org