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34-137 PDF 2007

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL

PARK BISON

OVERSIGHT HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS

AND PUBLIC LANDS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

March 20, 2007

Serial No. 110-7

Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

or

Committee address: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Chairman

DON YOUNG, Alaska, Ranking Republican Member

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan

Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Samoa

Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii

Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas

Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey

Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Islands

Grace F. Napolitano, California

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona

Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam

Jim Costa, California

Dan Boren, Oklahoma

John P. Sarbanes, Maryland

George Miller, California

Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts

Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon

Maurice D. Hinchey, New York

Patrick J. Kennedy, Rhode Island

Ron Kind, Wisconsin

Lois Capps, California

Jay Inslee, Washington

Mark Udall, Colorado

Joe Baca, California

Hilda L. Solis, California

Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota

Heath Shuler, North Carolina

Jim Saxton, New Jersey

Elton Gallegly, California

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee

Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland

Ken Calvert, California

Chris Cannon, Utah

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado

Jeff Flake, Arizona

Rick Renzi, Arizona

Stevan Pearce, New Mexico

Henry E. Brown, Jr., South Carolina

Luis G. Fortun ̃ o, Puerto Rico

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington

Bobby Jindal, Louisiana

Louie Gohmert, Texas

Tom Cole, Oklahoma

Rob Bishop, Utah

Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania

Dean Heller, Nevada

Bill Sali, Idaho

Doug Lamborn, Colorado

James H. Zoia, Chief of Staff

Jeffrey P. Petrich, Chief Counsel

Lloyd Jones, Republican Staff Director

Lisa Pittman, Republican Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS AND PUBLIC LANDS

RAU ́ L M. GRIJALVA, Arizona, Chairman

ROB BISHOP, Utah, Ranking Republican Member

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan

Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii

Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Islands

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey

Dan Boren, Oklahoma

John P. Sarbanes, Maryland

Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon

Maurice D. Hinchey, New York

Ron Kind, Wisconsin

Lois Capps, California

Jay Inslee, Washington

Mark Udall, Colorado

Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota

Heath Shuler, North Carolina

Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia, ex officio

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee

Chris Cannon, Utah

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado

Jeff Flake, Arizona

Rick Renzi, Arizona

Stevan Pearce, New Mexico

Henry E. Brown, Jr., South Carolina

Louie Gohmert, Texas

Tom Cole, Oklahoma

Dean Heller, Nevada

Bill Sali, Idaho

Doug Lamborn, Colorado

Don Young, Alaska, ex officio

(III)

CONTENTS

Page

Hearing held on March 20, 2007 ............................................................................ 1

Statement of Members:

Bishop, Hon. Rob, a Representative in Congress from the State of Utah ... 2

Grijalva, Hon. Rau ́l M., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Arizona ...................................................................................................... 1

Rahall, Hon. Nick J., II, a Representative in Congress from the State

of West Virginia ............................................................................................ 3

Statement of Witnesses:

Clifford, John, DVM, Deputy Administrator for Veterinary Services,

Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, U.S. Department of

Agriculture ..................................................................................................... 14

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 16

Hagenbarth, Jim, Montana Stockgrowers Association .................................. 61

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 62

Kay, Dr. Charles E., Institute of Political Economy, Utah State

University ...................................................................................................... 66

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 69

Nazzaro, Robin M., Director, Natural Resources and Environment, U.S.

Government Accountability Office ............................................................... 19

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 21

Osher, Joshua, Coordinator, Buffalo Field Campaign ................................... 43

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 45

Pacelle, Wayne, President and CEO, The Humane Society of the United

States ............................................................................................................. 55

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 57

Rehberg, Hon. Dennis R., a U.S. Representative in Congress from the

State of Montana ........................................................................................... 4

Schweitzer, Hon. Brian, Governor, State of Montana ................................... 7

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 9

Soukup, Michael, Associate Director, Natural Resources Stewardship and

Science, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior ............ 12

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 13

Stevens, Tim, Yellowstone Program Manager, National Parks

Conservation Association ............................................................................. 50

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 52

(1)

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON YELLOWSTONE

NATIONAL PARK BISON

March 20, 2007

U.S. House of Representatives

Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands

Committee on Natural Resources

Washington, D.C.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m. in Room

1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Rau ́l M. Grijalva

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

Present: Representatives Grijalva, Bishop, Heller, Inslee, Kind,

and Rahall.

STATEMENT OF HON. RAU ́ L M. GRIJALVA, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA

Mr. GRIJALVA. The Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and

Public Lands will come to order. This is an oversight hearing on

Yellowstone National Park Bison. First let me just say I am

pleased to welcome my colleagues and our distinguished panelists

to this oversight hearing on the Yellowstone Park Bison. Many of

our witnesses have traveled great distances, and we appreciate

their efforts.

It is a particular pleasure to welcome the Representative from

Montana as well as the Governor of Montana. Welcome. Their passion and energy on behalf of their state are obvious, and their perspectives are certainly welcome today.

Management of national parks often raises complicated issues.

Bison management in and around Yellowstone National Park, however, continues to be more complicated than most issues. It is the

purpose of this oversight hearing, along with a GAO review requested by Chairman Rahall to explore the complexities of this

issue so that we as policymakers can make informed decisions as

we go forward. Ultimately our goal should be the same as those included in the interagency bison management plan when it was first

adopted in 2000.

Any legitimate threat of disease must be managed effectively but

of equal importance the slaughter of bison needs to stop. The management plan—as it has been implemented to date—appears to

have achieved the former but not the latter. That is one change

that needs to occur. Effective disease control and free-roaming

bison are not mutually exclusive. Given the enormous scientific and

2

financial resources of the Departments of Interior and Agriculture,

along with the resources and expertise of Montana, Wyoming and

Idaho, I am confident that bison and cattle can be managed in a

way that is not a death sentence for either species.

We look forward to our witnesses’ insights regarding the challenges we face in achieving these goals, and I would now recognize

Mr. Bishop for any opening statements he may have.

STATEMENT OF HON. ROB BISHOP, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF UTAH

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. I have

to admit with the myriad of troubles that are besetting the national parks and our forests and public lands, it is a bit unsettling

that we are devoting time today to readdress an issue that has

driven us much by politics as it is by science. As it pertains to the

management in the past of bison in Yellowstone National Park, on

several occasions members of the Resources Committee have

sought to prohibit the National Park Service from actively managing the bison population in Yellowstone by offering limitation

amendments—which is the absolutely worst form of legislative policy—on the ‘‘must pass’’ appropriations bill.

Even with that being said, I look forward to listening to today’s

witnesses. I appreciate Congressman Denny Rehberg being here.

As a rancher and former member of this committee and a Representative of the State of Montana, he understands better than

anyone in Washington this issue and impact of the policies which

are being advocated by some of the witnesses here today will have

on the agriculture-dependent communities in his district. If this

Subcommittee is to give deference to anyone when it comes to public lands issues, it should be Congressman Rehberg.

It is also my privilege to welcome Dr. Charles Kay from Utah

State University. Among other things his testimony notes the historical records of 20 different expeditions into Yellowstone between

1835 and 1876. These are the expeditions which reported seeing

bison only three times, none of which were in the present day

boundaries of the Park itself. Dr. Kay is a preeminent and well-recognized expert on the management issues impacting Yellowstone

National Park and similar park property in Canada. He also happens to live in my district and work in my district which is why

I have to be really nice to him. So I welcome Dr. Kay and thank

him for being here.

I also appreciate Governor Schweitzer visiting us one more time.

I certainly hope you have a good lieutenant Governor back there

in Montana keeping the state running in your absence. I appreciate

you being here. In fact, the last time you were here we noted how

the western states—those 13 public land states in the west—have

about 50 percent of their land owned by the Federal government.

I note that Montana has probably the best deal in the bunch.

You have only 28 percent of your land owned by the Federal government as opposed to 70 in my state, 90 in Nevada. You know you

have the better opportunity of funding your education, building

your economy there. So I am going to be interested to see how you

play this good hand that has been dealt to you up there in Montana as opposed to the rest of the west.

3

It is interesting to note that Yellowstone National Park comprises 2.2 million acres, and is larger than the combined land area

of the entire states of Delaware and Rhode Island, and if that is

not enough land area to manage the bison herd, then we are never

going to find a solution. I fear the issue of bison leaving the Park

is being used by some as a pretext to expand the Park, acquire

additional Federal lands for habitat or control the already limited

private property in the west.

Further, I can understand why the bison are leaving the Park.

Since the reintroduction of the wolf in the Park, an animal which

makes a pretty picture on the cover of brochures, but when they

take down and devour an animal, it is a gruesome and brutal sight.

If I were a bison, I would want to leave the Park too.

Mr. Chairman, I would hope that as part of today’s hearing we

will look at ways in which we address the management issues impacting Yellowstone National Park, such as controlling the bison

herd at a manageable level, protecting the grazing rights of current

permittees, assuring the multi use and accesses that are available.

Hopefully we can also rediscover what worked historically in controlling the size of the herd and the control of the disease itself.

We should also touch on the issue of elk, equally problematic,

and the issue of brucellosis control. We should not use this hearing

to advocate views espoused by fringe groups but further we must

not permit the bison herds of Yellowstone to jeopardize the livelihood of local ranchers. These ranchers rely on the public lands

through grazing permits to sustain their livestock. Ranchers are

the real environmentalists. They have to be to survive, and they

may indeed—as one will testify—be the only link to open space

preservation in the future. With that I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I look forward to the witnesses.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. At this point let me turn

to the Chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Rahall,

Mr. Chairman, for any opening comments he might have.

STATEMENT OF HON. NICK J. RAHALL, II, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, Chairman Grijalva. I appreciate your

having these hearings today and allowing me the opportunity to

say a quick word. I believe we can all agree that the bison is a

symbol of America. Like the monuments on our National Mall or

like the dome of the Capitol, the bison is an American icon. These

magnificent beasts are woven into the fabric of our culture, not to

mention being sewn onto the fabric of every uniform worm by an

employee of the Department of Interior.

After a century of wanton slaughter, we have a small herd in

Yellowstone National Park, the last remaining example of the pure

bred, free-roaming bison left in this country. Is it any wonder then

that the American public periodically looks on in horror at footage

of employees of the U.S. Department of Interior participating in the

slaughter of Yellowstone bison?

The general public is under the impression that these animals

are being sheltered and protected by the Federal government, not

rounded up and shot, and the obvious question is why? Why the

Department of Interior is murdering its beloved mascot? We are

4

told that it is due to the threat of disease. During the harsh winter

months, bison migrate out of the Yellowstone National Park to

lower elevations in a desperate attempt to avoid starving to death.

Once they leave the Park, we are told they can come into contact

with cattle grazing on public and private land, and some of the

bison may carry a disease which can be dangerous to cows. But

here is the critical point. Here is the critical point. The transfer of

this disease from bison to cattle has never happened in the wild.

Has never happened in the wild. Never—and I rarely use that

word never, if ever.

The slaughter of bison is not required in order to manage the

threat of disease. Slaughter is not management. It is an approach

from a bygone era, and has no place in a time of rapid scientific

and economic progress. We are capable of more ingenuity and more

compassion if we are willing to try. So that is why once again today

we welcome the Governor of the State of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, before this committee, and I would say to my colleague, Mr.

Bishop, I think he can do two things at once, and govern the state

from here in Washington as effectively as back home on the home

front, and from him I look forward to hearing bold initiatives to

end the status quo.

Indeed during July of 2003, as has already been referenced in

statements made, I offered an amendment on the House Floor to

halt the National Park Service participation in the slaughter. It

was narrowly defeated during one of those infamous votes under

which the then Republican majority held the vote open long enough

until enough arms could be twisted to change the initial outcome

and to achieve the desired result of that majority.

That vote was a harbinger of what will come. The status quo is

no longer sufficient. So I conclude by saying, Mr. Chairman, it is

my hope that through this oversight hearing you have called today,

along with the results of the GAO review that I requested, we will

move on to a new path, a path that values both the bison and the

cattle. Thank you.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just remind

our three panels that testimony is limited to five minutes. Any

statement that you might have will be made part of the record in

its entirety, and with that let me welcome our colleague, Mr.

Rehberg. Congressman Rehberg, welcome, and if you would like to

begin your testimony at this point.

STATEMENT OF HON. DENNIS REHBERG, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MONTANA

Mr. REHBERG. I will, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving

me the opportunity once more to appear before your committee. If

my leadership had given me the waiver that I had asked for, I

would be sitting on the dais with you, and I would not have to keep

asking permission to talk about the issues that are so very important to Montana. To Mr. Bishop, thank you as well for your kind

remarks, and Mr. Rahall, thank you for giving me one more opportunity to come in and tell you why you are wrong.

I will suggest that the State of Montana is in good hands when

Governor Schweitzer is here because his Lieutenant Governor is a

Republican, and so we feel a lot more comfortable. Sometimes I feel

5

like I spend more time in Montana than he does, and he is in

Washington more than I but we will move along to something that

we think is very important in Montana.

I sometimes jokingly say in Montana, do you know why the

Internet is so successful? Because the government has not figured

out how to screw it up yet. If you mess with this memorandum of

understanding, you will be screwing up a very complex management opportunity to eradicate brucellosis and do all the things that

came together in a memorandum of understanding that was signed

by many government entities in the year 2005.

What does the former Chairman of the Republican Party, Mark

Racicot, Bruce Babbitt and Dan Glickman have in common? Probably not a lot but under the Clinton Administration, they finally

came to a 20-year decision to try and end the bickering, try and

end the lawsuits, try to end the emotional outbursts that occurred

from time to time, sometimes semi-violent, by coming together with

an understanding that something needed to be done to try and

manage the situation having to do with the bison in Yellowstone

Park.

Oftentimes I feel like there are those around the country that see

Montana through the eyes of either ‘‘Blazing Saddles’’ or ‘‘A River

Runs Through It’’ but I can tell you it is very difficult to manage

natural resources, and as a result of that difficulty it is also very

emotional. You get the polarization on both sides. That is what we

had moving into the year 2000.

We had a lawsuit. We had a counter lawsuit. We had a counter

counter lawsuit. We had threats of violence and guts being thrown

on our former Governor, and ultimately we all came to a very emotional decision that it was time to lay those differences aside and

come to an agreement. It was signed by Dan Glickman of the Department of Agriculture, Bruce Babbitt of the Department of Interior, and Mark Racicot, our Governor.

I am struck a little bit by the fact that missing from the panels

discussing today are the Native Americans who were a major part

of the decisions, and are a major part of the management opportunities. This memorandum, this understanding and this decision

was a compromise that was agreed to by the Courts as a result of

Court-appointed mediation. This was not something that was just

thrown together to slaughter our bison.

What did it accomplish? It determined the size of the herd. Now

I hate to tell you but when you get a male buffalo and a female

buffalo together, you are going to have baby buffalo. It is just a fact

of natural life. Ultimately you have to make the determination

what is the carrying capacity for the betterment and the health of

the Park? Ultimately you will have too many buffalo. There is no

other way than to move those bison off that Park, and ultimately

there is a limitation on how many buffalo that other tribes and entities can take. You are not going to end the slaughter for practical

reasons, for natural reasons.

The second is defining a boundary line, making a determination

where do we want to limit the opportunity or the ability for these

bison to go? The third is public safety. Little known fact. In the

Center for Disease Control, anthrax is number one. Brucellosis is

6

number two. It is called undulant fever in humans. You get it. You

keep it. It never goes away.

Protection of private property. Fact of life: In America, private

property does still matter in spite of the feeling of some people

within the Federal government that it is just a temporary holding

spot for Federal property or Federal purchase. Agency actions were

supposed to have shown the eventual elimination of brucellosis in

Yellowstone Park.

Unfortunately for us with the actions of the continuing resolution

under the new Congress, one of the earmarks that was lost to us

was the continuing vaccine research at Montana State University

for brucellosis vaccine, something that I hope to try and rectify in

this upcoming budgetary process. Protection of livestock. Make no

mistake. Perhaps it has not been proven that a cow has aborted as

a result of brucellosis but it is a fact they do. Because we are not

out in nature, because we do not watch the connection between the

cattle and the bison does not mean it does not exist. It is just that

we have not seen it occur.

It does cause spontaneous abortion in cattle, and the brucellosisfree status of the State of Montana I cannot begin to tell you the

economic devastation that would occur to our livestock industry,

and to our economy, to the State of Montana, if we were to in any

way, shape or form jeopardize our brucellosis-free status.

We had a problem in the year 1988 in Yellowstone Park. It was

called the let-it-burn policy. It was a failed experiment by the

Federal government to allow 75 percent of Yellowstone to burn. A

similar failed policy would be a let-them-roam-free-outside-thePark-in-a-diseased-state policy. It would be every bit as folly as the

let-it-burn policy.

I have got an answer. Why do you not fix your herd? If you really

want to do something for the bison, if it is the icon, if you want

to wear it on your shoulder, if you want to think of Montana as

the visions that you get with ‘‘A River Runs Through It,’’ then do

something about your herd.

Get in and fix it. Do not let diseased herds walk around the Park

because you would not allow us as livestock producers to have infected herds in amongst your wildlife. You would not let us

overgraze your park and your Federal properties. Where do we find

the philosophy that allows the opportunity for your diseased herd

to overgraze our park, your diseased herd to move into Montana,

and I hope you will listen very seriously to the ideas that the Governor has.

My final point in this record of decision that was signed December 20, 2000. It suggests any actions of Congress not having the

broad support of various agencies and parties could cause a major

setback in the progress that has been made. This could have a devastating impact on Yellowstone buffalo herd.

Any actions this Congress decides to take to try and undo something that we think is technically sound and legally defensible will

have a major impact, and this is where we have to decide, ladies

and gentlemen, are we going to allow sound science to manage our

parks or are we going to allow political science to manage our

parks? I hope you find for the former. Thank you.

7

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, Mr. Congressman. I appreciate that,

and let me just begin with a couple of general questions, and you

referenced the question that I am leading to is that you referenced

the interagency bison management plan that was adopted in 2000,

and the parties it appears to me clearly anticipated that much or

even all the private land within the area covered by the plan would

be acquired or at least any grazing on the land would be bought

out by the winter of 2002, 2003.

Seven years later that has not happened, and just for my own

edification, do you support that acquisition intent in the management plan or at least the acquisition of grazing rights so that the

cattle would no longer be on the land right outside the Park?

Mr. REHBERG. I think first you must look at the management of

the Park itself. Clearly as one of the people who does in fact do this

for a living, I believe in herding, I in fact have a herd myself of

2,800 goats with a herder, and the reason I do that is so that I

could adequately and efficiently move the herd around to where the

grass is available, and adequately and efficiently move it around to

where the water is available.

Now we are not going to go into wholesale water development

within Yellowstone Park but I can tell you it is very poorly managed as far as the grazing components of those grazing animals,

whether they are elk or bison. You do not have the ability in the

wildlife situation to necessarily herd animals such as wolves and

elk but it is a lot easier to have the ability to herd bison. I think

you should actively look at that before you start the wholesale purchase of private property or the elimination from the grazing opportunities for those lands that surround the park.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. I appreciate that. Mr. Bishop, any

questions or any other members of the Committee have any question for the Congressman? OK. Congressman, you are welcome to

join us here at the dais for the rest of the hearing.

Mr. REHBERG. I will do that, and I thank you very much.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Call the next panel, please.

[Pause.]

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you very much, and let me begin this panel

with our distinguished guest to provide his perspective to the Committee on this very important question, the Governor of the State

of Montana, Governor Schweitzer. Please.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. BRIAN SCHWEITZER,

GOVERNOR, STATE OF MONTANA

Governor SCHWEITZER. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bishop,

it is nice to ride with you on the airplane from Salt Lake City. As

you know when you leave Montana, you either go through Salt

Lake or Minneapolis, and Salt Lake is usually the way that I go.

So we leave a little money behind.

Mr. BISHOP. We appreciate you coming through Salt Lake.

Governor SCHWEITZER. And Mr. Chairman Rahall, it is good to

be back. Thank you for inviting me in.

Mr. RAHALL. We are working on bigger airports in West Virginia

so you will be able to stop there.

Governor SCHWEITZER. Well there is a connection. I come before

you not only as the Governor of Montana but the first cattleman

8

to be Governor of Montana since 1919. I come also as an agricultural scientist. There are a few principles at work here. The first

principle is this. We in Montana do not intend to lose our brucellosis-free status. That is important to us.

Because of the management of wildlife in the greater Yellowstone

area, both Wyoming and Idaho, our neighbors, have lost their brucellosis-free status during the last couple of years. Montana does

not intend to join them. The current management plan assures

that it is only a matter of time before we would lose our brucellosis-free status. I would agree with Congressman Rehberg that

brucellosis can be transferred from bison to cattle. The bison after

all managed to get brucellosis from cattle to begin with. So this disease will transfer back and forth.

I will just touch on the science that occurs in transferring the

brucellosis. Some think of it as a venereal disease because there

are abortions associated with it. It is not. When an animal has brucellosis and she gets the brucellosis at a young age, she will likely

abort her first offspring before full maturity, maybe at five, six

months.

That aborted fetus will lie on the ground or maybe the afterbirth.

Another ruminant will come along and as cattle or sheep or goats

or deer or antelope or elk are want to do, they will use their eyes

and they will use their nose. They will look down. They will see

something, and they will smell it. There is where the transmission

occurs. If you have infected buffalo occupying the same space as

livestock that are grazing, you will likely have a transmission at

some period of time.

We have about 3,600 head of buffalo. I call them buffalo. You

might call them bison. In Montana we use the terms interchangeably. Buffalo, 3,600 head of buffalo. Up to 40 percent of them have

some level of brucellosis. They have a positive titer. It does not necessarily mean they have brucellosis but they have a positive titer.

They would test positive for brucellosis.

So point one, we do not want to transfer brucellosis to Montana.

We do not want our cattle to lose our brucellosis-free status. Point

number two, you need to force the Department of Interior and the

Department of Agriculture to work together. The Department of Interior has these buffalo in the Park who when we have tough winters move into Montana and put our cattle at risk. You have the

Department of Livestock, USDA, through APHIS, tells us that if

only two herds turn up positive for brucellosis the entire state

would lose our brucellosis-free status.

Now, I have for you a map of the Yellowstone area, and the small

areas where bison are want to move out to when they are starving

to death. Now, just so you know the area is about 10,000 acres that

the bison move into. Now, if you were to compare 10,000 acres to

the 90 million acres plus that Montana has as a whole, that is a

footprint approximately the size of New York City on the entire

United States.

So we are placing the two-plus million head of cattle in Montana

at risk of losing their brucellosis-free status over about 700 head

of cattle that occupy this space some short periods during the year.

There are only a few livestock producers who live in the area, who

own cattle, and keep them for 12 months. One of the largest

9

producers—in fact the largest producer—is the Royal Teton Ranch

outlined in the darkest orange. I think some of their representatives are here today.

We, at the State of Montana, are negotiating with them today to

buy out the right to raise cattle, sheep or goats on this land. If they

want to raise horses or mules, that is fine, and we would compensate them. One solution, one permanent solution, would be for

this small area—these small footprints—this part of Montana

which would be the equivalent of New York City on the footprint

of the entire United States, would be for Congress once and for all

to buy the rights from private landowners so that they can continue to raise horses or mules on that land but not raise cattle so

that we do not have buffalo and cattle occupying the same space.

What we have been doing over the last numbers of years when

buffalo leave the Park on the tough winters, we chase them back

and forth, and you pay for it. About a million bucks a year to chase

those starving buffalo back into the Park. We use snowmobiles. We

use helicopters. We use folks on horses, and it does not make any

sense. We have had buffalo on the same space in the same pasture

with cattle during the last few years. That is a recipe for a wreck.

If you are not willing to buy out and pay for it, there is a second

option you should consider, and that is to create a buffer zone

around the Park where we would have 100 percent test of the cattle that enter and leave. If we have 100 percent test in this small

area around the Park and one, two, three of those herds do turn

up positive for brucellosis, all of the two million cattle in Montana

would not be at risk. Only that small area.

Now, the third option is active management of the bison in the

Park. Active management decreasing the numbers of bison or do

exactly what this interagency bison management plan was supposed to do which gave no tools to eradicate brucellosis once and

for all. You know Congressman Rehberg even mentioned about the

plan, and you will hear from some other people who will say oh

boy, do not depart from the plan. Well the plan said simply that

the goal is to eradicate brucellosis. Well I am a cattleman. I know

how to eradicate brucellosis. You round them all up. You test them.

You slaughter the positives, and you vaccinate. That is the way you

eradicate brucellosis.

We do not have the resolve to do that. There is nothing in the

plan that would give us an opportunity to eradicate brucellosis. So

barring the willingness of Congress to eradicate brucellosis and to

do the actual things that you would need to do to eradicate brucellosis, give us the tools in Montana so that it makes sense for our

cattle industry, so that it makes sense for the bison. Give them either a little more room to leave the Park or give us a buffer zone

around or do your job and leave us alone.

Either have the Department of Interior work with the Department of Agriculture or give us real tools in Montana so that we do

not lose our brucellosis-free status. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Governor Schweitzer follows:]

Statement of The Honorable Brian Schweitzer,

Governor, State of Montana

Chairman Grijalva and Ranking Member Bishop, I thank you for inviting me to

address this subcommittee, and affording me the opportunity to share my thoughts

10

about the management of Yellowstone National Park Bison. Few issues have been

as contentious to Montanans as bison management near Yellowstone National Park.

As the last vestiges of our Great Plains herds, Park bison are important to our heritage, and to the nation. Unfortunately, they also represent one of the few remaining reservoirs of brucellosis in the nation.

I have taken on this issue not because I have in mind a quick fix, or because I

have all the answers, but because sustainable solutions are long overdue. I have

hoped to refocus our collective attention.

The livestock industry in Montana and nationwide has gone to great lengths, at

substantial costs, to eradicate brucellosis from cattle. Montana remains brucellosisfree, but in the last 2 years Idaho and Wyoming have both dealt with the loss of

their brucellosis-free status. As a result, livestock producers in Wyoming and Idaho

have been subject to additional time-consuming and costly measures when they ship

cattle from their states. Recently Wyoming regained its status, but even as Idaho

works to do the same, no clear plan exists to prevent a recurring situation, and it

may be simply a matter of time before Montana loses its status.

My priority is to protect Montana’s brucellosis-free status. Having been involved

in the cattle industry my entire life, and particularly in the seed-stock business, I

understand the intricacies of the disease and the necessity of remaining brucellosisfree.

Longstanding and conflicting policies at the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and

Interior have caused the federal government to be less than helpful. Not only do

Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho deal with the real threats of brucellosis to our cattle

industry, but we often receive a black eye when we are forced to take management

actions to prevent potential transmission of brucellosis when bison enter Montana.

From 1985 to 1990, Montana culled bison entering the state through a hunt that

really more closely resembled a firing line, where government agents pointed out

the bison to be shot. The public outcry led to a halt of bison hunting that lasted

throughout the twelve years of the administrations of then Governors Marc Racicot

and Judy Martz. The bison herd continued to grow, and subsequent management

and legal actions led to a settlement with federal agencies that resulted in the current Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP). When the IBMP was crafted in

the year 2000, about 2,500 bison occupied the Park. Last year—several mild winters

later, and before the Park sent almost 1,000 animals to slaughter—the count was

estimated at 4,900 bison. The population estimate now stands at 3,600 head.

The IBMP establishes zones on the north and west sides of the Park where bison

are tolerated outside Park boundaries. The plan designates hazing, capture, testing,

and slaughter as management tools when bison leave the Park. In recent years almost $1 million per year has been spent on these activities. The Plan also calls for

the eradication of brucellosis when research someday provides the means to do so.

Principally, however, the Plan calls for temporal and spatial separation of bison and

cattle.

Plan proponents have tried to assure me that the IBMP protects Montana’s brucellosis-free status, providing a sort of federal guarantee from USDA-APHIS. Unfortunately, the disease status activities in Wyoming and Idaho provide little in the

way of comfort. The fact remains that Montana will lose its brucellosis-free status

if two herds are found to be infected. In other words, loss of status is caused by

infection, and is not prevented by the existence of a document.

On the ground, such assurance is far from secure. Bison can and have moved

many miles into Montana overnight, presenting the possibility of commingling with

cattle. The result is a situation where cattle and bison occupy the same space, at

the same time. Additionally, when bison are captured in the Park, many are

shipped live to Montana slaughterhouses hundreds of miles away. Possible roadway

accidents, careless offal disposal methods, and tissues carried off by scavengers become a concern. From a risk management perspective, we must do better than the

present Plan.

State veterinarians in the 19 western states agree. A year ago I received a resolution from their organization, the Western States Livestock Health Association. It advocates reducing commingling through spatial and temporal separation, quarantine

measures if commingling occurs, and contemplates additional requirements and

sanctions on the three states if their recommendations are not implemented.

Despite these facts, I still hear some in the livestock industry say we’re doing

enough to manage risk. Alternatively, they call simply for the eradication of brucellosis. Who can disagree? Eradication is a goal shared by every party interested in

Park bison management. It is lauded—even demanded—as a solution, yet we lack

an effective vaccine, and I have yet to see an eradication plan from the federal

government.

11

The National Park Service today insists on minimal management of bison in the

Park, despite a long history of intensive management activities within its boundaries, including captivity, feeding, live removals, lethal removals, and regulated

hunts. Similarly, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service today insists on strict, state-wide application of its ‘‘two-herds-and-you’re-out’’ brucellosis

policy for the cattle industry in the three states that border the Park, even though

the risk of transmission affects only a very small geographic region. This is despite

the fact that USDA has historically allowed the use of smaller, regionalized management areas for disease control.

Past suggestions for bison management have included a test and slaughter program that would eradicate brucellosis in Park bison; a specially-managed hunt inside Park boundaries; creative fencing of Park boundaries. Each of these notions

presents problems, and yet we have seen no forward-looking ideas from the federal

government.

Hope for mild winters seems to be the only long range federal plan, along with

the expensive and ongoing hazing, capture, testing, and slaughter actions when

bison breach Park boundaries. Meanwhile, cattle producers pray for no more brucellosis transmissions or disease status downgrades from the federal government. But

hopes and prayers do not constitute a plan.

Last July I sent a letter to USDA Secretary Johanns and Interior Secretary

Kempthorne to encourage them to resolve their agencies’ conflicting approaches, and

to work with us to develop realistic and effective long-term management. Let’s just

say that the response was not overwhelming.

The State of Montana has begun to explore the elements of eventual solutions.

For the first time in 15 years, in 2005 we conducted a public bison hunt. It was

a fair-chase hunt. Big game herds across the West are managed through hunting,

and it is a part of our heritage and tradition. The first Montanans hunted bison for

at least 12,000 years, which is why 16 of the 140 hunting permits currently available go to Montana’s Indian tribes. Our state joins Alaska, Arizona, South Dakota,

Utah, and Wyoming in managing bison through hunting.

Montana’s hunts over the last two years have been successful, but hunting is

merely one of the tools available for bison management. It can be used even more

effectively over time, given more experience and adequate area to maintain a fairchase hunt.

To explore other solutions, I have begun meeting with affected landowners near

the Park, agricultural and conservation organizations, and others interested in bison

management. I have proposed ideas for maintaining better separation between bison

and the approximately 700 units of cattle near the Park in order to protect the status of the 2.5 million head of cattle throughout the rest of the state.

One idea is the establishment of a small, specialized area near the Park where

we would apply stricter management protocols for cattle—100% test in, 100% test

out. In exchange, USDA-APHIS would agree that Montana would not lose its brucellosis-free status should two herds become infected inside that designated area. The

intent is not to increase the area where bison may wander outside the Park, but

instead to better manage cattle in the area, and to utilize geography to control bison

from December to March, when they are commonly on the move. Beyond this area

a ‘‘drop dead’’ zone would exist as it does now. Each spring, all bison would still

be moved back into the Park.

Another idea is the negotiation of grazing leases with private landowners near the

Park that compensate them for grazing only non-ruminant animals until brucellosis

is eradicated—or even permanent purchase of grazing rights or other management

agreements that landowners find reasonable. Whatever the mechanism, agreements

would be voluntary, and the federal government would need to provide fair-plus

compensation. The amount of private land involved likely would not exceed 9,000

or 10,000 acres. Montana has 94 million total acres, so we’re talking about an area

that makes up about one ten-thousandth of the land area of the state. For perspective, that is an area the size of New York City on a map of the lower 48 states.

To these ends, we have been involved in productive negotiations with Royal Teton

Ranch, the largest cattle operation on the north side of the Park.

An urgent necessity is the funding of further research into a more effective brucellosis vaccine, and into more effective vaccine delivery methods. The Park Service

has recently completed studies confirming the efficacy of remote vaccine delivery,

but vaccine effectiveness lags. RB51 is credited with 65-70% effectiveness in cattle.

Novel vaccines exist, including ‘‘RB51-plus,’’ developed at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, and ‘‘Strain 82,’’ developed at the All-Russian

Veterinary Institute. USDA funding for the National Brucellosis Eradication Program should be prioritized for further research for bison, cattle, and elk. Ongoing

quarantine studies should continue as well. But again, the federal government must

12

provide the resources necessary to dramatically speed up disease research and development.

There are almost certainly other good ideas. Just as I have proposed ideas for

practical solutions to this seemingly intractable issue, I have invited others to do

the same. I will continue to work with the livestock industry, conservationists, and

the federal agencies that bear responsibility. We must provide real risk management for Montana’s cattle industry and manage bison with the respect they deserve.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, Governor. Mr. Soukup, your testimony

please.

STATEMENT OF MIKE SOUKUP, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Mr. SOUKUP. Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee,

thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to present

the Department of the Interior’s views on Yellowstone National

Park bison. Accompanying me today is Suzanne Lewis, superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. My testimony has been

submitted so I will just offer a brief summary.

Bison are an integral part of a visitor’s experience in the natural

system of Yellowstone National Park. Today the Yellowstone bison

herd is the nation’s only continuously free-roaming herd, a small

but precious genetically true remnant of the vast herds of bison

that once roamed this continent. While many consider the bison

emblematic of our nation’s natural heritage, as a species it has not

fared well.

From populations estimated in the tens of millions by the end of

the 19th century, only 200 remain. Today evidence of cross breeding with cattle is common in the genetics of most domestic and

many public herds. Cattle are also likely responsible for the transmission of the exotic disease brucellosis to bison, elk and other

wildlife. Brucella bordis, the causative bacteria in brucellosis, was

first observed in 1917, and it has been a vaccine problem ever

since.

The dilemma of the largest free-roaming bison herd that carries

a contagious disease in a landscape where working ranches graze

their cattle has not led to many instances of finding common

ground or reasonable compromise over the decades. Perhaps the

best example of cooperation—although precipitated by a lawsuit—

has been the interagency bison management plan signed by the

Governor of the State of Montana and the Secretaries of Interior

and Agriculture in December 2000.

This plan was based on nearly a decade of negotiations and a

long, but necessary search for a common scientifically based understanding of the issue. The plan includes a step-wise approach and

a commitment to adaptive management that allows for plan improvement resulting from observation, experience and new information. Key provisions include an overall commitment to the longterm preservation of this free-roaming herd, as well as protection

of the brucellosis-free status of the State of Montana.

Major elements are cooperation, management of diseased risk,

increasing tolerance of bison outside the park, acquisition of grazing rights, management of disease risk, increasing tolerance outside the Park when and where feasible, and significantly emphasis

on the development of tools such as effective vaccines and remote

13

delivery mechanisms that can provide for the eventual elimination

of brucellosis from Yellowstone bison in a fashion that is fully protective of this national treasure.

All sides in this issue voice concerns about this plan. Progress is

being made in some areas certainly faster than others. For example, it has been difficult for the National Park Service to participate when bison are sent to slaughter in harsh winters when many

bison leave the Park. Nevertheless, Yellowstone National Park has

participated responsibly in carrying out this plan with confidence

that the Yellowstone bison population remains robust.

The Department of the Interior remains convinced that these lethal actions can be adaptively minimized through greater opportunities for spacial and temporal separation of cattle and bison and

eventually rendered unnecessary. With the development of proper

tools that is underway, it may be possible to then plan for the

eventual elimination of this nonnative disease and the risk of its

transmission without compromising the nature and future of the

Yellowstone bison.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks. Superintendent

Lewis and I will be pleased to respond to the Subcommittee’s questions. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Soukup follows:]

Statement of Michael Soukup, Associate Director, Natural Resource

Stewardship and Science, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the

Interior

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity

to appear before you today to present the Department of the Interior’s views on Yellowstone National Park Bison. Accompanying me today is Suzanne Lewis, Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park.

In December 2000, after nearly a decade of negotiation and planning, the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior, and the Governor of Montana signed Records of

Decision to implement the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) for the

State of Montana and Yellowstone National Park. The IBMP directs the National

Park Service (NPS), Gallatin National Forest, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to cooperate

with the State of Montana in implementing management operations to preserve the

largest wild, free-ranging population of bison while minimizing the risk of brucellosis disease transmission between bison and cattle. Brucellosis is a contagious bacterial disease that can infect domestic animals, wildlife, and humans. Brucellosis

was first found in the Yellowstone bison herd in 1917 and was most likely acquired

from domestic cattle. Potential transmission of brucellosis back to cattle from bison

has been a concern of the cattle industry, and the Montana cattle industry has

worked hard to maintain brucellosis-free status for its cattle herds.

Through various adaptive management techniques, the IBMP is designed to

progress through a series of management steps that initially allow only bison that

test negative for brucellosis on winter range areas outside the national park, but

will eventually allow limited numbers of any bison on public land within management areas covered by the IBMP during winter when cattle are not present.

The agency partners conducted reviews of the IBMP in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

These reviews have identified and implemented several adaptive management adjustments to the IBMP including increased tolerance for bull bison outside the park,

and increased flexibility of bison hazing. Additionally, a bison vaccination program

has been initiated for captured bison.

The NPS is currently developing an Environmental Impact Statement for comprehensive remote bison vaccination that will not require capture of bison. Spatial

and temporal separation of bison and cattle has been strengthened by improved

interagency cooperation during hazing and capture operations. The State of Montana is collaborating with APHIS to develop protocols for certifying some Yellowstone bison as brucellosis free so they can be used to improve the genetics in other

federal and State bison populations. In 2005, Montana reauthorized a public hunt

of Yellowstone bison on lands adjacent to the park.

14

When the IBMP went into effect in 2000, the bison population was approximately

2,500 animals. Currently, the bison population is estimated at approximately 3,600

animals. During winter 2005-2006, the bison population was reduced from 4,900 to

3,400 when, after the park conducted numerous non-lethal hazing operations along

the northern boundary, and when hazing became infeasible and unsafe to prevent

bison from leaving the park’s northern boundary and entering private lands occupied by cattle, the park captured 1,249 bison. Of these, 87 were provided for approved research, 305 were released back into the park, 849 were consigned to

slaughter, and there were 8 mortalities inside the capture facility. As happens every

winter, many additional bison die of natural causes including predation. Sending so

many bison to slaughter under the IBMP was difficult for the Park Service, but capture of these bison was necessary to prevent commingling and probable disease

transmission to cattle grazing on lands adjacent to parks.

In an effort to progress to the later, more flexible bison management stages established under the IBMP, the NPS continues to support the leadership of the State

of Montana to conduct negotiations that could lead to acquisition of cattle grazing

rights on lands adjacent to the park and thus provide additional habitat for bison

outside the park. The Royal Teton Ranch (RTR), USDA Forest Service, and the

Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks are currently in renewed discussions about new opportunities for grazing rights acquisitions on part or all of RTR

lands. While the NPS is not a principal party in these negotiations, at the request

of the State of Montana, park staff participated in discussions about the potential

value of all or part of these lands as bison habitat. The RTR retains grazing rights,

where they currently graze approximately 120 head of cattle, on their private property adjacent to Yellowstone National Park as provided for under the 1999 land acquisition and conservation easement agreement.

The NPS continues to meet with IBMP partners, private landowners, and the

State of Montana to seek opportunities to advance these discussions, and to identify

and implement progressive and more bison-friendly adaptive management approaches.

Bison management actions under the IBMP have not had an adverse impact on

long-term bison population viability. This bison population exhibits a robust, longterm population growth of 8-13 percent per year. The IBMP includes bison population management objectives that are intended to ensure long-term conservation of

this unique bison population and their significant genetic variation. A decision by

the NPS to capture bison only arises when all other options are exhausted. Any subsequent decision to consign captured bison to slaughter is very difficult, and is influenced by an interest in minimizing captivity and human-dependence of these wild

bison as well as the requirements of the IBMP. Despite the periodic capture and

removal of some bison, the NPS believes that the IBMP is a successful long-term

strategy for safeguarding and protecting the Yellowstone bison population.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions you or other members of the Subcommittee may have.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, sir. With that, Deputy Administrator

Clifford please.

STATEMENT OF JOHN CLIFFORD, DVM, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, ANIMAL AND PLANET HEALTH INSPECTION

SERVICE

Mr. CLIFFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Dr. John

Clifford, and I am the Deputy Administrator for Veterinary Services with the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health

Inspection Service. I also serve as the Department’s chief veterinary officer for animal health. My agency’s role in the management

of Yellowstone National Park’s bison herd is to prevent the transmission of brucellosis, a serious bacterial disease of animals and a

threat to the health of livestock in the greater Yellowstone area.

USDA has been working for many years with the state and industry cooperators to eradicate brucellosis from domestic cattle and

bison herds. Our cooperative efforts have been highly successful.

Only two states, Idaho and Texas, are not classified as free of the

15

disease in domestic cattle and bison herds. The greater Yellowstone

area is the last known reservoir of brucellosis in wild elk and bison

in the United States. Surveillance testing of wild bison from the

Yellowstone herd indicates approximately 50 percent of the bison

in the Park have been exposed to and are potentially infected with

the disease.

This disease reservoir poses a risk to cattle that graze on lands

adjacent to the Park. There have been published reports and scientifically documented cases of bison transmitting brucellosis to

cattle under both range and experimental conditions. Transmission

can occur through direct contact between infected bison and noninfected cattle and if they are allowed to commingle on lands adjacent to the Park.

APHIS works with the states around the GYA, and the cattle industry, the Department of Interior’s National Park Service, and

Fish and Wildlife Services, to address the risks of brucellosis transmission from wildlife leaving the Park to cattle that graze in surrounding areas. Our sister agency within USDA, the U.S. Forest

Service, also plays a key role in managing the public lands on the

Gallatin National Forest adjacent to Yellowstone National Park in

Montana.

The current interagency bison management plan carefully balances the need to preserve the Yellowstone bison herd with the

need to prevent the spread of brucellosis from bison to cattle. The

plan relies on spacial and temporal separation of bison from cattle

that graze in areas surrounding the Park. As bison leave the Park,

management zones are used to monitor their movement and ensure

that the bison and cattle do not commingle.

Depending on the bison population size, there is an array of risk

management options to prevent transmission from brucellosis from

bison to cattle during the winter. USDA and the Department of Interior believe the next step is develop a long-term plan for the

elimination of brucellosis from GYA. We are in the early stages of

this process but fully acknowledge that any disease elimination

plan must maintain the wild and free-roaming bison and elk herds

in the Park.

We intend for this plan to be developed by disease and wildlife

management experts and to include public input. Once brucellosis

is eliminated from the GYA, bison and elk can roam more freely

without the need for brucellosis intervention strategies. USDA and

DOI will soon send a letter to our GYABC partners enclosing a

copy of an updated memorandum of understanding for signature

that commits the partners to working together to develop this disease elimination plan for GYA.

In the near term, management of the risk of disease transmission from wildlife to livestock is a prudent approach to maintaining the brucellosis-free status of the GYA states, and the longterm elimination of brucellosis from GYA wildlife along with the

protection of elk and bison populations will be our goal. Thank you

for the opportunity to testify this morning, and joining me at the

table will be Ms. Becky Heath, Forest Supervisor for the Gallatin

National Forest in Montana. We would be pleased to answer your

questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Clifford follows:]

16

Statement of Dr. John Clifford, Deputy Administrator for Veterinary

Services, Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), U.S. Department of Agriculture

Thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. My name is Dr. John

Clifford, and I am Deputy Administrator for Veterinary Services with the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

In this position, I also serve as USDA’s Chief Veterinary Officer.

My Agency’s role in the management of Yellowstone National Park’s bison herd

is to prevent the transmission of brucellosis, a serious bacterial disease of animals,

and a threat to the health of livestock in the Greater Yellowstone area. I’d like to

begin my testimony by providing information on the disease and the longstanding

efforts of USDA, States, industry, and other cooperators to eliminate it from cattle

in the United States.

Background on Brucellosis and the Cooperative State-Federal Eradication

Program

USDA has been working with State and industry cooperators to eradicate brucellosis for many years. The disease affects many species of animals, including humans, and is caused by the bacteria Brucella abortus. Cattle, bison, and elk are especially susceptible to the disease.

The Brucellosis Eradication Program was launched on a national scale in 1934,

and a cooperative effort among the Federal Government, States, and livestock producers began in 1954. All States participate in APHIS’ Cooperative State-Federal

Brucellosis Eradication Program and are assigned a brucellosis classification by

APHIS. These classifications—Class Free, Class A, Class B, and Class C—are based

on herd prevalence rates for the disease and require various levels of movement restrictions and surveillance activities. Most importantly to cattle producers, restrictions on moving cattle interstate become less stringent as a State approaches or

achieves Class Free classification.

The program, which is predicated on cattle slaughter surveillance and milk ring

test surveillance, has been highly effective. In 1956, 124,000 affected herds were

found in the United States as a result of testing. By 1992, this number had dropped

to 700, and as of March 13, 2007, no known affected domestic cattle or bison herds

remained in the entire United States

Annual brucellosis-related losses due to aborted fetuses, reduced breeding efficiency, and lowered milk production have decreased from more than $400 million

in 1952 to almost zero today. Currently 48 States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin

Islands are free of brucellosis. Idaho and Texas—with herd infection rates of less

than 0.1 percent in each State—both hold Class A classification. States with Class

A classification must demonstrate there are no infected herds within a two year period to obtain Free classification status. Idaho and Texas are currently in the qualifying stage for Free classification. USDA is hopeful the Cooperative State-Federal

Brucellosis Eradication Program will achieve the goal of nationwide elimination of

this disease from domestic cattle and domestic bison within the next year.

Brucellosis in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA)

In 2004, Wyoming lost its brucellosis Class-free classification due to the detection

of four brucellosis-affected cattle herds that were most likely infected by elk from

the GYA. After additional surveillance testing and epidemiological investigation,

APHIS approved Wyoming’s Class Free classification in September 2006.

In November 2005, two cattle herds in Idaho were found infected with brucellosis

and the State subsequently lost its Class Free classification. Again, these infections

are also most likely linked epidemiologically to brucellosis-infected elk from the

GYA. Idaho will be eligible to regain Class Free classification after completing a 12-

consecutive month period of finding no additional brucellosis-affected herds, provided all other brucellosis Class Free requirements have been met.

Clearly, these recent situations involving brucellosis in Wyoming and Idaho illustrate that the GYA is the last known reservoir of brucellosis in wild elk and/or wild

bison in the United States. Surveillance testing of wild bison from the Yellowstone

National Park herd indicates that approximately 50 percent of the bison in the Park

have been exposed to and are potentially infected with the disease. Also, all elk

(100,000) and bison (5,000) across the 20,000,000 acre GYA are know to be exposed

at variable levels to brucellosis. There have also been published reports and scientifically documented cases of bison transmitting brucellosis to cattle under both range

and experimental conditions. It is generally accepted that transmission can occur

through direct contact between infected bison and non-infected cattle if they are allowed to co-mingle on lands adjacent to the Park. Transmission could also occur if

17

susceptible animals come into contact with aborted fetuses and afterbirth that carry

the disease.

Addressing Brucellosis in the GYA

As the Agency responsible for protecting the U.S. cattle industry from serious diseases like brucellosis, APHIS is responsible for working with the GYA States, the

cattle industry, and the National Park Service to address the risk of brucellosis

transmission from wildlife leaving the Park to cattle that graze in surrounding

areas. Our sister agency within USDA, the U.S. Forest Service, also plays a key role

in managing the public lands on the Gallatin National Forest, adjacent to Yellowstone National Park in Montana.

We acknowledge that this is a complex issue on a number of fronts. For our part

in the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee (GYIBC), USDA has

pledged its full cooperation to protect the economic viability of the livestock industry

by eliminating brucellosis while sustaining populations of free-ranging wild elk and

bison in the GYA.

The only way we can accomplish these dual goals is to continue cooperating with

Federal and State agencies in the management of the livestock and wild bison and

elk in the GYA. We recognize the risk this disease poses to livestock and wildlife,

as well as the financial hardship it has caused producers. Eliminating brucellosis

in the GYA is of vitally important to achieving our ultimate, shared goal—eradicating the disease throughout the entire United States.

Current Interagency Bison Management Plan

The current Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) that the cooperating

partners operate under carefully balances the need to preserve the Yellowstone

bison herd with the need to prevent the spread of brucellosis from bison to cattle

that graze on lands surrounding the Park.

The bison management plan relies on the spatial and temporal separation of bison

from cattle that graze in areas surrounding the Park. As bison leave the Park, management zones are used to monitor the movement of bison and ensure that bison

and cattle do not commingle. Depending on the bison population size, there is an

array of risk management options to prevent transmission of brucellosis from bison

to cattle during the winter, including non-lethal hazing, shooting, capture, testing,

and shipment to slaughter.

Any bison that remain outside the Park’s boundaries in the spring are hazed back

into the Park, captured or removed. As an additional disease safeguard, cattle are

not allowed to graze on public land outside the Park until a sufficient amount of

time has passed after the bison leave to ensure that the brucellosis bacteria is no

longer viable in the environment. However, at this time, the Gallatin National

Forest has vacated all grazing allotments located in the bison Management Zone

next to the Park.

While it is unfortunate that National Park Service employees must sometimes remove bison that have left Yellowstone National Park, we must emphasize that these

operations are targeted and only one component of a much larger effort to preserve

the health and viability of the entire bison herd. In this regard, all of the Federal

bison management actions are in accordance with the provisions of the bison management plan and the requirements of Federal law; the management plan also includes a commitment to treating bison in a humane fashion during hazing, capture,

and other handling.

The Roles of the U.S. Forest Service Under the Interagency Bison

Management Plan

As a full partner in the Interagency Bison Management Plan, USDA’s Forest

Service provides these main functions:

• Management of wildlife habitat on National Forest System lands (NFS) outside

of the Park in Montana;

• Law enforcement support to the counties and the State of Montana during bison

management operations outside the Park; and

• Administration of a special use permit for the State’s (Department of Livestock)

bison capture facility located in the Horse Butte area, west of the Park.

Under federal laws and the Land Management Plan, the Gallatin National Forest

lands are managed for multiple use purposes which include livestock grazing. Federal grazing permits are issued to private producers. However, given the Forest

Service management emphasis to provide for wildlife habitat, all Gallatin National

Forest cattle grazing allotments located in the Bison Management Zone next to the

Park have been held vacant for 3-10 years. Holding these allotments vacant from

cattle grazing fulfills one of the objectives in the Interagency Bison Management

Plan, which calls for creating spatial and temporal separation of bison and cattle.

18

Outside of Yellowstone Park, but within the Bison Management Zone closest to the

Park, domestic cattle graze on approximately 6,000 acres of private ranch lands on

the west and north sides of the Park; outside of this Zone there are numerous private cattle ranches as well as several active grazing allotments on NFS lands.

Royal Teton Ranch Land Conservation Project

The 12,000-acre Royal Teton Ranch (‘‘RTR’’) owned by the Church Universal and

Triumphant, is located north of Yellowstone National Park but within the Gallatin

National Forest proclamation boundary. This property provides critical wildlife migration and winter range habitat for numerous species, including grizzly bear, Yellowstone cutthroat trout, elk, bighorn sheep, antelope, bison and mule deer.

In 1997, the Forest Service partnered with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation

to develop a multi-component agreement with the Church that included fee purchases, conservation easements and a long-term right of first refusal for potential

acquisition of the remaining RTR lands.

The stated purposes of the 1997 RTR project were to:

• Conserve critical wildlife habitat north of Yellowstone Park for numerous wildlife species. • Improve public access for recreational opportunities, and • Protect the geothermal resources on the RTR lands.

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Forest Service, and Department of the Interior (DOI) successfully completed the RTR fee and easement purchases in 1999

using $6.7 million in LWCF funds appropriated to the Forest Service and $6.3 million in LWCF funds appropriated to DOI. In the project, about 5,300 acres of RTR

lands were acquired by fee purchases and another 1,500 acres were protected

through a conservation easement. In addition, the Church granted a conservation

easement prohibiting development of geothermal resources on the entire ranch. All

the acquired RTR lands and easements are held and managed by the Forest Service.

All cattle grazing allotments located on the lands acquired by the United States

in this purchase are held vacant. The Church waived their federal grazing permit

back to the Gallatin National Forest in 2004, and this land is also held vacant.

From the project onset (1999), the Forest Service, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and conservation partners all clearly recognized that the RTR project would

be a positive step for wildlife conservation, but that it would not, by itself, fully resolve the bison management issues in that area. Acquisition of the RTR lands and

conservation easements do, in fact, protect some of the historic migratory and winter range habitat for bison, and have kept future options open. However, nearly half

of the RTR ranch remains private land, and the Church has elected to continue to

graze its cattle on those remaining private lands.

New Draft Memorandum of Understanding Among the GYIBC Partners

As I mentioned a moment ago, the current bison management plan is a tool for

preventing the spread of brucellosis from bison to cattle on grazing lands in Montana adjacent to Yellowstone National Park. USDA and the Department of the Interior (DOI) believe the next step is to develop a long-term plan for the elimination

of brucellosis from the GYA. We are in the initial stages of this process, but fully

acknowledge that any disease elimination plan must maintain the wild and freeroaming bison and elk herds in the Park.

Our concept is for this plan to be developed by disease and wildlife management

experts and to include public input. Once brucellosis is eliminated from the Greater

Yellowstone Area, bison and elk can roam more freely without the need for brucellosis intervention strategies. The animals may also be moved to other parks and

tribal lands as desired by wildlife managers and other interested parties.

In this regard, USDA and the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) agreed upon

a revised GYIBC memorandum of understanding (MOU) after the previous MOU expired. In May 2005, the Federal agencies presented the draft to Montana, Idaho,

and Wyoming for consideration. Finalizing the updated version of the MOU originally presented in 2005 (the updated version reflects Idaho’s loss of brucellosis

Class-Free status earlier this year, as well as Wyoming’s September 2006 upgrade

to Class-Free status) is a priority for USDA. To that end, USDA and DOI will soon

send out a letter enclosing a copy of the updated version of the MOU and urging

participating States to sign the document.

The draft we will soon share with our State partners apprises the Governors that

we will take into account their views, as well as the input of all our stakeholders,

as we move forward with finalizing the MOU. I’d like to note, however, that we

strongly believe that we need to develop a disease elimination plan that also contains effective means of managing the bison herd. In the near term, management

of the risk of disease transmission from wildlife to livestock is a prudent approach

to maintaining the brucellosis-free status of the GYA states. In the long term, elimiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:42 Jun 13, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 L:\DOCS\34137.TXT Hresour1 PsN: Hresour1
19

nation of brucellosis from GYA wildlife concurrent with protection of the elk and

bison populations will require continued development and implementation of best

management practices, vaccines, vaccine delivery systems, and diagnostic techniques.

We know that finalizing this MOU is an important priority for all parties. Implementing the final MOU—in full cooperation with our Federal and State partners—

is an integral part of our efforts to eliminate brucellosis from elk and bison herds

in the GYA and to prevent reintroduction of this destructive disease into cattle

herds in surrounding States.

Conclusion

Mr. Chairman, while eliminating brucellosis from elk and bison herds in the

GYA—and preventing reintroduction of the disease into those herds—is challenging,

it is not an impossible task. It will require the use of a number of innovative and

time-proven disease elimination and management tools and the cooperation of our

State, Federal, and industry partners.

As I indicated previously, this is a goal we are striving very hard to achieve. I

believe finalization of a new GYIBC MOU, one that reflects the need for all parties

to come together to develop a long-term plan for eliminating brucellosis from the

GYA ecosystem, is the most important step we can take in the short-term to help

accomplish our goals. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify this morning,

and I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, sir. Let me now call on Ms. Robin

Nazzaro for your testimony, comments.

STATEMENT OF ROBIN NAZZARO, DIRECTOR, NATURAL

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Ms. NAZZARO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

Committee. My name is Robin Nazzaro, Director, National Resources and Environment with the Government Accountability Office. I am pleased to be here today to discuss the management of

bison in the Yellowstone National Park area. To facilitate my discussion, I will use a series of maps that will be displayed on the

monitors and have been made available to you in a supplemental

package with my statement.

The first map shows the location of Yellowstone National Park

overlapping three states—Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. As we

have heard, this is home to a herd of about 3,600 free-roaming

bison, some of which routinely attempt to migrate out of the Park

in the winter, particularly on the northern and western boundaries

as depicted by the red arrows on the map. Livestock owners and

public officials in the states bordering the Park have concerns

about the bison leaving the Park because many are infected with

brucellosis.

The State of Montana and its livestock industry in particular

have been active in protecting the state’s brucellosis-free status by

advocating for limits on bison migration. These efforts have been

opposed by advocacy groups working to expand bison habitat and

protect the free, wild roaming character of the bison and who assert that there has never been a documented case of brucellosis

transmission from bison to cattle in the wild.

The many years of public controversy over the management of

the bison in the area have ensued and has resulted in competing

concerns. In an effort to address these concerns, as we heard, the

agencies in December 2000 developed a three-step plan for

managing the bison on the northern and western sides of the Park.

20

The stated purpose of this interagency bison management plan is

to maintain the wild, free-ranging population of bison and address

the risk of brucellosis transmission to protect the economic interest

and viability of the livestock industry in Montana.

My testimony summarizes GAO’s preliminary observations on

the progress made in implementing this plan and the extent to

which bison have access to lands north of the Park acquired with

$13 million in Federal funds. This work was requested by the

Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Congressman Maurice Hinchey. More than six years after approving

the plan, the five Federal and state partner agencies remain in

step one of the plan because cattle continue to graze on certain private lands in the area represented on the map by the grey box.

These lands are owned by the Church Universal and Triumphant. A key condition for the partner agencies progressing further

under the plan requires that cattle no longer graze in the winter

on these lands to minimize the risk of brucellosis transmission

from bison to cattle.

The agencies had anticipated meeting this condition by the winter of 2002, 2003. While a prior attempt by Interior to acquire grazing rights on some of these lands was unsuccessful, Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is currently negotiating with

the Church to acquire the grazing rights. Until this condition is

met, bison will not be allowed to roam freely beyond the Park’s

northern border, west of the Yellowstone River.

Concurrent with the development of the bison management strategy in the late 1990s, the Forest Service was pursuing the acquisition of certain lands and conservation easements from the Church

to expand critical habitat for a variety of wildlife species, to protect

geothermal resources and improve recreational access. Map number two, an enlargement of the grey box I referred to earlier, shows

the land ownership prior to the Forest Service’s land conservation

project acquisitions. The Forest Service lands are shaded green.

Park lands are yellow. The grey areas are owned by the Church,

and the white areas are other privately owned lands.

The land acquisition occurred in two phases. Map three depicts

the first phase in which the Forest Service spent $6.5 million to

purchase 3,107 acres, most of which appears on the map in dark

green with diagonal lines. A 640 acre portion located further north

and west does not appear on the map. Map four depicts the phase

two purchase of an additional 2,156 acres shown in dark green, and

a 1,508 acre conservation easement shown as the darker grey dotted area. Under the easement, numerous development activities

such as the construction of commercial facilities and roads are prohibited.

However, the owners specifically retained the right to graze domestic cattle, except between October 15 and June 1 of each calendar year, the time of the year that bison would typically be migrating through the area. The owner currently grazes cattle

throughout the year on portions of its remaining 6,000 acres which

can be seen on map five in the grey areas. Map five shows the current land ownership north of the Park.

While the Forest Service viewed this project as a logical extension of past conservation efforts, the value of this acquisition for

21

the Yellowstone bison herd is minimal because no bison will be allowed to access these private lands, including those covered by the

conservation easement, until cattle no longer graze there. Mr.

Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be pleased to answer any questions that you or members of the Subcommittee may

have.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nazzaro follows:]

Statement of Robin M. Nazzaro, Director, Natural Resources and

Environment, U.S. Government Accountability Office

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

I am pleased to be here today to discuss our preliminary work on issues related

to managing bison in the Yellowstone National Park area. Bison lived in this area

long before the park was established in 1872, and have been under some form of

human management since the early 1900s. In 1901, after years of hunting and

poaching, the Yellowstone herd had been reduced to about 25 bison. For nearly the

next six decades, bison management in the park emphasized reestablishing the

bison herd and controlling the size of the population. Through a policy of natural

regulation adopted by the park in the 1960s, the bison population has increased,

and about 3,600 bison roam the park and surrounding areas today.

Brucellosis—a contagious bacterial disease that can infect domestic animals, wildlife, and humans—was first found in the Yellowstone bison herd in 1917 and is believed to have been transmitted from livestock. Livestock owners and public officials

in the states bordering the park are concerned about brucellosis in the bison herd

because of the risk of bison transmitting the disease back to cattle and the economic

impact such an occurrence could have on the livestock industry. The state of Montana and its livestock industry, in particular, have been active in protecting the brucellosis-free status that the state has held since 1985 by advocating for limits on

bison migration. These efforts have been opposed by advocacy groups working to expand bison habitat and protect the wild free-roaming character of the bison, and

who assert that there has never been a documented case of brucellosis transmission

from bison to cattle in the wild. Many years of public controversy over the management of bison in the Yellowstone National Park area have ensued as a result of

these competing concerns.

In an effort to address these concerns in the early 1990s, the Department of the

Interior’s (Interior’s) National Park Service, the Department of Agriculture’s

(USDA’s) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Forest Service, and Montana’s Departments of Livestock and Fish, Wildlife and Parks agreed to develop a

joint long-term bison management strategy. This joint planning effort ultimately resulted in a three-step, Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) that was agreed

upon by the five federal and state partner agencies in December 2000. Concurrent

with the development of a bison management strategy, the Forest Service was also

pursuing the acquisition of certain private lands and conservation easements near

the northern boundary of the park to expand critical migration and winter range

habitat for a variety of wildlife species, protect geothermal resources, and improve

recreational access.

My testimony today summarizes work performed to date that GAO began in midJanuary 2007 at the request of the Chairman of the House Committee on Natural

Resources and Congressman Maurice D. Hinchey. GAO previously reported on the

bison management issue and development of the IBMP in the 1990s. A list of related GAO products is provided in appendix I. Our current work is focused on determining: (1) the progress that has been made in implementing the IBMP and the associated costs and challenges; (2) what lands and easements north of Yellowstone

National Park, acquired for $13 million in federal funds, have been made available

to bison and other wildlife; and (3) what advances have been made in developing

a brucellosis vaccine and remote delivery method for bison. To begin addressing

these objectives, we visited the Yellowstone National Park area to attend an interagency sponsored public meeting on the IBMP, tour the bison management areas

near Yellowstone National Park, interview federal and state agency officials as well

as members of interested stakeholder groups, and review relevant documentation.

We have conducted our work to date in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Over the next several weeks, we will continue to collect and analyze information

to refine our approach for completing the review. To date, our efforts have focused

22

mostly on the first two broad objectives. Thus, my remarks today will provide our

preliminary findings on the first two objectives.

Summary

In summary, more than 6 years after approving the IBMP, the five federal and

state partnering agencies remain in step one of the three-step plan because cattle

continue to graze on certain private lands. A key condition for the partner agencies

progressing further under the plan requires that cattle no longer graze in the winter

on certain private lands adjacent to the north boundary of Yellowstone National

Park and west of the Yellowstone River to minimize the risk of brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle. The agencies anticipated meeting this condition by the

winter of 2002/2003. Until this condition is met, bison will not be allowed to roam

freely beyond the park’s northern border, west of the Yellowstone River. The Forest

Service has been successful in purchasing certain private lands and continues its

vacancy of national forest grazing allotments in the area; however, the partner

agencies have yet to acquire cattle grazing rights on other private lands adjacent

to the north boundary of Yellowstone National Park and west of the Yellowstone

River. While a prior attempt by Interior was unsuccessful, Montana’s Department

of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is currently negotiating with the private land owner to

acquire these grazing rights.

Yellowstone bison have limited access to the lands and conservation easement

that federal agencies acquired north of the park. In 1998 and 1999, as part of a larger conservation effort to provide habitat for a variety of wildlife species, protect geothermal resources, and improve recreational access, federal agencies spent nearly

$13 million to acquire 5,263 acres and a conservation easement on 1,508 acres of

private lands north of the park’s border, lands towards which bison frequently attempt to migrate for suitable winter range. While the conservation easement prohibits development, such as the construction of commercial facilities and roads, on

the private land, the land owner retained cattle grazing rights. The Yellowstone bison’s access to these lands will remain limited until cattle no longer graze on the

easement and other private lands in the area.

Background

Yellowstone National Park is at the center of about 20 million acres of publicly

and privately owned land, overlapping three states—Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.

This area is commonly called the greater Yellowstone area or ecosystem and is home

to numerous species of wildlife, including the largest concentration of free-roaming

bison in the United States. Bison are considered an essential component of this ecosystem because they contribute to the biological, ecological, cultural, and aesthetic

purposes of the park. However, because the bison are naturally migratory animals,

they seasonally attempt to migrate out of the park in search of suitable winter

range.

The rate of exposure to brucellosis in Yellowstone bison is currently estimated at

about 50 percent. Transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle has been documented under experimental conditions, but not in the wild. Scientists and researchers disagree about the factors that influence the risk of wild bison transmitting brucellosis to domestic cattle and are unable to quantify the risk. Consequently, the

IBMP partner agencies are working to identify risk factors that affect the likelihood

of transmission, such as the persistence of the brucellosis-causing bacteria in the environment and the proximity of bison to cattle, and are attempting to limit these

risk factors using various management actions.

The National Park Service first proposed a program to control bison at the boundary of Yellowstone National Park in response to livestock industry concerns over the

potential transmission of brucellosis to cattle in 1968. Over the next two decades,

concerns continued over bison leaving the park boundaries, particularly after Montana’s livestock industry was certified brucellosis-free in 1985. In July 1990, the

National Park Service, Forest Service, and Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife

and Parks formed an interagency team to examine various alternatives for the longterm management of the Yellowstone bison herd. Later, the interagency team was

expanded to include USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the

Montana Department of Livestock. In 1998, USDA and Interior jointly released a

draft environmental impact statement (EIS) analyzing several proposed alternatives

for long-term bison management and issued a final EIS in August 2000. In December 2000, the interagency team agreed upon federal and state records of decision

detailing the long-term management approach for the Yellowstone bison herd, commonly referred to as the IBMP.

The IBMP is a three-step plan for managing bison on the northern and western

sides of Yellowstone National Park, areas to which bison typically attempt to migrate for suitable winter range. The stated purpose of the IBMP is to:

23

1 If the Yellowstone bison herd exceeds a target population size of 3,000 bison as set forth in

the IBMP, other management actions, such as removing the captured bison to quarantine or

slaughter, may be taken to reduce the size of the herd. 2The Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 was enacted to help preserve, develop,

and assure access to outdoor recreation resources. Among other purposes, appropriations from

the fund may be used for federal acquisition of land and waters and interests therein. Pub. L.

No. 88-578, 78 Stat. 897. 16 U.S.C. § 460l-4, et seq.

‘‘maintain a wild, free-ranging population of bison and address the risk of

brucellosis transmission to protect the economic interest and viability of the

livestock industry in Montana.’’

Although managing the risk of brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle is at

the heart of the IBMP, the plan does not seek to eliminate brucellosis in bison. The

plan instead aims to create and maintain a spatial and temporal separation between

bison and cattle sufficient to minimize the risk of brucellosis transmission. In addition, the plan allows for the partner agencies to make adaptive management

changes as better information becomes available through scientific research and

operational experience.

Under step one of the plan, bison are generally restricted to areas within or just

beyond the park’s northern and western boundaries. Bison attempting to leave the

park are herded back to the park. When attempts to herd the bison back to the park

are repeatedly unsuccessful, the bison are captured or lethally removed. Generally,

captured bison are tested for brucellosis exposure. 1 Those that test positive are sent

to slaughter, and eligible bison—calves and yearlings that test negative for brucellosis exposure—are vaccinated. Regardless of vaccination-eligibility, partner agency

officials may take a variety of actions with captured bison that test negative including, temporarily holding them in the capture facility for release back into the park

or removing them for research. In order to progress to step two, cattle can no longer

graze in the winter on certain private lands north of Yellowstone National Park and

west of the Yellowstone River. Step two, which the partner agencies expected to

reach by the winter of 2002/2003, would use the same management methods on

bison attempting to leave the park as in step one, with one exception—a limited

number of bison, up to a maximum of 100, that test negative for brucellosis exposure would be allowed to roam in specific areas outside the park. Finally, step three

would allow a limited number of untested bison, up to a maximum of 100, to roam

in specific areas outside the park when certain conditions are met. These conditions

include determining an adequate temporal separation period, gaining sufficient experience in managing bison in the bison management areas, and initiating an effective vaccination program using a remote delivery system for eligible bison inside the

park. The partner agencies anticipated reaching this step on the northern boundary

in the winter of 2005/2006 and the western boundary in the winter of 2003/2004.

In 1997, as part of a larger land conservation effort in the greater Yellowstone

area, the Forest Service partnered with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation—a

nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the future of elk, other wildlife and

their habitat—to develop a Royal Teton Ranch (RTR) land conservation project. The

ranch is owned by and serves as the international headquarters for the Church Universal and Triumphant, Inc. (the Church)—a multi-faceted spiritual organization. It

is adjacent to the northern boundary of Yellowstone National Park and is almost

completely surrounded by Gallatin National Forest lands. The overall purpose of the

conservation project was to preserve critical wildlife migration and winter range

habitat for a variety of species, protect geothermal resources, and improve recreational access. The project included several acquisitions from the Church, including the purchase of land and a wildlife conservation easement, a land-for-land exchange, and other special provisions such as a long-term right of first refusal for

the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to purchase remaining RTR lands. The project

was funded using fiscal years 1998 and 1999 Land and Water Conservation Fund

appropriations totaling $13 million. 2

Implementation of the IBMP Remains in Step One Because Cattle Continue

to Graze on RTR Lands

Implementation of the IBMP remains in step one because cattle continue to graze

on RTR lands north of Yellowstone National Park and west of the Yellowstone

River. All Forest Service cattle grazing allotments on its lands near the park are

held vacant, and neither these lands nor those acquired from the Church are occupied by cattle. The one remaining step to achieve the condition of cattle no longer

grazing in this area is for the partner agencies to acquire livestock grazing rights

on the remaining private RTR lands. Until cattle no longer graze on these lands,

no bison will be allowed to roam beyond the park’s northern border, and the agencies will not be able to proceed further under the IBMP.

24

3The Forest Service and the Church chose not to complete the land-for-land exchanges proposed in the conservation project.

Although unsuccessful, Interior attempted to acquire livestock grazing rights on

the remaining RTR lands in August 1999. The Church and Interior had signed an

agreement giving Interior the option to purchase the livestock grazing rights, contingent upon a federally approved appraisal of the value of the grazing rights and

fair compensation to the Church for forfeiture of this right. The appraisal was completed and submitted for federal review in November 1999. In a March 2000 letter

to the Church, Interior stated that the federal process for reviewing the appraisal

was incomplete and terminated the option to purchase the rights. As a result, the

Church continues to exercise its right to graze cattle on the RTR lands adjacent to

the north boundary of the park, and the agencies continue operating under step one

of the IBMP.

More recently, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks has re-engaged Church officials in discussions regarding a lease arrangement for Churchowned livestock grazing rights on the private RTR lands. Given the confidential and

evolving nature of these negotiations, specific details about funding sources or the

provisions being discussed, including the length of the lease and other potential conditions related to bison management, are not yet available.

Although the agencies continue to operate under step one of the plan, they reported several accomplishments in their September 2005 Status Review of Adaptive

Management Elements for 2000-2005. These accomplishments included updating

interagency field operating procedures, vacating national forest cattle allotments

within the bison management areas, and conducting initial scientific studies regarding the persistence of the brucellosis-causing bacteria in the environment.

Federal Land and Easement Acquisitions Sought to Provide Critical

Habitat for Many Species, But Bison Access to These Lands Remains

Limited

The lands and conservation easement acquired by the federal government through

the RTR land conservation project sought to provide critical habitat for a variety

of wildlife species including bighorn sheep, antelope, elk, mule deer, bison, grizzly

bear, and Yellowstone cutthroat trout; however, the value of this acquisition for the

Yellowstone bison herd is minimal because bison access to these lands remains limited. The Forest Service viewed the land conservation project as a logical extension

of past wildlife habitat acquisitions in the northern Yellowstone region. While the

Forest Service recognized bison as one of the migrating species that might use the

habitat and noted that these acquisitions could improve the flexibility of future

bison management, the project was not principally directed at addressing bison

management issues.

Through the RTR land conservation project, the federal government acquired from

the Church a total of 5,263 acres of land and a 1,508-acre conservation easement

using $13 million in Land and Water Conservation Fund appropriations. 3 As funding became available and as detailed agreements could be reached with the Church,

the following two phases were completed. In Phase I, the Forest Service used $6.5

million of its Fiscal Year 1999 Land and Water Conservation Fund appropriation

to purchase Church-owned lands totaling 3,107 acres in June and December 1998

and February 1999. Of these lands, 2,316 acres were RTR lands, 640 acres were

lands that provided strategic public access to other Gallatin National Forest lands,

and 151 acres were an in-holding in the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness area.

In Phase II, BLM provided $6.3 million of its Fiscal Year 1998 Land and Water

Conservation Fund appropriations for the purchase of an additional 2,156 acres of

RTR lands and a 1,508-acre conservation easement on the Devil’s Slide area of the

RTR property in August 1999. In a December 1998 letter to the Secretary of the

Interior from the Chairs and Ranking Minority Members of the House and Senate

Committees on Appropriations, certain conditions were placed on the use of these

funds. The letter stated that ‘‘the funds for phase two should only be allocated by

the agencies when the records of decision for the ‘Environmental Impact Statement

for the Interagency Bison Management Plan for the State of Montana and Yellowstone National Park’ are signed and implemented.’’ The letter also stated that the

Forest Service and Interior were to continue to consult with and gain the written

approval of the governor of Montana regarding the terms of the conservation easement. Under the easement, numerous development activities, including the

construction of commercial facilities and road, are prohibited. However, the Church

specifically retained the right to graze domestic cattle in accordance with a grazing

management plan that was to be reviewed and approved by the Church and the

Forest Service. The Church’s grazing management plan was completed in December

25

2002, and the Forest Service determined in February 2003 that it was consistent

with the terms of the conservation easement. The Church currently grazes cattle

throughout the year on portions of its remaining 6,000 acres; however, as stipulated

in the conservation easement and incorporated in the grazing management plan, no

livestock can use any of the 1,508 acres covered by the easement between

October 15 and June 1 of each calendar year, the time of year that bison would

typically be migrating through the area.

While purchased for wildlife habitat, geothermal resources, and recreational access purposes, the federally acquired lands and conservation easement have been of

limited benefit to the Yellowstone bison. As previously noted, under the IBMP, until

cattle no longer graze on private RTR lands north of the park and west of the Yellowstone River, no bison are allowed to migrate onto these private lands and the

partner agencies are responsible for assuring that the bison remain within the park

boundary.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. Because we are in the very

early stages of our work, we have no conclusions to offer at this time regarding

these bison management issues. We will continue our review and plan to issue a

report near the end of this year. I would be pleased to answer any questions that

you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have at this time.

GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments

For further information on this testimony, please contact me at (202) 512-3841 or

nazzaror@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and

Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement. David P. Bixler, Assistant Director; Sandra Kerr; Diane Lund; and Jamie Meuwissen made key contributions to this statement.

Related GAO Products

Wildlife Management: Negotiations on a Long-Term Plan for Managing Yellowstone Bison Still Ongoing. GAO/RCED-00-7. Washington, D.C.: November 1999.

Wildlife Management: Issues Concerning the Management of Bison and Elk Herds

in Yellowstone National Park. GAO/T-RCED-97-200. Washington, D.C.: July 1997.

Wildlife Management: Many Issues Unresolved in Yellowstone Bison-Cattle Brucellosis Conflict. GAO/RCED-93-2. Washington, D.C.: October 1992.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Mr. Soukup and Dr. Clifford, if the

people you indicated want to join you at the table, this would be

the appropriate time to do so. While that is occurring, let me begin

with a question that the Governor referenced in his comments, and

that is the question is what is the current status of negotiations

between the state and the owners of the Royal Teton Ranch and

26

the other part of that question is, has the Federal government

through the appropriate agencies been participating in those discussions? Governor?

Governor SCHWEITZER. As has been suggested, there is an ongoing negotiation with the Royal Teton Ranch. Almost all real estate

deals start with about six or eight no’s before you get to a yes. We

are probably in the fourth or fifth no right now on our way to a

yes. So until you have a yes, until you have a deal there is really

nothing to talk about but I am confident that there is a willingness

on both sides to move toward a permanent easement that would remove cattle, sheep and goats from that property so that if bison do

leave—and they do leave during the tough winters—that there

would be a temporal space where we would not have cattle and

bison occupying the same space.

This is only a beginning. They are the largest cattle raiser in the

area. They are one of the few ranches that keep cattle during an

entire 12-month period. If you look at the map in the west Yellowstone area, there are no cattle that stay there through the winter

months. The snow is just too deep. They take too much snow.

There are a couple of other operators in the RTR area but they are

the predominant operator.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, Governor. Let me just a quick question for Dr. Clifford. We heard as part of the testimony that the

implementation of the management plan there is an attendant cost

of about a million dollars a year that was discussed, and in terms

of the inspection service, what is the yearly cost of working and implementing that management plan agreement? Do you have a figure?

Mr. CLIFFORD. We actually through Congress and actually

through earmarks in 2006 provided $277,000 to the State of Idaho,

$980,800 to the State of Montana and $277,000 to the State of

Wyoming.

Mr. GRIJALVA. That is that yearly allocation?

Mr. CLIFFORD. That was in 2006. In 2007, our line item was reduced by that amount from 2006 of a total of $10.3 million to $8.9

million.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you very much. Ms. Nazzaro, when do you

estimate that the review would be completed and what point are

we in that review process just as a general point of information?

Ms. NAZZARO. At this point, we have not negotiated a final product or the issuance date of that product. The original request letter

from Mr. Rahall and Mr. Hinchey asked us to look at the progress

in implementing the plan, the interagency bison management plan,

as well as associated costs and challenges, to identify the lands

that were acquired for the $13 million in Federal funds, and what

advances had been made in developing the brucellosis vaccine and

remote delivery method.

To date, we have focused primarily on the progress in implementing the plan and what was acquired for the Federal funds. At

this point, we toured the bison management area in Yellowstone.

We attended an interagency meeting sponsored by the joint agencies and have interviewed a number of state and Federal officials

as well as interested stakeholder groups and obtained relevant information.

27

We are in what we call the design phase. So we are trying to determine what information is available, how difficult is it to obtain,

and what we will do then at that point is negotiate with the staff

on a timeframe and a product.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you very much. And one last question for

Mr. Soukup and Superintendent Lewis if appropriate. It is a general question. Why do bison leave the Park? The written testimony

by Dr. Kay, who will be testifying later, argues that they leave because the Park is overgrazed. First of all, is that why they leave?

And if that were true, would they not leave all year round as opposed to just in the winter if it is overgrazed? General response to

that.

Ms. LEWIS. Thank you very much. The bison leave the Park, as

they have for centuries, in search of food outside the Park because

their winter range inside the Park is covered with snow. So they

are doing what they have done for centuries. They move to lower

elevation during the winter months where there is a greater opportunity for forage for them but it is not because the Park is overgrazed. It is because it is winter, and the ground is covered with

snow, and in many locations it is covered with deep snow.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Any comments, Mr. Soukup?

Mr. SOUKUP. I would just add to that that there is fairly good

science available that indicates that the bison herd is nowhere near

the carrying capacity of the range. Numbers in the literature, over

five to 7,500. So we do not believe it is overgrazing but it is a longheld migration that bison do in response to the conditions in the

winter.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Governor, did you want to make a comment?

Governor SCHWEITZER. Well I think there is an interaction. It is

true the tougher the winter the more bison leave the Park. That

is clear. But it is also true that the more bison we have in the Park

the more likely they are to leave during the winter. They will

scratch around and get to some feed, and they hang out around the

hot pots.

Any of you that would like to go in and watch the buffalo during

the winter, if you go to some of the hot spots in the Park, it kind

of looks like a feedlot because they hang around those warm areas,

and they graze right around those areas. The question is how many

bison would we have to reduce the number to that they would stay

in the Park five out of six years? There is probably no number,

even down to 50 head, that would keep them in the park every

winter but how about a five out of six? A six out of seven?

I hear up to 7,000 head in the Park. I am a rancher. I go down

to the Park every once in awhile, and I know that if you do not

push them up into the high country, move them around like—I

wanted to call you Denny—but it is Congressman Rehberg back

here, right? Like he said, if you do not have some way of moving

them around, they are going to hang around where it is easy, and

so it might be theoretically that 7,000 could run there but I can tell

you with 3,600 and the number of elk that we have sharing the

space with them you do not have to drive around much in the Park

to see that it is grazed a little bit more than most of the ranches

in Montana.

28

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you for your responses to the questions.

With that, let me turn to Ranking Member Mr. Bishop for any

questions he might have.

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you again. It may be Denny for you. He

makes me call him sir. Director Soukup, if I could ask you a couple

of questions. I understand that the brucellosis in Idaho and Wyoming was not caused by buffalo. It was caused by elk. Is the elk

herd in the Park, Yellowstone Park, brucellosis-free? Whomever

wants to answer.

Mr. SOUKUP. It is my understanding that there is brucellosis at

a very small incidence rate in the Park. The incidence rate for elk

are enormously high in those areas around the feedlots, and especially I think in Idaho and Wyoming feedlots. It is where the highest ratio is.

Mr. BISHOP. Was I accurate in my original assumption that

Idaho and Wyoming lost—and Wyoming regained—their brucellosis-free based on contact with elk and not with bison?

Mr. SOUKUP. Yes, that is correct.

Mr. BISHOP. All right. And the Governor made a couple of really

good points there. If the issue, Director Soukup, was a free-range

for bison or a brucellosis-free herd, which is the higher value? Brucellosis-free herd or range for bison, which would be a higher

value?

Mr. SOUKUP. I believe it would be our position that the freeroaming herd can be made brucellosis-free over time with the

appropriate——

Mr. BISHOP. That is not what I asked. Which is the higher value?

Mr. SOUKUP. We believe maintaining the free-roaming herd is

the higher value.

Mr. BISHOP. Over having a herd that is brucellosis-free?

Mr. SOUKUP. Yes.

Mr. BISHOP. OK. Can I ask you what you consider to be the ultimate size of the herd that should be in Yellowstone Park?

Mr. SOUKUP. We believe that the herd will be regulated by natural conditions that until it gets up to 7,500 we do not think there

is even an issue about reaching the carrying capacity.

Mr. BISHOP. Has there ever been a historic time in the Park

where it has been as high as 7,500?

Mr. SOUKUP. No.

Mr. BISHOP. And if they are going to self-regulate, you assume

that the wolf and other predators are going to regulate that size?

Mr. SOUKUP. Well the primary regulator that we have seen in

the past has been the harsh winters. We know that the wolf is

starting to be a factor in that some of the packs are feeding and

a couple of them are feeding solely on bison. So there will be some

impact from the wolf reintroduction but we believe that the harsh

winters are a major factor.

Mr. BISHOP. I guess what you ought to do is convince the wolves

that you know bison is a leaner meat than the cows around there,

and therefore their cholesterol would go down if they attack more.

I do have a problem in realizing or thinking that either a wolf

devouring a bison or starvation of a bison is the most humane way

of managing a herd, but if that is your position that is your position. In 1934, the Federal government had a brucellosis eradication

29

program that was successful. What were the techniques that were

used in that program?

Ms. LEWIS. You are referring to a program in Yellowstone

National Park?

Mr. BISHOP. Yes.

Ms. LEWIS. OK. At that time it was test and slaughter.

Mr. BISHOP. And it worked.

Ms. LEWIS. No.

Mr. BISHOP. Let me get the next question. In 1932, the Park had

a boundary adjustment. How many acres were added in that time

to the boundary?

Ms. LEWIS. I am going to estimate that I think that it was

around 8,000 acres, and you are referring to the north end of the

Park, outside the north end around today what is the community

of Gardner, Montana.

Mr. BISHOP. All right. I thank you because I did not know exactly

where that was. I appreciate that. Can I ask that Dr. Clifford from

APHIS? As I understand it, brucellosis vaccines that we have right

now are around 75 percent effective in their rate of controlling the

disease. Is that an accurate statement?

Mr. CLIFFORD. I think you have to look at the particular species

that you are referring to. With the particular vaccine that we use

today and we are doing research to try to develop better vaccines,

you can reduce the amount of abortions in bison but you do not

really reduce that much maternal transmission. So the cows would

still get the disease but you certainly can reduce the amount of

abortion which will therefore reduce the amount of the bacteria in

the environment, and therefore reduce the possibility of spread.

Mr. BISHOP. What I think you are telling me is that we do not

have a vaccine that is 100 percent yet.

Mr. CLIFFORD. No, sir.

Mr. BISHOP. We have to use some other mechanism.

Mr. CLIFFORD. We do not have a vaccine that is 100 percent.

Mr. BISHOP. But I am assuming we are working to try and develop that?

Mr. CLIFFORD. We are trying to develop a better vaccine.

Mr. BISHOP. I have 12 seconds to do this. Ms. Nazzaro, when you

come out with your report—which you have not done yet—are you

going to consider the issue of elk as well as bison in your report?

Ms. NAZZARO. What issue? As far as the transmission of brucellosis?

Mr. BISHOP. Yes, you have it.

Ms. NAZZARO. That had not been originally covered under the

scope.

Mr. BISHOP. If we were to do——

Ms. NAZZARO. I am not quite sure what the issue would be.

Mr. BISHOP. Considering what happened in Wyoming and Idaho

out of elk, if we were to do a report that did not consider both elk

and bison as far as the transfer of brucellosis, that is really kind

of a halfway approach to it or a halfway report, is it not?

Ms. NAZZARO. I think we could certainly mention the fact that

you know that there has been transmission. I know in our testimony we are mentioning that there has not been transmission from

the bison to the cattle in the wild. You know we did not go that

30

far in the testimony but I would think we would want to give that

context that you mentioned certainly.

Mr. BISHOP. I think it would be wise. I apologize for going over

my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. Let me turn for any questions that Chairman Rahall may have.

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Governor, let me ask

you the first question, and I would certainly agree with you that

the existing regime or the status quo does not bode well for keeping

Montana cattle disease-free while at the same time maintaining

the integrity of the Yellowstone bison herd, and you mentioned in

your testimony or rather I guess yes, you did, that on average the

National Park Service is spending a million dollars annually, is

that correct?

Governor SCHWEITZER. That is my understanding, and I think we

heard from Dr. Clifford that in 2006 nearly another million bucks

was spent by APHIS.

Mr. RAHALL. That is what I was going to add. So we are taking

it up to well over $2.4 million as a cost to the Federal government

currently. So I guess I would ask you a further question. What

would you estimate the buyouts to be that you discussed as one of

the tools that you would need to properly protect your cattle?

Governor SCHWEITZER. Well maybe four or five times that annual

investment. In other words, it could be in a range from $5 to $10

million, depending on how much we negotiated, on how much of

that private land, and what the actual cost would be. Bottom line

is you have nailed it, Mr. Chairman. It is much cheaper to take the

long goal, get a permanent solution, than it is to pay a couple of

million dollars a year to slaughter bison, to round them up, to use

snowmobiles and helicopters, to chase them back and forth.

We do not have a long-term solution. The Federal government is

just throwing a bunch of money away in the greater Yellowstone

area with the plan that we have right now. The plan is not working. It is not mitigating the management of brucellosis. We need

to be realistic and find a solution that ends with Montana not losing our brucellosis-free status as has occurred with our neighbors.

Mr. RAHALL. And saving the taxpayers money as well.

Governor SCHWEITZER. Well we always like it when Congress

sends a few more dollars to Montana but in this particular case I

think it would be better to leave the dollars in Washington, D.C.

and have a permanent solution for bison management that does

not end with Montana losing its brucellosis-free status.

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you. Any of the other panel which to comment on that?

Ms. NAZZARO. Well we have not pulled together all of the cost figures yet but I think you do need to realize that there will be ongoing monitoring so there will still need to be some cost associated

with the bison management. That will be an ongoing program you

know regardless of whether you move forward in acquiring additional lands for the bison.

Mr. RAHALL. And will those costs be a part of your upcoming report?

Ms. NAZZARO. Yes.

31

Mr. RAHALL. I appreciate it. Appreciate each of you for the job

you do, and Ms. Nazzaro, it is good to see you again before our

Committee.

Ms. NAZZARO. Thank you, sir.

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, Mr. Rahall. Let me turn for any questions to Mr. Heller.

Mr. HELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Governor, it is good to

see you again. Glad to have you back. I guess I am a little confused

on your testimony, and maybe you can clarify. I am trying to figure

out whether you are for active management of brucellosis or you

are actually for expanding the size of the Park. What is the longterm answer to this in your opinion?

Governor SCHWEITZER. The former, not the latter. I have not advocated increasing the size of the Park nor am I advocating for increasing the size of the land that the bison occupy when they leave

the Park. What I am advocating for is number one and the best solution would be for Congress to give the tools to Yellowstone

National Park to actively manage the bison to eradicate brucellosis.

Now I want to be honest with you here.

There are some folks that when it comes right down to it that

are in the livestock business in Montana that would not necessarily

appreciate that solution because you see if the bison population in

Montana were brucellosis-free, then they would become a freeranging, wild game species. They would work their way down the

Madison and the Yellowstone. They would run down the streets of

Bozeman. They would be standing in the middle of the interstate.

They would be stopping trains.

They would be running through fences across eastern Montana,

and so you see there will be some folks who tell you that the most

important thing we need to do is eradicate brucellosis but when it

comes right down to having the tools to eradicate brucellosis, they

know that ultimately if the wild, free-ranging herd has brucellosis

eradicated then there will be virtually no limitations other than

hunting to the size of the population of the bison herd in Montana.

Mr. HELLER. Just one follow-up. Do you not have a current

problem with the elk herds? In other words, are they not then able

to—they are free-roaming—they have the same issues?

Governor SCHWEITZER. In Wyoming in particular, they winter

feed. They feed hay to their elk population. They congregate them,

and their herd of elk have brucellosis incidence of some 30, 40 percent. Idaho has a limited amount of winter feeding, and I am proud

to say in Montana we do not winter feed our elk. The number of

elk that we have survive because they have the skills to find their

own grass and make their way around.

Our incidence of brucellosis is around 1.8 percent in the elk herd

in the greater Yellowstone area. So by not congregating the elk in

a wild management system in Montana, to this point, we have

managed to check the growth of brucellosis. Thank you.

Mr. HELLER. Thank you, Governor. I yield back my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Let me turn to Mr. Kind for any questions.

Mr. KIND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate a chance to

have this important hearing today, and I want to welcome SuperVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:42 Jun 13, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 L:\DOCS\34137.TXT Hresour1 PsN: Hresour1
32

intendent Lewis back to the Committee here in Washington. I had

the pleasure to go out and visit beautiful Yellowstone last August

and received an excellent briefing from her and her staff on a

whole host of issues, including this one, and I would really commend the people at Yellowstone Park for their management of this

issue, trying to be a good neighbor, while at the same time trying

to be the proper steward of this incredibly important resource that

we have which is attacking us as we speak apparently. We have

a free-roaming herd behind the witnesses today.

But I want to thank all the witnesses for your testimony. Governor, you too. I think you have shed some light on some various

aspects of this issue that I think the Committee will have to seriously consider, and we would like to follow up with you in regards

to the outreach you are doing with the private landowners in regards to a possible buyout program, what it would take, whether

there is interest even in going down that path, because it certainly

seems one way of being able to contain what I think is a very manageable issue at this point.

And I understand in your testimony today that you really have

not been able to calculate an approximate cost as far as a buyout

plan, is that correct? You have not reached that level of detail yet?

Governor SCHWEITZER. Well I can give you the background math.

In the west Yellowstone area, the area that is represented on this

map in this area, since there is not a single operator who owns the

land and raises cattle, we had one operator that was from Idaho

that sold his land, then it is just a question of finances for these

folks. They are private landowners.

Mr. KIND. Right.

Governor SCHWEITZER. There are cattle that are brought in for

a few months during the summer. The total numbers are around

500, 600 head for a three or four-month period. They pay about 20

to $25 per cow and calf per month. You can do the math. We give

them a little more than that and tell them they can raise horses

and mules. So you can do that math. And in the Gardner area, the

numbers are probably about 250 to 300 that are there permanently, times 12 months, times that 20, 25 bucks. There is your

math.

There will be those in the livestock industry who say, well this

is just the nose under the camel’s tent. These are people who are

just trying to push livestock people off of their land. No, I am a

rancher. I have made a living in the livestock business. I can tell

you this though, we will not allow a footprint the size of New York

City on the map of the United States, this small area, to put our

entire billion dollar livestock industry at risk in Montana. It makes

sense for us to be proactive, to work with these private landowners,

to compensate them a market value, and allow them to continue

to raise horses and mules.

Mr. KIND. Right. Now it is my understanding in part of the briefing I received last summer is that a lot of the movement of the buffalo is dependent on winter conditions. In some winters you are

going to have a large exodus or a larger exodus, and I think this

most recent winter the numbers have been relatively low, is that

correct?

33

Ms. LEWIS. We have had bison move this winter but not in large

numbers. We have not captured any bison this winter but we probably had more than 500 events where we are hazing every two

days, every three days. Approximately about 150 head of bison

were moving around the north boundary of the Park. As of last

night, there were no bison on the boundary on the west side of the

Park, no bison on the boundary of the north side of the Park. We

have been experiencing very warm temperatures over the last two

weeks. Green up is starting a little bit earlier, and again the bison

turn and begin to move back into the Park.

Mr. KIND. Ms. Nazzaro, I think I was walking in, in the middle

of your response, but is it my understanding, based on your testimony, that GAO does not have purview of looking at the possibility

of a buyout plan given the audit that you are doing now with the

bison management plan? You are not looking into a buyout proposal?

Ms. NAZZARO. We are looking at the various costs associated with

the current operations but no, we are not looking at what this additional buyout could cost. That is possibly something if we talk options down the road as to we would want to include the cost of

those various options. So I could see us getting into it. It is not specifically prescribed, if you will, and that is why I say when we are

in the design phase we try to go in and try to ascertain what are

the issues, what are some potential solutions, and then we go back

and talk with our clients and suggest possibly expanding the audit.

Of course it always depends on their timeframes and you know the

resources we have available.

Mr. KIND. Governor, one final question. What would be the economic impact on your state if you lose brucellosis-free status?

Governor SCHWEITZER. Montana has some of the greatest numbers of purebred cattle of any state in the union, whether that be

Angus or Limousin or Charolais or the business that I have been

in, the simmental business. We export semen and frozen embryos

and cattle all over the world. You can go to Argentina, go to a

ranch and ask them you know tell me about the genetics of your

angus cattle, and they will start ticking off names of bulls that

were bred in Montana.

So we have a billion dollar cattle industry in Montana but the

limitation of moving our cattle around, moving to feedlot, is only

a fraction of the cost that would be borne by those in the purebred

industry that would lose their opportunities to export Montana beef

genetics all over the world. It is hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. KIND. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Governor SCHWEITZER. Per year.

Mr. KIND. I appreciate it.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Mr. Rehberg, any questions?

Mr. REHBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will not abuse the

privilege of sitting up here. I thank you for giving me this quick

opportunity. The GAO, during their investigation, did they look at

what Ms. Lewis had suggested, the purchase of property I believe

in 1932 was an expansion of the Park clearly to the north? Clearly

that did not solve the issue.

So as you look at the memorandum or the interagency agreement, do you put any kind of a value on whether that is the trend

34

or do you only look at that was the agreement that we are going

to try and change the migration pattern of the bison out of the

Park? Ultimately where do you come down? Do you do a cost benefit analysis on one answer versus the other? And more simply, will

you make a determination is it better to vaccinate and clean up the

herd or buy more easements or property to solve the bison and migration issue?

Ms. NAZZARO. I could see us certainly providing a number of options. We would look at—if I understand the first part of your

question—from a historical perspective what has been tried in the

past and how successful or unsuccessful that has been. That would

be factored in but we would do kind of a cost benefit analysis. We

would talk about the pros and cons. What you would get. What the

various costs would be and probably lay it out more as options to

the Congress.

Mr. REHBERG. One of the concerns I have heard from the ranging

community in Montana is their nervousness that they have not

been contacted as far as getting public input. Is that part of your

study? Do you have people actually go out and talk to somebody

that knows something about grazing or is this all done internally

among the various Federal agencies?

Ms. NAZZARO. No. We definitely contact stakeholders during the

course of our review. In fact, we did attend the interagency sponsored public meeting that was held by the various Federal agencies

and state agencies. There were a number of ranchers there as well

as other interested parties. We were contacted specifically by a

rancher who wanted to meet with my staff, and they met with him

on a Sunday afternoon to discuss his concerns.

Mr. REHBERG. So if they contact you, you are perfectly willing

and able to?

Ms. NAZZARO. We would, and just under the course of our review

we would try. I mean we pride ourselves as far as our independence and our balance that we give to an effort. So we would contact

all stakeholders in this case.

Mr. REHBERG. Suzanne, if I could ask you a question, and as you

know or I mentioned I was down in Yellowstone Park

snowmobiling and looking at the bison just literally two weeks ago.

I would agree with the Governor. It is overgrazed in the areas that

are open. That is part of the difficulty is the pattern of grazing

within the Park, and I know they are free-roaming but sometimes

they need to be guided to their free-roaming areas.

Because one of the things I saw was a lot of wildlife biologists

out there. There were airplanes flying all over the place taking pictures or counting. There were people on snowmobiles out there.

Wildlife biologists counting. Do you in fact map the migration of

the bison so that if you were to put the map of the one that is over

there with the yellow park, could you tell me exactly where the

3,600 head are? Because my simple math is you get 2.2 million

acres. You have 3,600 animals. You have about 700 acres per bison.

The Governor and I are both in the same business. I have been

in the cattle business. I am fifth generation on the same ranch, and

I can tell you a bison takes about 50 acres per bison for year-round

grazing or 25 acres for six-month grazing if they are going off and

eating somewhere else. There is a big difference between 50 acres

35

or give them 100 acres and the 700 acres, the numbers work out.

Do you in fact as the manager of the Park know where those bison

are, how well they are distributed, and are they in fact taking full

advantage of the grass that is available to them?

Ms. LEWIS. Yes, we do, Congressman. We have extensive monitoring that has been conducted for more than a decade, and we understand where the herds are and how they move year-round

throughout the Park. There are several herds, the Mary Mountain

herd, the Pelican Valley herd, the Madison herd, the herd on the

north end. As you yourself just mentioned, with approximately

3,600 bison that we just finished the late winter count and we have

been again like I said hazing maybe about 120 head on the north

end, again that tells us that more than 3,400 of the bison are well

entrenched in the Park, do not get up and move during the winter

months.

They are different herds with different herd behavior, different

knowledge that they have about where they go in the winter. As

the Governor mentioned, many of them do live in the thermal

areas where they are able to feed on small lichen, stay warm

throughout the winter. So most of the bison herd does not move

during the winter months. The majority of them stay within the

Park.

Mr. REHBERG. The troublemakers. Mr. Chairman, would it be appropriate to ask for the mapping of the migration patterns? I think

that would be very helpful because in all the years I have served

and worked on this Committee, I have never seen that provided to

the Committee. I think it would be helpful to show that there are

troublemakers around the edge, and rather than continually buying additional property or easements around the Park, let us deal

with the troublemakers.

Ms. LEWIS. We would be happy to supply that data and those

maps.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you very much. Thank you for helping the

Committee identify the troublemakers in this whole process. With

that, let me ask Mr. Inslee if he has any questions.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Governor, thanks for being

here. It always amazes me that you have such a well managed

state. You manage to take care of the country too up here in Washington, D.C. We appreciate that. I wanted to ask I read in your testimony—I did not get to hear your testimony—but I read that one

idea you had floated is a special zone where you would have 100

percent testing and special zones with the agreement of APHIS

that if there was an infection in that special zone it would not affect the whole state. Could you just either elaborate or tell us what

APHIS’ response has been and where that may end up going?

Governor SCHWEITZER. Well APHIS has a rule that says two

strikes and you are out, not three, two. So if two separate herds

of Montana or any other state have an animal that tests positive

for brucellosis, the whole state loses their brucellosis-free status.

But since this mixing zone is such a small footprint in the State

of Montana, it is a thumb of the entire map of Montana on a map

this size, it does not make any sense to risk all the cattle that are

300 and 400 and 500 miles away from this mixing zone.

36

And so if we are not capable, if we do not want to actively purchase some conservation easements until we can eradicate brucellosis, another option would be to draw a 50 or 100-mile line around

the Park, and the few head of cattle that enter that area in Montana would be held to a higher standard. They would have 100 percent test. They would be tested before they entered. They would be

tested when they left.

And if we did have two, three or four herds that showed a positive animal, those herds would lose their brucellosis-free status.

They would be quarantined until they cleaned it up but it would

not affect the status of the rest of Montana.

Mr. INSLEE. Do you think that would have the support of the industry, that heightened inspection criteria?

Governor SCHWEITZER. It has the support of some of the industry. In Montana we have several livestock groups. There is the

Montana Stock Growers Association who have not been particularly warm to any of these ideas, some of which because there is

a pride of authorship because they were involved in the negotiation

in 2000 which probably ended up with a document that I am not

particularly proud of.

The Montana Cattlemen’s Association, which is a much larger organization, they have endorsed either one of these ideas that I

have proposed today, in addition to eradicating brucellosis in the

Park among the bison. So it is like all industries. There are different opinions but ultimately everyone agrees in Montana that is

in the livestock industry we do not want to lose our brucellosis-free

status, and we think that the Department of Interior ought to work

with the Department of Agriculture.

After all, the United States Department of Interior has the responsibility of managing the buffalo, and it is the United States

Department of Agriculture that decides whether we lose our brucellosis-free status. So we think that they ought to work together here

in Washington D.C. not to dump the problem on us in Montana

when the buffalo leave the Park. Thank you.

Mr. INSLEE. What is APHIS’ response to that idea?

Mr. CLIFFORD. Basically when you are talking about the issue of

zoning, really that is what the Governor is talking about is zoning

out, zoning is done when a disease enters that particular area and

the state requests it. Then we consider whether zoning or regionalization is appropriate at that particular time not prior to. Our ultimate goal is for the elimination and eradication of brucellosis from

the entire U.S., both wildlife and domestic livestock. That goal has

been met in 48 states. The State of Idaho and the State of Texas

are the only two states that are not recognized free.

The standards that are set for the program are not just set by

USDA. It is a cooperative program with the industry and the

states, and so all of us together have set these standards nationally

for the brucellosis program. So if you start changing those standards, it would require us to go out with our partners, both at the

industry and as well with the other states, to consider those

changes to the program.

Mr. INSLEE. Is that underway? Should it be underway? Should

those discussions take place? I mean is there any reason not to do

it prospectively rather than retroactively?

37

Mr. CLIFFORD. I think there is really no point at this point in

time to be changing the program that has been so effective for so

many years.

Mr. INSLEE. Sounds like an answer, Governor, that might not be

the one you are looking for.

Governor SCHWEITZER. Well, I do not know that it has been so

effective for so many years because my neighbors in Wyoming and

Idaho do not think that it has been so effective.

Mr. INSLEE. Right.

Governor SCHWEITZER. They believe that the greater Yellowstone

area has contributed to their loss of the brucellosis-free status. So

to suggest that status quo is working when two out of three have

already failed, I do not like to be the third one waiting in line for

losing our brucellosis-free status. So we happen to disagree that it

is working.

Mr. INSLEE. Is there not an argument, Mr. Clifford, that a prospective inspection protocol right on the boundaries of the Park actually gives consumers a greater level of protection than this sort

of retroactive once it happens then we whack the whole state?

Mr. CLIFFORD. We certainly find with the prospective look as far

as testing in and out of that the states can require that themselves.

The State of Montana, the State of Wyoming, the State of Idaho

can make those requirements within the state. They do not need

the Federal government to make that determination and put those

requirements in place. They can do that themselves, and we certainly support that if that is the direction they want to go with regard to testing.

Mr. INSLEE. Governor?

Governor SCHWEITZER. Well that would be amazing. So the State

of Montana decides we are going to test more cattle so we can find

the two herds so they can put us out of compliance and lose our

brucellosis-free status. If we are going to do that in this small area,

we would suggest that every cow in America be tested, and under

those testing regimes there would be many more states that would

lose their brucellosis-free status, if we tested every single animal.

So unless USDA is prepared to offer us the opportunity—if we

do have two, three, four herds that ended up brucellosis positive—

not to lose the entire state’s brucellosis-free status, of course we

would not subject our own herds to a higher standard of testing

than the rest of the country.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. I have some follow-up questions just

to kind of finish up on some questions. Mr. Clifford, does the inspection service have any documentation of the transmission of

brucellosis from bison to cattle in the wild?

Mr. CLIFFORD. Not in the wild but certainly captive bison that

would not act any differently than wild bison. There is an article

in the 1983 proceedings of the U.S. Animal Health Association

where transmission occurred from a captive bison herd in the State

of North Dakota to cattle.

Mr. GRIJALVA. But my point is——

Mr. CLIFFORD. It is not wild but it is not research either. It was

a captive herd of bison but the captive herd of bison is not going

to act any differently than wild bison with regards to transmission.

38

That is why spacial and temporal separation and other activities

are so critically important. In addition, in Yellowstone National

Park area there have been fetuses found and tested and brucella

bordis isolated from those fetuses which is infective to cattle.

Mr. GRIJALVA. But the statement I would consider true that as

Chairman Rahall said in the wild there has never been a documented instance of that transmission?

Mr. CLIFFORD. To my knowledge, there has not been a documented case of wild transmission but there has been documented

cases of bison to cattle.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. And just for Mr. Soukup and Superintendent Lewis, are there discussions underway with tribes? Any

discussion going on between Park Service or another Federal agency with tribes adjacent to the Park relative to them assuming some

herd responsibility on the reservation for the bison? Has any of

that discussion occurred?

Ms. LEWIS. Yellowstone enjoys and is very proud of part of its

mission which is our relationship with the 26 tribes who are affiliated with the Park. We meet with those tribes on a regular basis.

There is an actual intertribal bison committee that gives us a lot

of input on how we conduct the interagency bison management

plan. So they are part of our routine and ongoing discussions, and

I think the Governor had a comment he wanted to offer.

Mr. GRIJALVA. But specifically establishing bison in those reservations.

Ms. LEWIS. Currently the regulations controlling brucellosis

through the Animal, Plant and Health Inspection Service prohibit

us from transmitting any bison outside of the Yellowstone National

Park because of the presence of the disease.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Governor?

Governor SCHWEITZER. But during the course of the last few

years, when bison do leave the Park, young females have been captured, and with the idea that perhaps they might be young enough

that they would still be brucellosis-free. We test them. If they are

negative, we keep them in captivity until they have had their first

calf, and the gold standard in this business is if they still do not

have an elevated titer by the time they have their first calf, that

they are brucellosis-free.

Now that is preparing an opportunity of a repository of these genetics to be in a position to move them out of the greater Yellowstone area and presumably to some of the reservations. In addition,

we have had all of the reservations in Montana and the Nez Perce

tribe from Idaho involved in our hunts that we have been conducting in Montana. We issue some of the permits. They come.

They hunt. They kill animals. They slaughter them. They take

them back and feed them to members of their family and community.

So I am hopeful that some of these animals that we have captured, these young females, will be a start of some genetics that we

can move out to some of our Indian tribes, and give them an opportunity to raise some of these free-ranging genetics on their own reservations.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Last question. Mr. Clifford, does the

inspection service have the legal authority to enter Yellowstone

39

National Park to pursue a program of testing all bison in the Park

and slaughtering those which test positive for brucellosis? Do you

have that authority?

Mr. CLIFFORD. Our position is that we would work with the Park

on that. I do not know that. You know we would have to go back

and look at our particular authorities whether we would have that

authority to do that or not. I really do not know if that authority

exists on the papers. I do know that in time of emergency disease

when the Secretary of Agriculture declares an emergency, that

gives us very broad authority to take action for diseases like footand-mouth disease but in this case I think it would probably take

that type of an emergency.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. If you would, Mr. Clifford, just for the

sake of the Committee’s full information on that authority question, if you could provide that.

Mr. CLIFFORD. We will do that, sir.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Let me ask Mr. Bishop if he has any

questions.

Mr. BISHOP. Yes. Let me be brief. I have two quick questions,

and then perhaps a simple statement. Let me ask two questions

about hunting if I could to Director Soukup again, and the Chairman touched on this. There are Indian tribes that have valid treaty

rights allowing them to hunt in the Park. Is that part of your management plan?

Ms. LEWIS. There is no authority by which Native Americans can

hunt inside Yellowstone National Park. The hunting that they have

been participating in is outside the Park’s boundary in the State

of Montana by which their treaty rights do apply. They do not

apply inside Yellowstone National Park.

Mr. BISHOP. We will look at that one in greater detail. I appreciate that comment. Congressman Mark Udall has introduced legislation that allows sports hunting to harvest elk in the Rocky Mountain National Park under very regulated conditions. If such legislation were introduced in Yellowstone, would your service, the Park

Service, be supportive of that?

Mr. SOUKUP. As I understand that legislation, I believe we have

that authority already. We have the authority to use authorized

agents. How you define that and who they might be is something

that in each case we analyze in our public involvement process.

Mr. BISHOP. So I do not want to put words in your mouth. Did

you just say you were supportive of that? Would be supportive or

would not?

Mr. SOUKUP. I believe we already have that authority.

Mr. BISHOP. Let me try this one more time. I do not want to put

words in your mouth. Does that mean you would be supportive of

that legislation?

Mr. SOUKUP. I do not believe we would, sir.

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you for the answer. Let me ask two last questions, and once again for GAO. I recognize the report that was requested of you deals with bison only but the issue obviously is brucellosis, otherwise there would be no issue for the report. Any report that does not actively go out and try to add the element of elk

which also is the purveyor of brucellosis as part of the equation

means the report would basically be woefully inadequate when it

40

is finished and given to us. I will simply say that as an up-front

comment about it.

And finally, Director of the Park Service, I am very much troubled in the one question that I did ask you. You gave me very good

answers in many of them but the one question I asked you which

would be the higher value, and making a brucellosis-free herd was

not your highest value. Greater Yellowstone Park is the only area

where brucellosis is still a major problem.

If we are not in active management of that herd to make it a

brucellosis-free, we are failing in our responsibility, and if that is

not your greatest responsibility and greatest value then there is

something deeply wrong with what we are doing in that Park. If

we could have this as a brucellosis-free area, in both of those areas,

we would solve a whole lot of problems as opposed to trying to get

buffer zones, which they would then inhabit. Then you would have

to have a different buffer zone and other kind of processes.

Simple logic tells us that should be the highest priority, and

when you say that is not the highest priority there is something

that is deeply wrong in the Park Service, and we need to talk about

that in great detail later on. Thank you. I am done with the question.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Mr. Rahall?

Mr. RAHALL. No questions.

Mr. GRIJALVA. No question. Mr. Rehberg?

Mr. REHBERG. No.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Kind?

Mr. KIND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief. Just to follow-up on a couple of more questions but getting back to what Mr.

Bishop was asking you a second ago, Mr. Soukup. What concerns

would the Park have in regards to issuing limited hunting permits

for this purpose? Do you see a management problem or——

Mr. SOUKUP. I am sorry. I am not clear on what purpose your

are referring.

Mr. KIND. Well he was referencing Mr. Udall’s legislation as far

as Rocky Mountain National Park and issuing limited hunting

rights for culling the elk heard there, and you indicated the Park

may not be so inclined to embrace such a policy inside Yellowstone?

Mr. SOUKUP. Well we have the authority to make reductions and

to manage wildlife when we understand that there is a necessity

to do that. Within that authority is the authority to use authorized

agents. So——

Mr. KIND. Bring in some sharpshooters in other words?

Mr. SOUKUP. We often use the APHIS division that is very professional at this. They are very capable of doing this in a very

clean, concise, quick way. We use them quite a bit. There is the

possibility to use authorized agents that could be perhaps the——

Mr. KIND. But just to pin you down a little bit. I think this is

what Mr. Bishop was trying to get at is there is some concern

about issuing some permits to private hunters inside the Park.

What is the concern?

Mr. SOUKUP. Well we have a long, very long tradition, and it is

very clear in our legislation and all of our policies since 1872 that

there is no hunting allowed in Yellowstone National Park.

Mr. KIND. So just tradition mainly?

41

Mr. SOUKUP. Well it is legal. It is in the enabling legislation.

Mr. KIND. It is in the enabling act. Yes. Mr. Clifford, let me ask

you briefly are we getting better at developing an accurate, nonlethal form of testing for brucellosis or is the most accurate test

after you have killed the animal?

Mr. CLIFFORD. Actually there is very accurate tests with regards

to blood tests that can be done. You do not have to kill an animal

to diagnosis brucella.

Mr. KIND. So you can do a pretty good calculation as far as the

pure herds in Yellowstone right now if we had the resources to——

Mr. CLIFFORD. Well you have to capture the animal to be able

to draw the blood.

Mr. KIND. Right. Right. Governor, you seem willing to share

some information with us.

Governor SCHWEITZER. It is the doggonedest thing. When the

buffalo leaves the Park, then the State of Montana is responsible

to chase them around, to round them up or have a hunt. We have

been hunting them for the last couple of years. We had 12 years.

We went three consecutive administrations before me where we

were not of the resolve to have a hunt.

So we have been hunting them when they leave the Park but we

have to wait until their nose crosses a line, and then we can shoot

them. So the State of Montana has to fix the problem that the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture have created, in part in hunting them. So I would suggest if we could hunt

them on one side of the line we ought to be able to hunt them on

the other side of the line and open up the entire basin for hunting.

We can control numbers. We have been controlling numbers of

elk and antelope and moose and other game species in Montana.

We have the largest, healthiest group of wild game in Montana. We

have for 75 years, and we manage those numbers with a hunt. I

do not know why the Federal government cannot follow the lead of

the State of Montana. Thank you.

Mr. KIND. Well let me ask you in regards to the buyout proposal

that you were suggesting today, from your experience in some of

the negotiations that are ongoing, are the private landowners receptive to this idea? Are they open to it?

Governor SCHWEITZER. To some extent. The largest landowner is

RTR. They are in negotiation. There are others that are discussing

it with us. We have met with landowner groups in the area, and

there are varying levels of acceptance but there are varying levels

of offers in terms of financial contribution that can be brought to

bear.

Mr. KIND. But it may be more complicated though, as you

suggested too, is whenever you have free-roaming animals of this

nature, transportation systems, rail system, things like that, that

we would have to have a plan for as well.

Governor SCHWEITZER. Well understand that there would still be

what I call a drop dead zone. Even if we purchased easement rights

just adjacent to the Park, those 10,000 acres and much less of it

would be private land, there would be some choke points along

both the Madison River and the Yellowstone River where the canyons are very narrow. Beyond that, we would not accept a single

one of those buffalo into Montana until they are brucellosis-free.

42

So we will not expand the area that the bison are moving in and

out of. We would just allow for cattle not to be in the area where

those bison are moving in and out so that we would not have cattle

and bison occupying the same space. Thank you.

Mr. KIND. Is anyone working on an elk management plan comparable? Is this not the problem that Wyoming and Idaho got into

as far as the spread of brucellosis, Mr. Clifford?

Mr. CLIFFORD. In my testimony what we were talking about is

developing management plans for all of the elk and bison in the entire GYA. That is the direction we would like to have is an MOU

with all of the parties involved to develop an elimination plan for

all of the bison and elk in the greater Yellowstone. We recognize

that that is a long-term effort but we believe it is the best effort

with regards to moving this issue forward.

Mr. KIND. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Heller?

Mr. HELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Clifford, I just have

a couple of questions. What is the status of say Nevada and Utah

as far as the brucellosis disease is concerned?

Mr. CLIFFORD. All the states in the U.S. are free with the exception of Idaho and Texas.

Mr. HELLER. And the reason I ask you know I apply for tags, elk

tags, deer tags in Utah. In fact, I think there is even a bison herd

in Utah, is that correct?

Governor SCHWEITZER. Yes, and they have a hunt.

Mr. HELLER. They do have a hunt?

Governor SCHWEITZER. You bet.

Mr. HELLER. That is what I thought.

Governor SCHWEITZER. You bet.

Mr. HELLER. Because every time I apply for a tag in Utah I see

bison on the form, never applied for a bison tag, but interesting

that it is there. What is the status of that herd there?

Mr. CLIFFORD. Those herds are free of brucella.

Mr. HELLER. Then explain to me why the disease is so more

acute in Yellowstone Park as opposed to a herd in Utah.

Mr. CLIFFORD. Well I do not know that it is an issue of being

acute. I think it is an issue of the fact that the disease has been

present there for a long period of time. I think it was first diagnosed in the Yellowstone bison I believe it was in 1917, and the

disease really to my knowledge has never been eradicated from

that population of animals, even during that entire period of time,

and now it is in the elk population as well, and it is a bigger issue.

Mr. HELLER. You are saying it is not in the elk population

though in Nevada or Utah that you are aware of?

Mr. CLIFFORD. Not that I am aware of.

Mr. HELLER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. KIND. [Presiding.] Thank you. Mr. Rahall, any further

questions?

Mr. RAHALL. No.

Mr. KIND. Mr. Bishop?

Mr. BISHOP. No.

Mr. KIND. I want to thank all of the panelists here and your testimony was very helpful, very enlightening, and obviously we have

some work to do. So thank you for your testimony here today.

43

[Recess.]

Mr. KIND. OK. I think we are going to keep this going. We have

some votes starting shortly. So we want to get to the next panel

of witnesses as soon as possible, and we have with us for the third

panel Mr. Josh Osher with the Buffalo Field Campaign. Thank you

for joining us. Tim Stevens, Yellowstone Project Manager, National

Parks Conservation Association. Wayne Pacelle, who is the CEO of

the Humane Society. Good to see you again, Wayne. Jim

Hagenbarth, Montana Stock Growers Association and Dr. Charles

Kay from the Utah State University.

I believe all or some of you have submitted written statements

that will be made a part of the record but let us start with Mr.

Osher for your testimony. Thank you for being here.

STATEMENT OF JOSH OSHER, BUFFALO FIELD CAMPAIGN

Mr. OSHER. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, again my name is Josh Osher,

and I am a coordinator with the Buffalo Field Campaign. The Buffalo Field Campaign is the only group working in the field every

day documenting the harassment and slaughter of Yellowstone’s

wild bison herd. Buffalo of Yellowstone National Park cannot be

here today to defend themselves to this committee and to represent

themselves, and we do not pretend to speak for them but we are

their advocates, and that is why we are here today.

I would also like to recognize that with me today is Darrell Geist,

a Buffalo Field Campaign associate, who has researched extensively the grazing program in the Gallatin National Forest and D.

J. Shubert from the Animal Welfare Institute with 20 years plus

experience on this issue as a wildlife biologist.

Twenty-five to 40 million buffalo once roamed the North American continent. Their range expanded from Canada to Mexico and

across the United States. They were an incredibly significant feature of the lives of many Native American tribes living in the

plains region. The buffalo were so important to the Native Americans in this area that they considered them their relatives.

But a directed policy in the late 1800s led to the extermination

of nearly all of the buffalo from their native range. In less than 50

years, the millions were down to just a handful of animals that survived in Yellowstone National Park’s Pelican Valley. The buffalo of

Yellowstone today are the only living link in this country to the

great herds of millions that once roamed freely throughout the

plains. They are genetically pure, not hybridized with cattle. Their

significance is strong with the American people as well as they

are—as was pointed out earlier—a symbol of the Department of

Interior and the National Park Service.

They are truly a treasure. However, these agencies have advocated their responsibility toward the buffalo in recent years. In

2000, as has been mentioned, the interagency bison management

plan was developed through court-ordered mediation. The management plan is a product of politics, not of sound science. It was even

recognized by the agencies that there was large disagreement and

the plan would be an adaptive management plan.

However, the plan has focused solely on eliminating buffalo from

the range that they are trying to access outside of the Park. The

44

agencies use techniques called hazing where they use horses,

ATVs, helicopters and snowmobiles, as the Governor described. In

one instance last year, 14 bison fell through the thin ice of Hebgen

Lake as they were chased by snowmobiles. Two drowned, and then

within several months later all 40 or so of those bison were rounded up and sent to slaughter anyway, without even preliminary brucellosis testing.

When the buffalo are deemed unhazeable, they are captured, and

these facilities that you are seeing here, these are designed for domestic livestock. This is the product of years of an eradication program for livestock. Wild buffalo are not domestic livestock. They

cannot be treated the same way. In these facilities the buffalo are

often injured, some of them are even mortally wounded in these facilities, never even making it to the testing chutes or eventually to

the slaughterhouse.

Oftentimes when buffalo are captured, they may be tested for

brucellosis exposure, and the testing procedures are themselves

quite a brutal experience for these buffalo. These procedures were

designed for domestic cattle. The tests used were designed for domestic cattle. They are not accurate in the buffalo. Less than 20

percent of the buffalo that test positive for antibodies to brucellosis

actually test positive when their tissues are cultured for the bacteria. So most of the animals that are being slaughtered do not in

fact have brucellosis. What they have is the resistance to brucellosis.

In the last six years of the interagency plan, over 2,000 wild buffalo have been killed by the agencies, 1,500 by the National Park

Service alone, 850 of those just last year as they try and leave the

Park. If this was not enough, the agencies have moved onto a program the Governor spoke about quarantine. Bison quarantine is a

program where these calves are taken from their families. They are

placed in a facility north of the Park. They are held captive for four

years. They are fed hay. They are fed water. They are ear tagged.

They are moved around. They are kept in small pastures and small

corrals.

These are our Yellowstone buffalo with ear tags being treated

like domestic cattle. Is this the future we really want to see for the

wild buffalo of Yellowstone? So that what you have seen here are

the tools of brucellosis eradication: Testing, slaughtering, vaccination. The vaccine just simply does not work in the buffalo. Some

studies have indicated it has not efficacy. Some other studies have

put that up to around 40, 50 percent. But the truth is, these are

buffalo. They are not cattle. The vaccines and the tools and the

tests for cattle do not work on buffalo.

What the buffalo really need is winter range habitat, and it is

available. There is a large landscape in Montana, and we can make

this land available for wild buffalo. The Gallatin National Forest

can create a wild bison recovery zone where they make multiple

use decisions based on the concept that this land is prioritized for

habitat for wild buffalo. It is their principal role in the interagency

management plan to provide habitat.

APHIS can do what the Governor said: Create a zone management system for domestic cattle in the greater Yellowstone area to

protect Montana’s brucellosis-free status. They can provide service

45

to the livestock industry which is their charge rather than funding

the slaughter of wild buffalo.

Yellowstone has to return to its original charter, to conserve the

scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. It took an Act of Congress, signed by the President, enforced

by the U.S. Army to stop the near extinction of Yellowstone’s wild

buffalo before. It is going to take an Act of Congress now to ensure

their survival and restoration as a native wildlife species in the

American west. Thank you for your time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Osher follows:]

Statement of Joshua Osher, Coordinator, Buffalo Field Campaign

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for the opportunity to address the subcommittee on this issue of great

importance to the American people.

A Brief History of the Yellowstone Herd

The bison of Yellowstone National Park are unique among herds in the United

States, being members of the country’s only continuously wild herd. Bison once

ranged from the northeastern United States to Oregon and California and from

northern Mexico and Florida to northern Canada. Freely migrating in response to

natural conditions, North America’s bison comprised the largest concentration of

mammals ever known to exist. While no one will ever know exactly how many bison

the continent once supported, scientific estimates place the figure between twentyfive and forty million animals.

North America’s native bison gave rise to and supported diverse Native American

cultures. For many tribes of the Great Plains and surrounding regions, the bison

was essential to life. John Fire Lame Deer eloquently expresses the depth of the

connection between the Lakota Nation and the Buffalo Nation: ‘‘The buffalo was

part of us, his flesh and blood being absorbed by us until it became our own flesh

and blood. Our clothing, our tipis, everything we needed for life came from the buffalo’s body. It was hard to say where the animal ended and the man began.’’ John

Fire Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, Simon and

Schuster, New York, 1972, p244

The mass eradication of wild bison from the plains, an episode in our history with

which we are all familiar, forever altered the balance of life in North America. By

the early 20th century all but one of the wild herds had been killed and virtually

every Native American tribe had been eradicated or forced into a sedentary lifestyle

on a reservation. When the last great bison herds were decimated in the West, a

few hearty individuals holed up in Yellowstone’s Pelican Valley, one of the country’s

coldest and most snowy valleys, barely avoiding extinction.

Fearing that the wild herd would die off, park managers purchased 18 captive cow

bison from Montana’s Flathead Valley and three bulls from the Texas Panhandle

to establish a herd on Yellowstone’s northern range. Over time, members of the

Lamar herd mingled with members of Yellowstone’s indigenous Pelican Valley herd.

While the extent of interbreeding isn’t known, the bison we see today in Yellowstone

National Park are directly descended from these herds. Members of the only herd

in America never confined by a fence, these bison carry a direct genetic link to Yellowstone’s original population.

Yellowstone’s approach to bison management in the 20th century tended toward

the heavy-handed. Animals were sometimes ear-tagged and branded, confined in

pens as tourist attractions, and fed at cattle-like feed-lines. Bison calves from the

wild Pelican Valley herd were captured and nursed on domestic cow’s milk, a practice that likely resulted in the Yellowstone bison becoming infected with the livestock disease brucellosis. The Department of Agriculture and the Montana and Wyoming livestock industries, fearing a transmission back to cattle, pressured Yellowstone officials to capture, test, vaccinate, and slaughter Yellowstone bison within the

park, which they did periodically between the 1920s and 1967, when Yellowstone

adopted a more hands off ‘‘natural regulation’’ approach to wildlife management.

The bison were largely left alone inside the park between the late 1960s and the

early 1980s, a result of this new management paradigm and a period of mild winters in which bison stayed deep within the park.

Harsh winters are another story. Snow and ice obscure the grass in the park and

hunger pushes the bison to lower elevations, which happen to lie across the MonVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:42 Jun 13, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 L:\DOCS\34137.TXT Hresour1 PsN: Hresour1
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tana border. When they cross this invisible line, bison change political jurisdictions

and step into a conflict zone. Montana held a hunt for migrating Yellowstone bison

between 1982 and 1989, when a national public outcry forced the state to call it off.

Montana game wardens took up where the hunters left off, shooting any bison that

left the park. In 1995 the Montana legislature turned bison management authority

over to the Department of Livestock (DOL), an agency mandated with protecting the

interests of the state’s livestock industry, where it remains to this day.

Although there has never been a documented case of brucellosis being transmitted

from wild bison to livestock, the DOL and, in recent years the NPS, use the disease

to justify the harassment and slaughter of bison when they leave or approach the

boundary of the park. Since 1985 the DOL and Yellowstone National Park have

killed more than 5,000 Yellowstone bison. While elk and other wildlife also carry

the disease, only bison are routinely hazed, captured, and slaughtered, indicating

that the agencies are more concerned with controlling bison than with controlling

brucellosis.

More bison were killed during the winter of 1996-1997 than in any single year

since the 19th century. That winter and spring the National Park Service and the

State of Montana killed 1,084 Yellowstone bison. Starvation was common as well,

as early winter rains turned the snowpack to mush. Record freezing temperatures

locked the grass away beneath a thick slab of ice, and heavy snows followed. Bison,

braced against blizzard, nuzzled heavy snow aside only to scrape their noses on diamond-hard ice. Between the human slaughter and natural deaths, over two thousand animals, more than half the herd, were killed in a matter of months.

Under the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP), an agreement forced

upon Montana and the U.S. Government by court order, America’s only continuously

wild bison are still not tolerated in Montana. Chased with snowmobiles, helicopters,

and ATVs; trapped and confined in cattle pens and quarantine facilities; and shot

on their native habitat, Yellowstone bison are in serious trouble. The National Park

Service and the Montana Department of Livestock killed more than 1,000 Yellowstone bison in 2006. The Park Service alone was responsible for the death of more

than 900 animals, the most killed by the agency in its 90-year history.

Today’s Yellowstone herd faces a situation perilously similar to that of its ancestors of a century ago. Wild bison are considered ecologically extinct everywhere outside Yellowstone. If history continues on its present course, the Yellowstone herd

will become just another intensively managed, domesticated herd, and the thin

thread so tenuously linking our present century to the wild and fertile past will be

forever severed.

In 1872 the U.S. Congress played an instrumental role in the creation of Yellowstone National Park and the protection of the American bison from hunters and

poachers. In 2007 Congress can play an equally important role in the protection of

the Yellowstone bison from state and federal agencies operating under an inherently

flawed management plan.

What is the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP)?

The IBMP, and the Modified Preferred Alternative of the Final Environmental

Impact Statement (FEIS) that it represents is the product of court ordered mediation resulting from a Federal lawsuit. 95 percent of the public comments on the

FEIS were opposed to the agencies’ Preferred Alternative, yet the Plan was approved in the state and federal Records of Decision in December, 2000.

The IBMP’s stated purpose of action is, ‘‘to maintain a wild, free-ranging population of bison and address that risk of brucellosis transmission to protect the economic interest and viability of the livestock industry in the state of Montana.’’ FEIS,

Vol. 1, p. 14. The FEIS continues to state in the ‘‘Need for Action’’ section, ‘‘Bison

are an essential component of Yellowstone National Park and the Gallatin National

Forest because they contribute to the biological, ecological, cultural, and aesthetic

purposes of the park. However, Yellowstone National Park is not a self-contained

ecosystem for bison, and periodic migrations into Montana are natural events.’’

FEIS, Vol 1, p. 14. This analysis continues in the FEIS in the ‘‘Objectives In Taking

Action’’ section, ‘‘Lower elevation range could provide areas for bison to winter adjacent to the park as well as additional management options ... and the modified preferred alternative already includes acquisition of lands to the north of the Reese

Creek boundary on the Royal Teton Ranch.’’ FEIS, Vol. 1, p. 45

Furthermore, the IBMP is designed as an adaptive management plan. ‘‘Professionals in the fields of wildlife science, livestock disease, wildlife disease, livestock

management, and wildlife management do not agree on the central issues relating

to brucellosis in Yellowstone bison. The agencies have agreed to support research

on these issues and will update the bison management plan as new information becomes available.’’ FEIS, Vol. 1, p. 45.

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Is the IBMP living up to it’s stated goals?

In the six-year history of the IBMP, nearly 2000 Yellowstone bison have been

killed as a result of agency management actions. The National Park Service alone

is responsible for the slaughter of nearly 1,500 bison under the IBMP. The plan was

originally developed in three phases. According to the timeline provided in the FEIS,

the plan should have entered step 3 during the winter of 2003/4 in the western

boundary area and by the winter of 2004/5 in the northern boundary area. However,

to date, the plan is still mired in step 1 with no established or updated time line

as to when the plan will advance to steps 2 and 3. Under step 3, untested bison

would be allowed to utilize habitat outside of Yellowstone National Park.

One primary assumption made in the FEIS that enables progression to steps 2

and 3 in the Northern Boundary area is the elimination of livestock grazing on the

Royal Teton Ranch (expected in 2002) and the development of a bison plan for the

federally acquired and easement lands north of Reese Creek. As of today, cattle still

graze on the Royal Teton Ranch and there is no bison plan for the federally acquired

lands. Therefore, bison are still being hazed, captured and slaughtered by the

National Park Service for attempting to access this essential winter range habitat.

Last winter alone, Yellowstone National Park captured nearly 1,200 bison and sent

almost 900 to slaughter.

No transmissions of brucellosis between wild bison and domestic cattle have occurred under the IBMP. Montana still firmly holds its class-free brucellosis status.

The viability of Montana’s livestock industry has not been compromised in any way

by the Yellowstone bison herd. However, there has never been a documented case

of brucellosis transmission between wild bison and domestic cattle. Therefore, it is

inaccurate to characterize the IBMP as having protected Montana’s livestock industry from brucellosis transmission and the loss of class free status. In fact, the implementation of the IBMP’s methods for providing temporal and spatial separation between bison and cattle, particularly hazing of bison back into Yellowstone National

Park, may add to the risk of infected birthing materials in the environment as pregnant female bison are highly stressed prior to calving. The simple truth is that brucellosis transmission between wild bison and cattle is a highly unlikely event. Sensible risk management practices that incorporate the best available science could

easily prevent transmission from occurring without the excessive cost and harsh

practices of the current IBMP.

In terms of ensuring a viable, free-ranging population of wild bison, the IBMP is

failing in it’s stated goals. The bison are unable to access vital winter range habitat

outside of park borders. Thousands of bison have been killed for attempting to access lands that were expected to be available several years ago. Additionally, recent

research in the genetic makeup of Yellowstone bison indicate a high probability that

there are at least two and likely three unique and distinct subpopulations of bison

that make up the Yellowstone herd. Natalie Dierschke Halbert, The Utilization of

Genetic Markers to Resolve Modern Management Issues in Historic Bison Populations: Implications for Species Conservation, December 2003, pages 137-140.

Therefore, management removals of large groups of bison migrating to the boundary

areas, as was the case last winter, could have significant detrimental impacts on

the genetic viability of one or more subpopulations. The IBMP has not adapted management protocols to reflect these findings, leaving the future of the bison in jeopardy.

How is the IBMP implemented?

Hazing

Spatial and temporal separation of bison and cattle is the primary risk management strategy of the IBMP. This is currently accomplished by ‘‘hazing’’ bison back

into Yellowstone National Park. Hazing is the term the agencies use to describe the

forced movement of bison. The Montana Department of Livestock, the lead agency

on the park’s western boundary, uses a variety of means to haze bison. These include helicopters, snowmobiles, ATV’s and horses. Oftentimes, bison are chased ten

miles or more to the park border or the capture facility. The bison, desiring to access

their chosen spring calving grounds on the Gallatin National Forest’s Horse Butte

Peninsula, will return the next day only to be chased back again. Newborn calves

and pregnant females suffer greatly from the stress of these repeated hazing operations.

Hazing operations, by the very nature of the implements used, not only impact

the bison, but are highly detrimental to the multitude of other species that occupy

this magnificent wildlife migration corridor. Displaced species include bald eagles,

trumpeter swans, elk, moose, wolves, grizzly bears and a myriad of other species.

This type of hazing is also very costly, requiring large numbers of personnel and

expensive equipment.

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Capture

The protocols of the IBMP allow the agencies to capture bison that are deemed

‘‘unhazeable.’’ The Montana Department of Livestock operates one permanent capture facility within 1/4 mile of the park border at Duck Creek and one temporary

capture facility on the Horse Butte Peninsula through a special use permit granted

by the Gallatin National Forest. The National Park Service operates one capture facility, Stephens Creek, located within park borders near the northern boundary.

These facilities are all modeled after livestock handling facilities. It is important to

remember that wild bison are not domestic cattle. The nature of the bison and the

facility design create a circumstance where bison are often injured or even killed

in the trapping, sorting and transporting process.

Testing

Once captured, the bison may be tested for exposure to brucellosis bacteria. All

bison that test positive for exposure on the standard blood test are immediately

shipped to slaughter. Bison that test negative may be tagged and released or held

for future release. Negative testing bison calves and yearlings may also be shipped

to an experimental quarantine facility located near the park’s northern border.

Often times, tagged bison will be recaptured and retested or sent to slaughter at

the discretion of the agency. The process of testing bison at the capture facilities

is both cruel and inhumane. The animals are highly stressed, the agency handlers

are often aggressive and unforgiving, and the facility design is inappropriate for

wild bison.

However, not all captured bison are tested for brucellosis exposure. The IBMP allows for the slaughter of all captured bison without testing if the late winter / early

spring population is estimated to be above 3000. Last winter, the National Park

Service sent nearly all of the adult bison captured at Stephens Creek to slaughter

without prior brucellosis testing. Only the calves were tested with negatives being

sent to quarantine. Calves that tested positive were sent to slaughter.

The tests used to determine whether an animal has brucellosis are highly controversial. The standard blood tests (serological tests) only identify long-term antibodies to brucellosis. These tests were designed for cattle, not bison or other wildlife.

Other bacterias, particularly yersenia, can cross-react with brucellosis and show a

positive test result. Additionally, when compared to culture tests of tissues sampled

from slaughtered bison, considered the gold standard in brucellosis testing, studies

show that the correlation between seropositive bison and culture positive bison is

very weak. Many bison test seropositive simply because they were once exposed to

brucellosis bacteria in a strong enough concentration to produce an immune response. These bison may have already cleared the bacteria but still retain antibodies. Essentially, the bison selected for slaughter may, in fact, often be those that

have developed resistance to the bacteria.

Slaughter

Since 1985, more than 5,000 wild bison from Yellowstone National Park have

been killed through a combination of agency management actions and state-sponsored hunting. The majority of these animals, particularly since the inception of the

IBMP, were sent to slaughterhouses throughout the region. Yellowstone bison are

wild animals. The procedures involved in sending bison to slaughter include sorting

in the capture facility, loading onto trucks, hours of transport to the slaughter facility, and finally the taking of their lives on the slaughterhouse floor. This process

sometimes takes days and hundreds of miles of transport. The bison are often not

fed or given water during this time. They are highly stressed and often arrive at

the slaughterhouse in terrible condition. Some are so badly injured and bruised that

the meat and hides are not in usable condition.

Quarantine

The IBMP made provisions for the addition of quarantine as a management tool

when such facilities were established. The agencies view quarantine as a management option that would provide more flexibility in handling bison that test negative.

Currently, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Montana

Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks are conducting a quarantine feasibility study

at two facilities located just outside the park’s northern border in the heart of a critical wildlife migration corridor. The study is a multi-year program whereby two

groups of 100 test-negative bison calves or yearlings will be held for a total of four

years, undergo multiple rounds of testing and be bred twice before being released

to unnamed public and tribal lands. One half of the bison are slaughtered under

the protocol with their tissues being culture tested for the bacteria.

The facilities the agencies chose for quarantine are very small. The young bison

are kept behind tall double fencing right along State Highway 89. They are fed hay

49

and drink water from troughs. They are quickly becoming domestic animals and losing their wild instincts. They no longer have the benefit of experience passed on

from their family groups. Each day, they are one step farther from being the wild

Yellowstone bison they were before capture.

Vaccination

A key component of the IBMP is the addition of bison vaccination. Subcutaneous

vaccination of bison calves and yearlings has already been incorporated into the

plan for captured bison on both the north and west boundaries. The National Park

Service is still in the process of developing an Environmental Impact Statement for

remote delivery of vaccine within the park. The vaccine currently approved for use

in bison calves and yearlings is RB51. However, the efficacy of RB51 for bison is

highly controversial. A report to the United States Animal Health Association in

2002 on the efficacy of RB51 as a calfhood vaccine concludes, ‘‘based on the high

number of abortions/weak calves, high percentage of colonized calves, and due to the

high number of cow/calf pairs that will still be infected with virulent brucellae, B.

abortus RB51 cannot be considered an efficacious calfhood vaccine in bison.’’ Elzer,

et. al., 2002. This study, unlike many other vaccine trials, attempted to mimic field

conditions in the GYA.

Additionally, RB51 is not considered a safe vaccine for adult bison. Therefore it

could only be used on calves and yearlings. One study examining the use of vaccination as an eradication tool concludes that the focus would need to be on adult female

bison with a vaccine that is at least 50 percent efficacious. Dobson, unpublished.

This type of vaccine simply does not exist. Time and energy would be better spent

in the development of a more efficacious vaccine for domestic cattle. Cattle are already regularly vaccinated for many livestock diseases. Additionally, there is a need

for a better brucellosis vaccine for cattle throughout the world. RB51 has been widely criticized for it’s low efficacy in cattle, particularly in countries where brucellosis

is widely present.

Can Brucellosis be Eradicated from Yellowstone Bison?

Eradication of brucellosis as an eventual goal is a concept that is easy to support

in theory. If brucellosis were not found in Yellowstone’s bison, sound wildlife management might be much easier to develop and implement. However, brucellosis is

endemic in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). Bison are not the only affected species. Tens of thousands of elk in the GYE also potentially carry brucellosis,

particularly in Wyoming where elk are fed throughout the winter. Some of these elk

also migrate into Yellowstone in the summer months leading to the potential for

transmission to bison and other species. Additionally, many other species have been

known to carry brucellosis including grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes,

foxes, moose, bighorn sheep, beavers, and even muskrats. Therefore, any efforts that

focus specifically on bison without addressing the disease in the ecosystem as a

whole will not provide a long-term solution to this issue. Even if brucellosis were

eradicated from Yellowstone bison, there is a high probability that they would be

reinfected in the future.

The tools of brucellosis eradication are highly limited and would result in the decimation of the Yellowstone bison herd. The primary tool for eradication is test and

slaughter. Based on the inaccuracy of the current blood tests, it has been estimated

that test and slaughter could reduce the bison herd to as few as 10 animals. Dobson,

Unpublished. Test and slaughter would also require handling nearly every bison in

Yellowstone. Capture facilities would have to be set up throughout the park and

maintained for many years. This type of program was attempted in Yellowstone in

the early 1960s, reducing the herd to fewer than 200 animals. In 1967, the National

Park Service instituted a policy of ‘‘natural regulation’’ and ended the test and

slaughter program. The costs to the bison and to the natural resources of the park

were considered too high to continue this program. The tools of eradication have not

significantly changed since this time.

Vaccination, as discussed earlier, is another tool of brucellosis eradication. However, vaccination alone, using the currently available vaccines, will not result in the

eradication of brucellosis. Neither was vaccination ever a stand alone tool to eradicate brucellosis in domestic cattle. Test and slaughter has always been the primary

mechanism because of the limitations of the available vaccines.

Given all of the constraints, particularly the social/cultural consequences of aggressively handling all of the bison inside Yellowstone National Park, eradication

of brucellosis utilizing the tools currently available is not a realistic goal. Sensible

risk-management policies are a much more effective means of protecting Montana’s

livestock industry and the viability of Yellowstone bison. Risk management, however, does not preclude efforts to develop alternative methods to eradicate brucellosis in the long run. Research into more effective vaccines for livestock and a potenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:42 Jun 13, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 L:\DOCS\34137.TXT Hresour1 PsN: Hresour1
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tial cure for brucellosis can be conducted, but in the meantime, habitat-based risk

management polices must be instituted to protect the bison and Montana’s livestock

industry.

Winter Range Habitat

The provision of lower elevation winter range habitat is essential to resolve the

current conflicts at the park border regions. Yellowstone National Park simply does

not have sufficient winter range habitat for any of the ungulate species within its

boundaries. Regardless of the population of bison in the park, animals will always

move to the boundary areas in search of better winter habitat. During winters when

the snow conditions make it difficult to access food within the park, large migrations

are likely. The current management plan does not provide for access beyond park

border to winter range habitat. This circumstance has led to the slaughter of thousands of migrating bison throughout the years, underscoring the failure of the IBMP

to protect wild, free-roaming bison.

The necessary winter range habitat on the west side of the park lies beyond the

current zones of the IBMP. The primary winter range habitat is located in the

Madison Valley. This area is comprised mostly of large tracts of private and public

land. Some of the landowners in the Madison Valley lease their land for livestock

grazing in the summer. However, the climactic conditions of this region preclude

winter grazing of cattle. The nearest cattle present in the valley during the winter

are more than 35 miles from the park border. Much of the public land is leased for

livestock grazing, but the stocking dates are typically not until late June or July.

Therefore, most of the valley is cattle-free during the winter months when bison

would utilize this area as winter range. The latest research on the disappearance

and persistence of brucellosis bacteria suggests that the bacteria would not remain

in the environment after early June. If cattle stocking dates are designed to reflect

this science, brucellosis transmission between bison and cattle could be easily prevented.

On the north side of the park, the primary winter range occurs outside park

boundaries along the Yellowstone River corridor. Much of this land is owned by the

Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT). In the late 1990s Congress appropriated

$13,000,000 for conservation easements and land exchanges that were supposed to

provide winter range habitat for bison. However, these lands are still not available

to bison and are the primary factor influencing the Park Service’s decisions to capture and slaughter bison that attempt to migrate onto CUT lands.

What can Congress Do?

The primary needs to address the concerns about brucellosis transmission and the

long term viability of Yellowstone bison involve the acquisition of winter range habitat for bison and the modification of the classification system for brucellosis in the

Greater Yellowstone Area.

Congress can facilitate the resolution of grazing issues associated with the Royal

Teton Ranch.

Congress can direct the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to develop

a brucellosis-management zone whereby livestock producers within the zone will institute brucellosis proof management practices. This might include booster vaccination of cattle, wildlife-proof fencing of cattle feed-lines, individual herd certification

for brucellosis, and a reorganization of stocking dates consistent with the best available science about brucellosis persistence and disappearance. The costs of this program could be recovered using the monies saved from the reorganization of the

IBMP.

Congress can direct the Gallatin National Forest to establish a wild bison recovery zone within which the needs of habitat for bison and other species are taken

as a primary consideration in all multiple use decisions.

NOTE: Attachments and a statement submitted for the record by Darrell Geist,

Researcher, Buffalo Field Campaign, have been retained in the Committee’s official

files.

Mr. GRIJALVA. [Presiding.] Thank you. Mr. Stevens.

STATEMENT OF TIM STEVENS, YELLOWSTONE PROJECT

MANAGER, NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. Chairman and other members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify about the bison that

make Yellowstone our first national park home. The National

51

Parks Conservation Association works to protect and enhance

America’s National Park System for present and future generations. I am NPCA’s Yellowstone program manager based out of Livingston, Montana.

Last year, as was mentioned, over 900 migrating bison were

stopped at the Park’s border and shipped to slaughter. This is a national travesty and an embarrassment to the National Park System. Ironically with slaughter it takes place at a time when 57 percent of Yellowstone’s visitors cite seeing buffalo as their most important task when they come to the Park, and in 2004 wildlife

watchers spent $82 million in the region.

Each winter bison move out of Yellowstone’s high country to

lower, snow-free lands. Some claim that this migration is due to too

many bison and lack of forage in the Park. In reality the most recent studies attest that the current population of 3,600 is well

below the carrying capacity of 5,500 to 7,500 animals. Scientists

tell us that no matter if there is 300 or 3,000 bison, when the snow

gets too deep bison will move out of the Park to seek forage. However, the zero tolerance policy toward bison beyond boundaries prevents access to these critical lands.

Seven years and millions of dollars after completion of the interagency bison management plan the plan’s goals have yet to be

achieved. However, there are solutions to the current dilemma, and

with the enactment of the four-point strategy outlined here we can

protect the region’s livestock industry, while reestablishing a

healthy, free-ranging Yellowstone bison population.

Point one, assisting with the completion of the grazing agreement with the Royal Teton Ranch. It is important to note that

while details of the agreement are still being worked out it is critical that any agreement allow adequate bison numbers onto these

lands, and that the cost of any deal stays within reason but successful completion and funding of this agreement will be an absolute watershed for Yellowstone bison. This agreement would be financed by Federal, state and private funds but it is essential that

Congress lead the effort to pay for the grazing agreement.

Point number two, creating a brucellosis classification subregion

within greater Yellowstone, and we were encouraged to hear the

Governor’s words earlier, but some in the livestock industry have

rightly questioned the current policy that is in place, and NPCA

agrees. Congress can help craft part of the solution by directing the

USDA to create the brucellosis subregion or zone in counties

surrounding the Park. The subregion that is managed for separation of livestock and bison and also that provides government assistance for fencing and vaccination will be a major step in the

right direction.

Point three, instituting a spacial and temporal separation of

bison as the primary short-term means for addressing brucellosis.

To date management has focused on attempts to eliminate brucellosis. Lost in the debate is the fact that brucellosis is present in

many other wildlife species, including bears and elk which are

much wider ranging than bison across the landscape. So even if we

had 100 percent success rate at eliminating brucellosis from bison,

it still would be present in other wildlife. Simply put, eradication

of brucellosis in all wildlife is impossible in the short-term.

52

The Western States Livestock Association recently voiced their

support for separation of livestock and bison as the means to address concerns over brucellosis. NPCA agrees. Many creative and

viable approaches—other than slaughter of bison—have yet to be

tried. By providing dollars and direction necessary to focus on separation as the primary strategy, Congress can help forge a new path

away from slaughter and toward long-term solutions.

And my final point is that additional monies are needed to develop safe and effective vaccines that can be broadly administered

to wildlife. Equally important is the need for more investment in

development of a safe vaccine for livestock. Obviously it would be

much more practical to administer a brucellosis vaccine to livestock

than to wildlife.

In conclusion, Yellowstone is at a crossroads with its and America’s iconic wildlife species. Central to their long-term survival is

the protection of bison habitat. We are already seeing what happens when this habitat is lost in and around other parks across the

country where the ability to use reasonable wildlife management

tools is precluded, leaving only the most inhumane and wasteful alternatives.

We still have a chance in Yellowstone to show that we can make

it work for bison but realizing this opportunity requires prompt action. Thank you for considering our views. I would be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stevens follows:]

Statement of Tim Stevens, Program Manager,

National Parks Conservation Association

Mr. Chairman, and other distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you

for inviting me to testify about the bison that make Yellowstone—our first national

park—their home. Founded in 1919, the National Parks Conservation Association

works to protect and enhance America’s National Park System for present and future generations. Today, we have 22 regional and field offices across the country,

including the Yellowstone Field Office in Livingston, Montana, which I manage. I’m

here today on behalf of our more than 325,000 members, who care deeply about our

national treasures and want to see them protected.

The History of Bison, and Bison Management, in Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park remains the only place in the country home to truly

wild, genetically pure bison with an unbroken connection to their native habitat.

Tens of millions of bison once thundered upon western plains in the mid-19th century. When the buffalo slaughter of the late 1800s ended, only 23 bison remained

in the wild, and Yellowstone was their sanctuary. Numbering 3,600 today, Yellowstone’s herd has irreplaceable biological, cultural, spiritual and historic value, and

is one of our nation’s great conservation success stories.

The designer of the famous buffalo nickel, minted between 1913 and 1938, chose

the buffalo design because it represented a uniquely American image. Yet, over the

past two decades, 5,000 wild Yellowstone bison have been killed by state and federal

agencies to keep them from accessing winter habitat in Montana adjacent to the

park. Last year alone, more than 900 migrating bison were stopped at the border

of Yellowstone and shipped off to slaughter. This is a national travesty and an embarrassment to the National Park System. Ironically, this slaughter takes place at

a time when Yellowstone is experiencing a significant growth in visitors who offer

wildlife viewing as the primary reason for their visit. Fully 57% of Yellowstone’s

visitors cite seeing bison as their main reason for visiting the park and wildlife

watchers spent $82 million in the Yellowstone gateway region in 2004.

Each winter, bison, like other wildlife, tend to move out of Yellowstone’s high

country to lower habitat with better forage on lands adjacent to the park. In fact,

in 1926 Congress authorized additions to the Absaroka and Gallatin national forests

next to Yellowstone, recognizing that wildlife needed to use lower-elevation land beyond park boundaries, especially during winter. Some falsely claim that the reason

53

bison leave Yellowstone is because there are too many bison in the park and there

is not enough forage to sustain them. Instead, the most recent studies attest that

there are an estimated 3,600 bison inside the park, well below the most recent estimated carrying capacity of 5,500-7,500 for Yellowstone. In addition, in 2002 the

National Research Council, the working arm of the National Academy of Sciences,

completed an exhaustive review of science related to the health of Yellowstone’s

northern range, and found that bison and other ungulates are not destroying Yellowstone’s grassland habitat. Scientists tell us that it doesn’t matter if there are

3,000 or 300 bison in the park, when the snow gets too deep, they will seek winter

habitat and forage outside the park. But in recent years, there has been a policy

of zero tolerance for wild bison beyond park boundaries that does not allow these

animals access to ancestral lands.

Yellowstone’s wild bison are being captured and killed due to a fear that they will

transmit brucellosis to cattle. Brucellosis is a disease caused by a bacterium

(Brucella abortus) that can infect wild and domestic animals. Brucellosis has little

effect on wildlife, including some Yellowstone bison and elk with the disease, but

it can initiate premature births in cattle. For this reason, livestock interests have

worked hard to eliminate brucellosis from domestic herds. Ironically, Yellowstone

bison picked up the brucellosis bacterium from a herd of dairy cattle that were

brought to Yellowstone National Park nearly 90 years ago. There has never been

a single recorded case of wild bison transmitting brucellosis to cattle in the wild.

The risk of transmission between wild bison and cattle was deemed low in a 1992

General Accounting Office report, and again in a 1998 National Research Council

study.

Solutions to Protect Bison, and Montana’s Livestock Industry

The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) believes that the American

public now has an unprecedented opportunity to not only greatly advance efforts to

restore bison on the landscape, but to also assure security for the region’s livestock

industry.

Bison are currently managed under the Interagency Bison Management plan

(IBMP), whose purpose is:

‘‘...to maintain a wild, free-ranging population of bison and address

the risk of brucellosis transmission to protect the economic interest

and viability of the livestock industry in the state of Montana.’’

Seven years and about $21 million dollars after completion of the IBMP, the goals

of the plan have yet to be achieved. There is a solution to the current dilemma, however, but it is not being aggressively pursued under the current IBMP. The solution

NPCA supports has four components.

Those components are:

1) Completing an agreement with the Royal Teton Ranch (RTR);

2) Establishing a brucellosis classification ‘‘sub-region’’ within the Greater Yellowstone Region;

3) Instituting spatial and temporal separation of cattle and bison; and,

4) Assuring the development of a safe, effective vaccine for livestock and bison.

All four elements are designed to protect the livestock industry while restoring

critical bison habitats outside the park, thereby reestablishing a healthy, free ranging Yellowstone bison population. In and around Yellowstone National Park, we still

have a chance to restore those habitats before our options close, as they have in so

many other national parks across the country.

1) Assist with the completion of a grazing agreement with the Royal Teton

Ranch.

Simply put, current bison management isn’t working because the habitat currently available to bison is inadequate. Habitat is the key. For years, biologists have

told us that the Royal Teton Ranch just north of the park is the lynchpin when it

comes to access to key winter habitat.

Under direction from Governor Schweitzer, negotiations are underway to purchase

the grazing rights of the Royal Teton Ranch, otherwise known as the Church Universal and Triumphant, and contractually allow bison to cross that private land to

access significant public land winter habitat. The final proposition is the lynchpin

to success on the bison issue.

The details of the grazing lease are still being worked out. It is critical that any

agreement allow for adequate numbers of bison to use RTR lands and that the overall cost of the deal stays within reason, but assuming those two issues can be agreed

upon, successful completion and funding of this agreement will be the most significant action to advance the bison issue in many years.

54

The agreement would be financed by federal, state and private funds. It is essential that sufficient dollars be appropriated by Congress to contribute to completing

the grazing agreement.

2) Create in statute direction for establishment of brucellosis classification

‘‘sub-regions’’ within the Greater Yellowstone Region.

The USDA has classified Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming’s livestock as ‘‘brucellosis

free.’’ However, if two cattle herds are found infected with brucellosis in a single

small area of the state, the whole state is penalized and loses its ‘‘class free’’ status.

This has happened in both Wyoming and Idaho over the past few years and these

states have been required to take specific actions in an attempt to regain their class

free status.

Some in the livestock industry have rightly questioned why an entire state should

lose its status when brucellosis is detected in a small part of the state. NPCA

agrees. Lost in the debate about bison is the little acknowledged but important fact

that brucellosis resides in most wildlife species, including elk, which range across

a much broader geographic landscape than do bison. Put in another context, eradication of brucellosis in all wildlife is simply impossible in the short term. But when

it comes to bison, Congress can become a significant part of the solution by directing

the USDA to create a brucellosis sub-region, or zone, in counties surrounding Yellowstone National Park.

A subzone that is managed for spatial and temporal separation that provides government assistance for fencing and vaccination of existing cattle herds within the

sub-region and that looks to public lands for creative management and preference

around wildlife would be a major step towards both protection of Montana’s state

cattle industry as well as reestablishment of a free-roaming bison herd. With the

establishment of this subzone, in the unlikely event that two herds of cattle were

found with brucellosis within this zone, all of Montana’s cattle outside this zone

would not be penalized by losing their brucellosis free status. This is a smart and

essential strategy of containment and protection.

3) Institute spatial and temporal separation of cattle and bison as the primary short term means to address brucellosis.

Efforts relative to bison and brucellosis have largely focused on attempts to eliminate brucellosis. The fact is, even if agencies were 100% effective at eliminating the

disease from bison, many other wildlife species also have brucellosis.

Recently the Western States Livestock Health Association, an organization of the

western state veterinarians, has recently stated that the separation of livestock and

bison is an essential component of any long-term solution. Montana’s Governor

Brian Schweitzer has said he agrees with this, as does NPCA. In the past, this separation was achieved through the slaughter of bison, but that is the most draconian

and inflammatory of separation strategies. Many other approaches can be at least

as effective. It’s also important to preface these strategies with the reality that there

are less than 500 cow-calf pairs occupying public lands on the north side of Yellowstone. On public lands adjacent to the park, spatial and temporal separation strategies include:

• Delaying by a few weeks the turnout date for livestock onto public land grazing

allotments, which will eliminate any possibility of brucellosis transmission from

a bison fetus to livestock;

• Adjusting livestock grazing allotments to accommodate for a steer operation,

which would eliminate possibility of transmission;

• Employing creative fencing strategies that keep bison and livestock separated;

• Looking for opportunities to purchase, trade out or eliminate existing leases

with willing permittees.

By providing the dollars needed to purchase or transfer grazing rights from willing sellers on these lands, critical winter habitat will be made available for bison

through spatial and temporal separation.

4) Assure the development of safe, effective vaccines

Studies have shown that safe and effective vaccines can reduce brucellosis rates

in bison. In addition, the implementation of a vaccination program in Yellowstone

National Park would eliminate the requirement that all bison be tested for the presence of brucellosis before they leave the park.

We are not there yet when it comes to producing an effective vaccine that can be

comprehensively administered to wildlife. Additional dollars are needed for research

and science.

Equally important is the need to devote additional resources to develop a safe vaccine that could be administered to livestock. Obviously, it would be much more practical to administer a vaccine to livestock than to wildlife.

55

Conclusion

In conclusion, Yellowstone, our nation’s first national park, is at a crossroads in

terms of the long term viability of its, and America’s, most iconic wildlife species.

Central to their long-term survival is the recognition of and the protection of, habitats essential to free-roaming bison. We are already seeing what happens when such

essential habitats are shut down, excluded and compromised in other parks around

the country. When critical habitats are lost, the potential to use reasonable, appropriate means of managing wildlife can be vastly curtailed, with only the most unpleasant, inhumane and wasteful means remaining. We have a chance in Yellowstone now to demonstrate that we can realize a fully functioning park for bison, but

realizing this opportunity will require prompt action.

Thank you for considering our views. I would be happy to answer any questions.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Mr. Pacelle.

STATEMENT OF WAYNE PACELLE, PRESIDENT AND CEO,

HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES

Mr. PACELLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thanks to all the

members for being here. I am Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO

of the Humane Society of the United States, representing 10 million members and constituents, 1 of every 30 Americans. A lot of

people associate our work with domesticated animals and pets but

we have a very robust wildlife department of about 20 folks, PhDs

and other scientists in our section. We have been involved in this

Yellowstone bison issue for two decades. I personally have been involved for that period of time. Our regional office in Billings, Montana has been actively involved.

I really do want to take the opportunity to thank Natural Resource Committee Chairman Nick Rahall for his tremendous leadership on the issue, the Interior appropriations amendments, to try

to stop and abuse and mismanagement of the bison, and we are

really grateful to you, Mr. Chairman.

You know this species is really the symbol of human’s destructive

capability. I mean you look at all the species in this country, and

you just contemplate the idea 30 to 50 or even 60 million bison

brought down in the span of just a few decades—once we developed

the transcontinental railroad and the repeating firearm—to just

dozens or hundreds of individuals. I mean the destructive capacity

is extraordinary. We should not forget that as we delve into this

debate and think about this issue.

The mistreatment and mismanagement of bison continues today.

You have heard it from the prior two witnesses, and you have

heard it from some of the others. This is a special population of

animals. They have a special place in the country with Yellowstone

as the world’s first national park. They are a symbol of the west.

They are an icon of western Americana. They are treated like shaggy members of a dispossessed cattle herd that are encroaching on

adjacent and occupied cattle ranches.

The authorizing statute for Yellowstone calls for the protection of

bison. Very strict protections in the enabling legislation. The lands

that they principally move on outside of the Park—and it is just

the small areas we heard. I mean the testimony from the Governor

I thought was extraordinary. We are talking about just a small

number of cattle principally moving onto Federal lands. This is just

a small number of bison going onto Federal lands for the most part

56

with a very limited number of cattle in this areas that we can solve

very readily. You heard the prescription here today.

The whole rationale here is brucellosis, and we have heard so

much about it. We have heard so many times before that there has

never been a documented case of brucellosis transmission from wild

bison to cattle. This whole thing has been an exaggeration. It is a

canard. This is a land use issue, and it is concern about the bison

extending their range. It is not so much about brucellosis. There

is a serious concern about brucellosis partly because of the USDA’s

very strict rules in this area, but we can solve this issue.

Just a couple of examples on this. We have heard that at least

in west Yellowstone the cattle are not even there when the bison

are there. There is no overlap, and we have just a small number

of animals in the northern part of the Park and the northern

reaches on forest land where you have year-round grazing. They

said 300 was the number that was advanced near Gardner. We

know that male bison cannot transmit brucellosis to cattle. Why

are we killing the male bison? They do not abort fetuses. They do

not leave placental materials. But this policy extends to every

bison. Killing every one and not making any distinctions between

which bison may pose some infinitesimal risk versus those bison

that pose absolutely no risk at all.

We have also heard about inhumane treatment, and yes, those

pictures we should really embed in our minds. The primary elements that concern us include animals being run to exhaustion,

corralling that does not guard against bison goring each other in

a panic, animals driven onto frozen lakes that results in their falling through the ice into frigid waters and freezing to death, mishandling that results in injury and death, overstocking transport

trailers and shooting of bison at slaughter plants because the animals were allowed to inadvertently escape their holding areas.

You know we have in this country 100 million cattle. We are

talking about 3,600 bison in America’s first and most famous national park. The world’s most famous national park. A lot of people

talk about the economics. Well what about the economics of Yellowstone and this country? How many millions of visitors? This is one

of the two or three more visited parks in the United States. Millions of people go there. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into

the economy to see the bison and to see the other native wildlife

of Yellowstone National Park. These animals help bring millions to

the economy of Montana as well as Idaho and Wyoming.

We can mitigate and correct our behavior. We can exhibit greater

tolerance for these animals. We can recognize that these animals

deserve a place in Yellowstone. They deserve a place somewhere at

least in this country. Is there anywhere where we are not going to

subvert the wildlife protection interest to cattle interest? Is there

one place? Should it be in this area? A massive 2.2 million acre

park where the animals are supposed to be protected with millions

of acres of forests outside?

I want to just close by noting I first went to Yellowstone on the

bison issue in 1988, and there was a hunt of the bison at that time.

It was stopped, as Governor Schweitzer mentioned, and I watched

these animals who had been habituated to a nonthreatening

57

human presence in the Park. People walk up to them and take pictures of them.

I saw them in these huge open areas feeding you know on the

grass. They were burrowing in below the snow, and people walked

up to these animals and shot them. It was the sorting equivalent

of shooting a parked car. It was appalling, and I saw one 14-yearold shot an animal. I do not know why he did not get closer, but

he was 200 yards away with his telescopic rifle, and he shot the

buffalo, and he hit the buffalo in the spine, and the Boston Globe

reporter and I who were there saw this animal try to raise himself

more than 30 times.

He would pull himself up just a little. He was obviously paralyzed in the back legs, and he would fall down, and he kept doing

it 30 or 35 times, and the Boston Globe reported that. I saw that

cruelty, and I was appalled by it, and I think now we have a circumstance in this country where we can make a choice. Is there

one place where we can protect these bison? One place in this country?

I thank Chairman Rahall for your leadership on this issue, and

I hope we can solve this issue. We have heard constructive solutions today. We want to be part of that solution. They are there for

us to realize. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pacelle follows:]

Statement of Wayne Pacelle, President & CEO,

The Humane Society of the United States

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify on the subject of the Yellowstone bison. I am Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of

the United States, the nation’s largest animal protection organization with 10 million members and constituents—one of every 30 Americans. The HSUS has worked

since its founding in 1954 to protect both domesticated animals and wildlife. We

maintain a 20-person wildlife department with professional scientists and advocates

and work on a wide range of wildlife programs.

I want to thank Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall for his outstanding

leadership on this issue, twice going to the floor with amendments to the Interior

Appropriations bills in 2004 and 2005 to mitigate harm to these animals. Further,

I wish to acknowledge the leadership and support of Representative Maurice Hinchey, who along with former Representative Charles Bass, co-authored on legislation to diminish conflicts between people and bison and to prevent as much needless

killing of Yellowstone bison as possible. I would further commend Representatives

Jay Inslee and Corinne Brown, along with Chairman Rahall, for communicating

concerns and questions to the National Park Service (NPS) and other agencies as

more and more bison were hazed and slaughtered in recent years. Finally, I extend

our strong appreciation to Subcommittee Chairman Rau ́l Grijalva for holding these

oversight hearings and placing a spotlight on the tragic mistreatment of these

majestic symbols of the West.

Since the early 1980s, The HSUS has been very active in wildlife issues in and

around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We have submitted numerous public

comments and provided testimony on behalf of the bison and we actively provide

support to other groups locally involved in this issue. I have a long personal history

with this issue, having gone to Yellowstone National Park (YNP) in 1988 to videotape the shooting of bison in the first ‘‘sport hunt’’ of bison that the state of Montana had authorized during the century.

Our regional office located in Billings, Mont. has actively participated in the Yellowstone bison issue for over a decade. Our regional director served on the Montana

Governor’s Humane Bison Handling Task Force in 1997, and our representatives

conducted a corral inspection at South Creek in 2003.

Since then, we have continued efforts to provide oversight of bison management

and secure more humane treatment of the bison. We have worked with both YNP

staff and numerous environmental groups to seek non-lethal solutions to bison management. Most recently we met with Montana Governor’s staff and state legislators

58

in an unsuccessful attempt to convince them that the expansion of a bison ‘‘sport

hunt’’ was essentially a state-sponsored canned hunt of tame animals.

There is ample documentation that the treatment of bison in and around YNP is

inhumane and unacceptable. The primary elements that concern us include animals

being run to exhaustion, corralling that does not guard against bison goring each

other in a panic, animals driven onto frozen lakes that results in their falling

through the ice and into frigid waters, mishandling that results in injury and death,

overstocking transport trailers, and shooting of bison at a slaughter plant because

the animals were allowed to inadvertently escape their holding areas.

This deplorable set of circumstances reveals the clumsy and unprofessional handling of the animals by the state and the federal government. In short, these animals are handled like livestock rather than extremely powerful wild animals. There

has been no government agency with central authority to take charge of this situation and eliminate the litany of problems associated with the mistreatment of these

animals

History of Bison in Yellowstone

The history of America’s treatment of the bison in the West is a painful and sad

story of unbridled sport and market killing of these animals, and it provides a powerful case example of how destructive attitudes and technology can conspire to wipe

out species thought to be super-abundant and inexhaustible. This species once

roamed across much of the continental United States, from northern New York state

to the Deep South in the east and as far west as Washington state north to Alaska

and south into northern Mexico. There are even historical records of bison in the

New Orleans area from the 1600s and early 1700s (Lowery 1981).

The estimated historic population of bison in the United States was 40—60 million animals. Due to market hunting and overexploitation for meat and hides in the

18th and 19th centuries, bison populations plummeted, particularly in the latter

part of the 19th century. By the late 1800s, remnant populations were scattered

across the country, most in captivity, consisting of perhaps just 1,000 animals. A

handful of wild bison remained in YNP. The superintendent of Yellowstone in 1902

estimated that there were about 22 bison left in the remote Pelican Valley of the

park.

Attempts were made to lure these remaining animals into enclosures using bait,

but this failed. Amid growing fears that the last remaining bison in the Park would

be lost due to weather, disease, or poaching, the park superintendent established

an enclosed population from 21 animals purchased from herds maintained in Texas

and Montana. This imported herd remained separate from the native Yellowstone

herd until 1932 when the herds were allowed to intermingle. All of the bison in Yellowstone today are derived from that original founder population of 43 animals from

Yellowstone, Montana, and Texas (Gates et al. 2005).

Bison in Yellowstone Today

Presently, the three bison populations inhabiting Yellowstone are maintained at

a total population level between 3,000—4,000 animals. Yellowstone National Park

is not an island of habitat, and it constitutes just 10 percent of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). The GYE covers an area of 10.8 million hectares and represents the southernmost area in North America that sustains a full complement

of native predators, including wolves that were recently reintroduced and have

thrived in the park. This includes 2 national parks (Yellowstone and Grant Teton)

that make up about 9.5% of this area while another 14.8% is designated wilderness

areas. A total of 36% of the GYE is private land while 64% is public land (Noss et

al. 2002).

Unfortunately, bison are not aware of the arbitrary human boundaries that separate YNP from the rest of ecosystem. Bison are obligate grazers and as such need

access to forage throughout the year. Although animals may survive on fat stores

during times of deep snow fall, bison cannot survive the winter and spring without

access to range without enormously deep snow cover. During or after harsh winters

bison will wander to lower elevation, sometimes across the park boundaries, in

search of food and milder weather conditions (Meagher 1989).

Under current regulations, bison that cross the park boundary are either hazed

back into the park or shot. This policy has resulted in nearly 5,000 animals being

killed in the last 12 years, with more than 1,000 slaughtered in the winter and

spring of 2005—2006 alone (Buffalo Field Campaign 2007). The primary reason

given for this killing is the threat of disease transmission between bison and cattle,

particularly the bacterial infection brucellosis.

59

Brucellosis, bison, cattle, and elk

Brucellosis is caused by a bacterial zoonosis whose symptoms have known to medicine since the 3rd century BC (Cutler et al. 2005). Various strains of brucellosis

may infect a wide range of mammals including humans, rodent, marine mammals,

ungulates, goats, sheep, and pigs. Pathology in humans includes a suite of flu-like

symptoms that may persist for years or even decades. These symptoms may be so

severe that the bacterium that causes brucellosis in pigs (Brucella suis) was developed as a biological warfare agent by the United States (Greenfield et al. 2002).

The species that infects cattle and other ungulates is Brucella abortus. While humans may contract this disease through the consumption of unpasteurized dairy

products from infected cattle or goats, or inhalation of the bacterium or contact with

infected tissues including the consumption of raw meat, concerns with bison and

brucellosis are centered on possible transmission to cattle, not humans.

Brucellosis infection in ungulates may cause the abortion of fetuses, temporary

sterility, and occasionally calf mortality (Reynolds et al. 2003). Before considering

the factors that make brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle extremely unlikely, we must consider how bison came to be infected with this pathogen in the

first place.

As mentioned, the symptoms of brucellosis in humans have been known for millennia and were recorded in ancient Greece; hence it is obvious that this disease

was known in the Old World. An examination of the evolutionary history of bison

and B. abortus in addition to this disease’s animal hosts, genetics, and biochemistry

has revealed that this pathogen was introduced to the New World as an infection

of domesticated cattle. Further examination of historic documents also revealed that

ranched bison in Yellowstone most likely contracted the disease from cattle being

kept in the park by employees sometime around 1917, when the first recorded abortions of bison occurred (Meagher and Meyer 1994). This disease and its symptoms

in bison were never recorded or mentioned by Native Americans or European Americans anywhere on the continent before the incidents in 1917. In the analysis cited

(Meagher and Meyer 1994), they analyzed the possibility of disease transfer through

cattle fostering of bison calves yet concluded this means of disease transfer to be

unlikely because the milk feedings occurred about 13 years before brucellosis was

ever detected in bison.

While transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle can occur, as proven under

controlled, experimental conditions (Davis et al. 1990), the chance of this actually

happening under natural conditions is remote indeed, and there has never been a

documented case of brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle in the wild. In fact,

the origins of this disease in bison appear to be a result of forced proximity to cattle.

Under unmanaged conditions, bison and cattle are generally separated spatially

and temporally and thus are unlikely to come into contact with each other, especially during the period of time when female bison are giving birth or when livestock

may otherwise come into contact with potentially infectious materials. In fact, existing cattle grazing allotments bordering the Park are not utilized at a time when elk

or bison are calving and thus may potentially abort. Hence, cattle are not present

at an appropriate time or place for exposure to brucellosis from bison or elk (Thorne

and Kreeger 2002).

Although the USDA may claim that bison are more likely to pass brucellosis to

cattle than are elk due to their gregarious nature, this argument does not apply in

the area around Yellowstone where elk are artificially concentrated over food. In

fact, this feeding practice is recognized as the primary reason that elk can successfully serve as a reservoir for B. abortus (Godfroid 2002). In fact, elk that had been

congregated around feeding stations have been implicated in the most recent transmission of brucellosis to cattle from wildlife in Idaho (USDA website). As of this

winter, nearly 7,000 elk were counted in the northern region of the Park and across

the border on adjacent lands (Yellowstone National Park 2007). The park estimates

that at least 15,000 elk winter within the park with nearly 30,000 present within

its borders during the summer (YNP website).

Considering that the vast majority of cattle in the GYA area are vaccinated

against brucellosis as calves and the chance of transmission from bison is highly improbable, the policy to test and vaccinate wild, free-ranging bison simply does not

make sense. It is a severe overreaction by state and federal authorities who disregard the public’s interest in balancing concern for livestock production with the

imperative to protect wildlife in the America’s first and most famous national park.

Such actions can be equated to combating rabies in pet populations by attempting

to test and vaccinate free-ranging bats, foxes, skunks, and raccoons. In both of these

cases, the financial and logistical costs of such actions, in addition to the excessive

stress caused to these animals, far outweighs the infinitesimal risk of actual disease

transmission. It is a radical overreach, and it should be discontinued.

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Current Treatment of Bison in Yellowstone

The NPS, USDA and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the

U.S. Forest Service, and the State of Montana completed an Environmental Impact

Statement for the Interagency Bison Management Plan for the State of Montana

and Yellowstone National Park in November 2000. Under this plan, animals within

the park boundaries are subject to capture, testing, and vaccination for brucellosis.

If animals test positive, they are shipped to slaughter. If animals leave the park,

efforts are made to haze them back into the park. If these efforts fail, the state allows hunters to shoot the animals.

The Yellowstone bison roam a unique ecosystem and are one of the few remaining

bison herds that is not known to have ever been interbred with cattle. Moreover,

these are large, powerful wild animals that are not accustomed to close human contact and hence will make all efforts to avoid capture. Forcing these creatures into

pens and into restraints is excessively stressful and may jeopardize the survival of

young animals subject to unnecessary handling.

As mentioned, the bison that cross the park boundary are subject to hazing and

killing. The animals that venture outside of YNP are not in any real danger of coming into contact with cattle. Additionally, federal and state authorities do not just

target females, but also male bison, despite the fact that these animals pose absolutely no risk of transmitting brucellosis to cattle. They do not have placental material, and therefore pose no risk of transmitting brucellosis to cattle. In contrast, the

elk that roam throughout Forest Service grazing allotments outside of Yellowstone

are not subject to such a severe no-migration policy even though they are known

to carry brucellosis. This inconsistency is very difficult to reconcile—one wildlife species that does demonstrate an exposure to brucellosis is allowed to range freely outside of YNP, and the other species with brucellosis exposure is subject to a strict

no-migration policy.

The livestock industry would just as soon see no large ungulate populations, or

wolves, outside of the park, since any ungulates competes for grass during a small

portion of the year with cattle. That is the subtext for this controversy. But the elk

have a stronger political lobby of hunters and wildlife watchers and the task of

eliminating them from Forest Service lands would be a very difficult political and

logistical exercise. They have instead chosen to draw the line with bison and do not

want to see any competition from this species. The brucellosis issue is at worst a

red herring, and at best an overblown overreaction by the livestock industry.

What should be done

Bison are large roaming ungulates that require vast tracks of land with suitable

forage to exist and flourish. While there are an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 bison

living in North America today, the vast majority of them are in a semi-captive state.

Best-guess estimates conclude that there are only about 12,000-15,000 free-roaming

bison left on the continent. In comparison, according to the National Agricultural

Statistics Service, there are nearly 100 million cattle living in the United Stats at

present a number which meets or exceeds the historic numbers of bison estimated

to have inhabited the whole of the North American continent.

The Yellowstone bison draw to tourists from around the world that seek to experience the wild character of the unique GYE landscape and its robust complement of

native wildlife species. Is there one place in our nation where we can allow them

to roam, or must we subvert bison protection to cattle interests in every single ecosystem in the United States?

Bison should be permitted to traverse the borders of Yellowstone in search of food

in the winter and early spring. There is no biological, ecological, or even economic

reason why these animals must be corralled in Yellowstone National Park and

treated like a group of shaggy, unowned cattle. The animals roam principally on

America’s public lands, and they deserve protection.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify

NOTES

Buffalo Field Campaign 2006. Online database available at:

http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org accessed March 2007.

Cutler, S.J. et al. 2005. Brucellosis—new aspects of an old disease. Journal of

Applied Microbiology 98: 1270—1281.

Davis, D.S. 1990. Brucella abortus in captive bison. I. serology, bacteriology,

pathogenesis, and transmission to cattle. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 26(3): 360—

371.

Gates et al. 2005. The Ecology of Bison Movements and Distribution in and Beyond Yellowstone National Park: A Critical Review with Implications for Winter Use

and Transboundary Population Management. University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Available online: http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/gatesbison.htm

61

Godfroid, J. 2002. Brucellosis in wildlife. Rev. Sci. Off. Int. Epiz. 21(2): 277-286.

Greenfield, R.A. et al. 2002. Bacterial pathogens as biological weapons and agents

of bioterrorism. American Journal of the Medical Sciences. 323: 299—315.

Lowery, G. H. Jr. 1981. The Mammals of Louisiana and its Adjacent Waters. Louisiana State University Press 565 pp.

Meagher, M. 1989. Range expansion by bison of Yellowstone National Park. Journal of Mammalogy 70(3): 670—675.

Meagher, M. and M.E. Meyer. 1994. On the origin of brucellosis in bison of Yellowstone National Park: a review. Conservation Biology 8(3): 645—653.

Noss, R. F. 2002. A multicriteria assessment of the irreplaceability and vulnerability of sites in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Conservation Biology 16(4):

895—908.

Parmenter et al. 2003. Land use and land cover changes in

Reynolds, H.W. et al. 2003. Bison. Pg. 1009-1060. In: The Wild Mammals of North

America: Biology Management and Conservation 2nd edition. G.A. Feldhamer, B.C.

Thompson, and J.A. Chapman (eds.) The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

Thorne, T. and T. Kreeger. 2002. Management options for the resolution of brucellosis in the GYA. In: T.J. Kreeger (ed.), Brucellosis in Elk and Bison in the Greater

Yellowstone Area (Proceedings of the national symposium), September 17—18, 2002.

USDA website: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/nahps/brucellosis/cattle.htm#About%

20Elk accessed March 2007

Yellowstone National Park 2007. Press Release: 2006-2007 Winter Count of

Northern Yellowstone Elk available online: http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/press/

nycwwg.htm (accessed March 2007).

NOTE: Additional information submitted for the record by Mr. Pacelle have been

retained in the Committee’s official files.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Mr. Hagenbarth.

STATEMENT OF JIM HAGENBARTH,

MONTANA STOCKGROWERS ASSOCIATION

Mr. HAGENBARTH. Mr. Chairman and members of this Subcommittee, my name is Jim Hagenbarth. As a representative of my

family and of the families of the Montana Stock Growers, I thank

you for this opportunity to testify in regard to the disease and landscape issues that impact Yellowstone National Park, the greater

Yellowstone wildlife populations and especially the landscape.

The testimony I submit today is taken from years of livestock experience and generations of resource management. Our family’s

history in this region began in the 1860s with gold fever and progressed to livestock production in the 1880s. Today my brother, my

son and myself take pride in managing portions of this same landscape. Hopefully my testimony will provide insight to this committee on facilitating responsible management of the resources in

this area under your control.

Brucellosis is an intercellular bacterial disease affecting animals

and humans. It has taken 50 years and a $3 billion battle for

APHIS and the livestock industry to eradicate brucellosis from the

cattle herds of America. By using a marginal vaccine and an iron

will, a will that was tempered by setbacks due to the enormity of

the task and the resilience of this disease, the nation’s cattle herd

has become brucellosis-free.

The lessons learned from this experience and the emotional scars

left by the losses incurred has led to the tenacity displayed by

APHIS and the livestock industry in attempting to manage diseased wildlife in the greater Yellowstone area. It is understandable

that the general public and possibly this committee does not comprehend the seriousness of our dilemma in Yellowstone.

62

Brucellosis in Yellowstone was first recorded in bison in 1917

and in elk in 1935. This disease was controlled in the Park until

a nature regulation policy was adapted in 1967. Under this policy

the brucellosis exposed populations of wildlife in the greater Yellowstone area have increased to the point that this area’s livestock

industry is in jeopardy. It is unimaginable that a policy in Yellowstone has enhanced an exotic disease that has held bison captive

to either starve in the Park or leave and be slaughtered.

Montana has received a black eye because we accept our obligation to society to be a responsible resource and wildlife manager.

In the west ranchers’ ability to harbor open space is much more important to society than the production of food and fiber. Brucellosis

in wildlife in the greater Yellowstone area has the potential to

drive economically viable ranching interests out of business. We

must design a long-term plan to meet this challenge.

Time is running short yet science is developing new tools that

will give us different alternatives in eradicating disease. We need

to gather all the involved interests in order to reach our goal. If

we fail, if we fail, the GYA will be fragmented beyond recognition

because as we lose the rancher the last crop planted will be a subdivision. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hagenbarth follows:]

Statement of James F. Hagenbarth,

Representing the Montana Stockgrowers Association

My name is Jim Hagenbarth. I am thankful to the Committee for the opportunity

to testify on behalf of my family and the Montana Stockgrowers Association, one of

the oldest livestock associations in the United States and offer you insight into the

issues that involve the ‘‘Yellowstone National Park Bison’’. My brother, son and I

own and manage a livestock operation in southwestern Montana and southeastern

Idaho. This business was put together from scratch in the late 1930’s by my Father

after he completed the dispersal of my Grandfather’s failed livestock holdings in the

same area in the early 1930’s. Our family’s history in the Greater Yellowstone Area

(GYA) began in the 1860’s in the goldfields of southwestern Montana and southeastern Idaho. As the gold disappeared, development of a livestock enterprise began

in the early 1880’s and we still manage portions of the same land resource. In 1904

my grandfather, Frank Hagenbarth, had a survey made of the Targhee Forest and

sponsored this area as a National Forest to President Theodore Roosevelt and the

President promptly set aside the Targhee as a National Forest. The majority of the

Targhee lies in the GYA and borders the west boundary of Yellowstone Park. We

take great personal pride in the land resource that we manage and hopefully my

testimony will provide insight to this committee on facilitating responsible management of the resources in this area under their control.

The geographic location of our livestock operation requires movement of cattle

across state lines. This movement subjects our herd to the animal health requirements of both Montana and Idaho and at times the federal regulatory authority of

the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Health Inspection

Service (APHIS), depending upon the livestock disease status of both states. I have

been actively involved in the development of these regulations due to their potential

impact on our business. This participation placed me on the Montana Board of Livestock from 1985 to 1997. During this time the brucellosis exposed bison from Yellowstone Park were migrating into Montana during the winter and the foundation was

being laid for the development of the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP).

Due to the devastating impacts brucellosis exposure could have on our operation

and interstate movement of our livestock, I studied every aspect of this disease and

it’s far reaching implications. The information I have assimilated over the years and

the experiences of being involved are the sources from which my testimony is

drawn.

Yellowstone National Park (YNP) was established in 1872 and wide-spread hunting occurred until 1883. The earliest population estimates were 600 bison in 1880

and 300 in 1892. I am not sure if bison were native to the Park or if these remnant

populations were forced there by hunting pressure on the plains. In 1902 Congress

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appropriated funds to save YNP bison from extermination. Fewer than 50 wild bison

remained in the Park and the herd was augmented with 21 bison from semi-domesticated herds in Montana and Texas. These introduced bison were maintained in enclosures initially at Mammoth and then at the Buffalo Ranch in the Lamar Valley

until 1952. Periodically there were some wild calves added to the ranch herd and

some ranch herd bison released to the wild. In 1917 tests indicated brucellosis infection in bison at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch. From 1925-1967 bison management emphasized restoring bison to previous ranges in the park and population control with

a range-based carrying capacity of 425 bison. Periodic culling occurred either

through capture and shipment or shooting. During this period more than 9000 bison

were removed by management actions. The largest population of 1,477 head occurred in 1954. In 1967 YNP began a policy of natural regulation for bison and the

actual count was 397. From 1967 until the IBMP was finalized in December of 2000

a series of federal, state and joint management plans were used to control the winter migration of brucellosis exposed bison from the Park. Some of the removal was

accomplished through hunts authorized by the Montana legislature. In 1985 Montana’s cattle herd became brucellosis free. In 1991 the Fund for Animals asked the

U.S. District Court for injunctive relief to stop the harvesting of bison outside park

boundaries. Injunctive relief was denied. In 1994 several states required additional

testing requirements for exported Montana cattle due to the disease risk of disease

exposed and seropositive bison outside YNP. In January of 1995 Montana filed a

complaint in the U.S. District Court against the federal government, related to Department of Interior policies that caused diseased and diseased-exposed bison to

enter into Montana and Department of Agriculture policies that might revoke Montana’s brucellosis-free certification based on the mere presence of diseased wild

bison in the State. In November of 1995 the U.S. District Court accepted the settlement agreement submitted by Montana, the federal government and the Royal

Teton Ranch. Among the provisions of the settlement was a schedule for completion

of a long-term management plan and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS); and,

concurrence that bison management, according to the provisions of the settlement,

is consistent with Montana’s brucellosis-free status. In December of 2000 the IBMP

was completed and dictates how bison are to be handled as they leave YNP. The

plan manages the risk of brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle through areaspecific strategies to maintain temporal and spatial separation between bison and

cattle. This plan includes vaccination protocols appropriate for both bison and cattle.

This plan is very specific as to areas (zones) where specific numbers of bison can

be outside the park. This plan is adaptive and changes can be made where sound

scientific research indicates that the risk of transmission is acceptable to the Montana State Veterinarian in consultation with APHIS. Provisions are made in this

plan that outlines the consequences of parties not living up to their commitments.

In March of 2006 the Western States Livestock Health Association (an association

of state veterinarians) passed a resolution reminding the GYA states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming that temporal and spatial separation must be maintained between infected elk/bison and cattle. Future communications to the states clarified

that compliance with the IBMP will allow the states to retain their status, but failure to do so may require the western states to consider additional requirements and

sanctions upon the GYA states. In the last couple of years Wyoming and Idaho have

had cattle exposed and infected with brucellosis through contact with infected elk,

not bison. Both states lost their brucellosis free status and had to go through testing

procedures and re-certification by APHIS. Wyoming has since regained brucellosis

free status and Idaho is under review.

When eradicating brucellosis from YNP bison was being discussed in the early

1980’s, it was the general consensus that if the bison became disease free, brucellosis would not sustain itself in the wild elk herds. This does not seem to be the

case now. Eighty percent of the elk population in Wyoming is dependent upon winter feed grounds. These elk are being fed to either give them subsistence because

of lack of native winter range to sustain the current numbers or keep the elk from

using livestock feed lines and exposing cattle to brucellosis. There are twenty plus

feed grounds in Wyoming and the incidence of disease vary between areas, but it

can be as high as twenty percent seropositivity. Congregating elk on winter feed

grounds exposes large numbers of animals to disease due to abortions of infected

females. The aborted fetus and birthing fluids and membranes pose the greatest

risk of infection with this disease. Some feeding of elk in southeastern Idaho occurs

because of loss of winter range to development, elk populations wintering in non traditional areas, and strategic feeding to keep separation between elk and livestock.

Feeding of elk by any entity other than the Fish and Game department is illegal.

In Montana feeding of wildlife is illegal. Due to displacement of some elk by development and large numbers, wintering herds are growing and concentrating on winVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:42 Jun 13, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 L:\DOCS\34137.TXT Hresour1 PsN: Hresour1
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ter ranges in southwestern Montana valleys. This is causing concern because the

concentration of elk during this period exposes more numbers of the herd to disease.

Predation and harassment of elk by wolves has impact on the behavior of elk. In

Wyoming wolves are moving elk off feed grounds into nontraditional poor winter

ranges or close to cattle feed lines. In Montana wolves are concentrating elk into

large herds and often close to the valley floors where livestock reside. Management

of these herds is becoming more difficult and brucellosis will sustain itself in these

populations, regardless of the brucellosis in the bison. Consequently, brucellosis

eradication in the GYA includes YNP bison and many of the elk herds in the GYA

states that are exposed. The brucellosis infection of cattle from elk in Wyoming and

Idaho is testimony that elk are a real threat and need to be dealt with. The fact

that cattle have not been infected by infected park bison relates to the efficacy of

the IBMP.

Brucellosis is an infectious and contagious intracellular parasitic bacterial disease

of animals and humans. It was first recognized in the Mediterranean area and was

at first thought to be an exotic form of typhoid fever. In 1886 a British surgeon,

Sir David Bruce, first isolated the bacteria from the spleen of a human fatal case.

In 1887 Bernard Bangs, a Danish physician, found cattle to be reservoirs of undulant fever which was causing abortion in dairy cattle. Brucellosis was undoubtedly

introduced to America via livestock brought by the early explorers and settlements.

Brucella abortus, the species most commonly associated with brucellosis in cattle in

the U.S., causes abortion, dead or weak calves, reduced milk yield, lower weaning

weight, and lowered fertility. In humans, Brucella abortus causes undulant fever,

a disease characterized by intermittent fever, headaches, fatigue, joint and bone

pain, psychotic disturbances and other symptoms. It is contracted through exposure

to infected animals and their products. Livestock and slaughter industry workers

and consumers of non pasteurized milk products have typically been at highest risk

of contracting the disease. Cases have decreased as brucellosis eradication in domestic livestock has progressed and dairy products were pasteurized. Two of the last

cases in Montana involved hunters that contracted brucellosis from dressing cow elk

during a late season elk hunt northwest of YNP in the Ennis, Montana area.

Since the cooperative State-Federal program was begun in 1951, approximately $3.5 billion in State, Federal and Industry funds have been spent on brucellosis

eradication. Using surveillance, vaccination, quarantine, herd management, and

herd depopulation with indemnity payment, the program has been successful in reducing the number of known infected herds from 124,000 in 1957 to 0 at this time.

Texas and Idaho are in the process of applying to APHIS for reinstatement of their

class free status classification. After 50 plus years of experience in eradicating this

disease in cattle and the availability of a vaccine that is only 70% efficacious,

APHIS and producers have recognized that whole herd eradication is the preferred

method for domestic livestock. The nature of the disease and the poor immune response of its host to vaccination render mitigation through risk management a dangerous alternative to depopulation. Latent infections have often caused major setbacks in eradication efforts. Most producers who have not dealt directly with eradication efforts and practically all other publics do not understand the tenacity displayed by APHIS and state veterinarians when asked to allow risk management

strategies other than depopulation and total eradication. Only with the development

of more efficacious vaccines that can be delivered orally or injected, will brucellosis

be eradicated from the elk and bison that are infected in the GYA.

In a brucellosis class free state, contracting brucellosis in any domestic livestock

herd will automatically require depopulation. If two herds are found infected in a

state, the state loses its class free status and must meet APHIS testing protocols

of large populations of test eligible animals to regain their status, not to mention

the testing of all test eligible cattle that are exported out of state. It took 30 years

of testing and 33 million dollars for Montana to achieve its brucellosis free status

in 1985. In the early 1990’s a wildlife outbreak in Wyoming cost the Parker Ranch

1.1 million dollars for loss of cattle, out-of-pocket costs and loss of future earnings.

Since 1970 our business has spent over 260 thousand dollars vaccinating and testing for brucellosis and we have never had the disease. The Market Cattle Identification (MCI) trace back program requires every sexually intact female over two years

of age that is processed at a federally inspected packing plant to be tested. This program is an excellent surveillance tool to identify any outbreak of brucellosis that

may occur nationally. APHIS and the livestock industry have expended millions of

dollars and have exerted tremendous effort while enduring much pain and agony

eradicating brucellosis from our domestic cattle herds. The livestock producers in

the GYA that are being exposed to infected elk and to YNP bison, if the IBMP is

not adhered too, are very apprehensive that we can withstand the challenge that

brucellosis infected wildlife presents. We need help from the scientific and research

65

community to develop more efficacious vaccines that will eradicate this disease from

the wildlife in the GYA and effectively protect our domestic livestock herds. There

must be population control through hunting and or other methods (birth control) if

brucellosis is to be contained and eventually eradicated from the elk in the GYA and

the bison in YNP. For the Secretary of the Interior to not allow population control

of bison in YNP and the Park Service to use a natural regulation policy to hide behind in managing a bison herd that is infected with an exotic zoonotic disease that

serves as the host for infection of elk and livestock in the GYA, is irresponsible and

unimaginable. By not accepting their responsibility of population and disease management, the Department of Interior (DOI) and YNP are sentencing the YNP bison

to the option of starving to death in the park or facing harassment, testing, and

slaughter because they carry a disease that threatens other wildlife, livestock and

the integrity of the landscape in the GYA. Due to geography and how the bison migrate, the current and past Governors of Montana, the Montana Stockgrowers Association, the Montana Board of Livestock, and APHIS have taken a stand against

this disease and have gotten a black eye because we recognize the impacts this disease can have. If we cannot eradicate this disease, the livestock production from the

GYA states will be discounted by those states and countries we export to, severely

impacting our industry. This could also become a trade issue and used as leverage

against us in the international market place for our healthy and wholesome cattle

and beef products.

The landscape in the GYA is changing. Urban America has fallen in love with the

open spaces of the rural west. The ranching and farming community accepted the

challenge of the Homestead Act and other legislation that allowed us to settle the

west and develop the infrastructure that supports what we now have. This job must

have been well done because everyone is seeking the open space we nurtured. It is

quickly becoming apparent that the livestock industry’s value to society is the preservation of open space, rather than the production of food and fiber. The private

land that was homesteaded has some of the best water and soils and provides some

of the most productive wildlife habitat in the GYA. The cumulative effects of the

abuse of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to change land use, bureaucratic nightmares involving government programs along with air and water quality laws, planning and zoning, estate taxes and just the challenge of managing a private business

in America today is about to take its toll. The inability of the current players involved to find solutions to the disease and population issues in the bison and elk

in the GYA may very well be lead to the demise of the ranching community in the

GYA. One must recognize that the last crop harvested by a rancher in the GYA will

be a subdivision. This development in the GYA will fragment the landscape and destroy the wildlife habitat that makes this area important to society today and tomorrow. We must not venture down this path. Just visit Jackson Hole, Wyoming,

or the Teton Basin in Idaho or the Madison Valley in Montana and you will get a

feeling for what is coming if we lose the working ranch community.

I have served on three consensus groups in the last fifteen years dealing with resource and watershed issues. In these groups all interests are represented and their

concerns are understood. In every instance we have been able to find a solution that

enhances the resource or species of concern and satisfies all interests. This process

is time consuming and difficult, but once one begins listening to and trusting each

other, positive solutions are produced. In talking with the scientific community,

great strides are being made in disease control and tools are becoming available

that will help us achieve brucellosis eradication the GYA elk and bison herds. We

need all the interested parties to join together to design a long term plan with solid

intermittent steps to achieve the eradication goal. The stakes are too high to proceed down the path we are going. The loss of the livestock on our western ranges

is insignificant compared to the loss of the men and women who own and manage

these ranches and have the knowledge, fortitude and love of the land to keep it productive, sustainable and open. If we lose this culture, the GYA and its wildlife habitat and openness will be fragmented beyond recognition. The bison has become a

symbol of the American west. How appropriate it would be to start with the YNP

Bison in finding solutions that will stop this disease that is threatening to take all

that we have worked for. This can be done and must be done and we need the help

of our new neighbors and friends that have come west to seek the same values and

opportunities that lured our predecessors out of the nest. It is time to go to work.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Dr. Kay.

66

STATEMENT OF DR. CHARLES KAY, UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY

Mr. KAY. I would first like to thank the Chairman and the Subcommittee for inviting me to testify here today. My PhD is in wildlife ecology, and I am presently associated with the political science

department at Utah State University. I spent more than 20 years

studying in Yellowstone National Park. I have also done extensive

research for Parks Canada in the southern Canadian Rockies.

Yellowstone is presently managed under what is termed natural

regulation. This though is more than simply letting nature take its

course for it entails a specific view of how nature operates. According to the Park Service, predation is an assisting but nonessential

adjunct to the regulation of bison and elk populations. Instead,

ungulates are limited by their available food supply, termed resource or food limited. The Park Service contends that ungulated

populations well self-regulate without overgrazing the range.

This means that wolves and other predators only kill the animals

slated by nature to die from other causes and thus predation has

no effect on elk or bison numbers. Under natural regulation the

Park Service claims that thousands of bison and elk have always

inhabited Yellowstone. The Park Service also contends that present

conditions in Yellowstone are similar to those in the past. Now if

this were true then earlier explorers should have found Yellowstone teaming with wildlife and the range should be as overgrazed

in the past as it is today.

Historical data however paint an entirely different picture. As

part of my research I have conducted a continuous time analysis

of all first person historical accounts of Yellowstone exploration.

Between 1835 and 1876, there were 20 different expeditions. They

spent 765 days in the ecosystem on foot or horseback. They saw

bison only three times, none were in the present confines of Yellowstone Park.

Today there are approximately 4,000 bison within the Park as

well as an estimated 100,000 elk in the ecosystem yet those same

explorers reported seeing elk only once every 18 days, and their

journal contained 45 references to a lack of game or shortage of

food. In addition, none of the early explorers—and I emphasize

none—reported seeing or killing a single wolf, another indication

that ungulates were rare and present conditions are entirely outside the range of historical variability. Similarly, archeological data

indicate there are more bison and elk in Yellowstone today than

any point in the last 10,000 years.

Why are bison leaving the Park? According to the Park Service,

bison are leaving the Park today are simply following historic migration routes down the Madison River Valley to the west and Yellowstone River Valley to the north.

Interestingly, however, that is not what the Park Service said in

1973 when the agency formulated its natural regulation program,

and I would refer the committee members to attachment eight of

my testimony. This is from the Park Service scientific monogram

in 1973 that laid out the whole natural regulation paradigm for

bison. You will see there is no bison movements either to the north,

down the Yellowstone River Valley or to the west, down the

Madison River Valley.

67

In that document as well as other earlier documents the Park

Service said that Yellowstone’s bison population would naturally

regulate at 1,000 to 2,000 animals. As we all know that has not

proven to be the case. The Park Service has since suggested that

the reason the bison population has grown beyond the numbers the

agency predicted was because the Park roads have improved to facilitate over-the-snow vehicles during winter, and this is what

started the whole snow machine debate.

It has been hypothesis that the use of snowpacked roads reduced

the energetic cost of bison moving through deep snow and opened

new areas to bison foraging which in term allowed bison numbers

to increase. Recent research, however, has shown that hypothesis

to be false, and the National Academy of Science has concluded

that grooming Park roads has had nothing to do with the increase

of bison above earlier predictions.

As bison numbers have grown, the animals have steadily overgrazed the range. It should come as no surprise then that bison are

simply leaving Yellowstone Park and the animal is looking for

something to eat. As explained in a recent book called Yellowstone’s Destabilized Ecosystem, this is the latest word on whether

the Park is grazed or overgrazed, published by Oxford University

Press, one of the leading publishers of the scientific book. It is a

synthesis of all the research that has been done in Yellowstone

Park. Not only is it seriously overgrazed but natural regulation is

a failed management philosophy.

Not only has Yellowstone’s bison population not self-regulated as

earlier predicted by the Park Service, no ungulate population anywhere in the world has self-regulated without first causing extensive resource damage. Instead, the natural state of the Yellowstone

ecosystem included native hunters who kept bison and other populations at very low levels and actually promoted biodiversity. Native people, not wolves, were the system’s keystone predator, and

it was not until native populations were decimated by European introduced diseases and the survivor was banished from Yellowstone

with the second superintendent Norris that bison elk populations

erupted to unnatural levels.

So what then is the solution to the bison overpopulation problem? I suggest that Congress revisit the treaties of 1851 and 1868

which predate the establishment of Yellowstone Park and under

which various tribes already claim hunting rights in Yellowstone.

The previous Park Service witness said that they had no hunting

rights in the Park. My understanding is that is not what the native

people think and Congress may want to revisit that issue.

Thus one way to reduce overgrazing and to keep bison from leaving the Park would be to honor the United States’ previous commitment to Yellowstone’s original owners and allow them to hunt in

the Park. After all, aboriginal hunting has been a natural ecosystem process for more than 12,000 years, and as such is in keeping with the Park Organic Act and subregulations to maintain natural conditions.

For how this might be accomplished, I suggest we look to our

northern neighbors. Parks Canada has the most stringent environmental protective statutes of any park service in the world for they

added an amendment to their organic act which says that ecologiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:42 Jun 13, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00071 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 L:\DOCS\34137.TXT Hresour1 PsN: Hresour1
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cal integrity shall be given first priority in all management tools.

Shall not will or may. Shall mandates compliance. There is no wiggle room for the government bureaucrats.

So based on extensive archeological research, Parks Canada has

developed ecological integrity standards that include both native

hunting and native burning. First Nations are already allowed to

hunt in various Canadian national parks and are the bison restoration program that I have been involved in in Banff National Park,

First Nations will be allowed to hunt bison in the park to maintain

ecological integrity. Native hunting will be used to prevent bison

from leaving the park as well as to prevent overgrazing.

Parks Canada is also working out a directive to allow First Nations to hunt elk and other animals in national parks to prevent

resource damage from unnaturally high ungulate populations.

Again, we must remember that parks with native hunting are natural and parks without native hunting like Yellowstone are entirely unnatural and totally outside the range of historical variability.

Would not giving bison additional land outside Yellowstone solve

the problem? Unfortunately inadequate land has never been the

problem. Instead the present situation is a direct route of natural

regulation management under which the Park Service assumes

that bison will self-regulate, and that predation including that by

native people is unimportant to limit the ungulate numbers.

No matter where the line is drawn under natural regulation,

bison will continue to increase until they are forced by overgrazing

and starvation to again cross that line. In fact, giving the bison

more land will only make situation worse. OK. For the sake of argument, say that bison are given all the last west of Yellowstone

Park and the Madison drainage down to Quake Lake or however

far you want to go down. OK.

While to the north bison are given all the land down the Yellowstone River down to the Yankee Jim Canyon or maybe halfway to

Livingston, if that is your view. Would not that solve the bison

problem? It might for a few years. OK. But during some future

winter instead of 5,000 bison coming out of the Park, we would

have 10,000 or 15,000 bison heading for Ennis, Livingston and Helena, and the bison would still be infected with brucellosis. This

would mean killing even larger numbers of bison or never ending

calls for additional land.

Moreover, this option has already been tried, and it has been a

dismal failure. In 1932 land was added to Yellowstone Park in an

attempt to solve the elk over population problem. This is called the

boundary line addition, and is now one of the most overgrazed

areas in the Park. It did not work then, and it will not work now.

It is also likely that bison will start summering on any new

range as has happened in other bison population build-ups. I mean

if you do not harass those bison off those areas, they are going to

just move to them.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Dr. Kay, if you could wrap it up.

Mr. KAY. Yes.

Mr. GRIJALVA. The grace period that other people had has already passed.

69

Mr. KAY. After all, once bison summer on the northern great

plains, there is no biological reason for them to move back into

Yellowstone. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kay follows:]

Statement of Charles E. Kay, Institute of Political Economy,

Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-0725

I would first like to thank the Chairman and the Subcommittee for inviting me

to testify here today. I have a B.S. in Wildlife Biology and a M.S. in Environmental

Studies both from the University of Montana, and a Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology from

Utah State University. I am presently an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Senior Research Scientist at that University’s Institute of Political Economy. I am the only independently funded scientist to have conducted a detailed evaluation of Yellowstone Park’s ‘‘natural regulation’’ program.

Not only have I conducted scientific research on the overgrazing question, but I have

also studied the bison problem, wolf recovery, grizzly bear management, and other

key issues in that ecosystem. I have also traveled widely throughout the West and

am familiar with similar resource management problems in other national parks.

For instance, I have conducted extensive research in the southern Canadian Rockies

for Parks Canada. This included work in Banff National Park on bison reintroduction. I am also one of the leading experts on aboriginal influences and the original

state of nature.

My research in Yellowstone and Canada has been widely published in books and

scientific journals and I have submitted copies of those papers to the committee’s

staff. I have previously testified before this Subcommittee on ‘‘Science and Resource

Management in the National Park System’’ and I have testified before the House

Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health on ‘‘The Decline of Aspen in the Western United States.’’

Yellowstone is a great national treasure, but as the Subcommittee that oversees

national parks, you face many difficult issues—such as, Why are bison leaving Yellowstone Park? Will giving bison additional land outside Yellowstone solve the problem? and, Is there a solution to the brucellosis issue? I will address each of these,

in turn, but first some background information.

Yellowstone is presently managed under what is termed ‘‘natural regulation.’’

This, though, is more than simply letting nature take its course for it entails a specific view of how nature operates. According to the Park Service, predation is an assisting but nonessential adjunct to the regulation of bison and elk populations. Instead, ungulates are limited by their available forage supply-termed resource or

food-limited. The Park Service contends that ungulate populations will self-regulate

without overgrazing the range. This means that wolves and other predators only kill

animals slated by nature to die from other causes and thus, predation has no effect

on bison or elk numbers. In the debate over reintroducing wolves, the Park Service

has denied that wolves are needed to control elk or bison populations in Yellowstone

Park. Moreover in the current effort to remove wolves from the Endangered Species

List, the Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deny that wolves have

had or are having any major impact on ungulate populations anywhere in the West,

including Yellowstone. Thus, if you think predators limit ungulate numbers, then

by definition, you do not believe in ‘‘natural regulation.’’

Under ‘‘natural regulation’’, the Park Service claims that thousands of bison and

elk have always inhabited Yellowstone. The Park Service also contends that present

conditions in Yellowstone are similar to those in the past. Now if this was true, then

early explorers should have found Yellowstone teeming with wildlife, and the range

should have been as overgrazed in the past as it is today. Historical data, however,

paint an entirely different picture.

As part of my research, I have conducted the only systematic, continuous-time

analysis of first-person journal accounts of Yellowstone exploration. Between 1835

and 1876, 20 different expeditions spent a total of 765 days in the Yellowstone ecosystem on foot or horseback, but they reported seeing bison only three times, none

of which were in Yellowstone Park itself. Today there are over 4,000 bison in the

park, as well as an estimated 100,000 elk in the ecosystem. Yet those same explorers reported seeing elk only once every 18 days and their journals contain 45 references to a lack of game or shortage of food. In addition, none of the early explorers

reported seeing or killing a single wolf—another indication that ungulates were rare

and that present conditions are entirely outside the range of historical variability.

Similarly, archeological data indicate that there are more bison and elk in Yellowstone today then at any point in the last 10,000 years.

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Why are bison leaving Yellowstone Park?

According to the Park Service, bison that leave the park today are simply following historic migration routes down the Madison River to the west and the Yellowstone River Valley to the north. Interestingly, however, that is not what the

Park Service said in 1973 when the agency formulated its ‘‘natural regulation’’ program. Instead, after reviewing the historical evidence, the Park Service concluded

that bison had not historically left Yellowstone Park to the west or north—I refer

the Subcommittee to Figure 11 in the Park Service’s Scientific Monograph on ‘‘The

Bison of Yellowstone National Park’’—see Attachment A. No new, first-person historical journals have been discovered since the Park Service conducted its original

analysis. In early documents, the Park Service also stated that Yellowstone’s bison

population would ‘‘naturally regulate’’ at 1,000 to 2,000 animals. And as we all

know, that has not proven to be the case.

The Park Service has since suggested that the reason the bison population has

grown beyond the numbers the agency originally predicted was because park roads

have been groomed to facilitate use by over-the-snow vehicles during winter. It has

been hypothesized that use of snow-packed roads reduced the energetic cost of moving through deep snow and opened new areas to bison foraging during winter, which

in turn, allowed bison numbers to increase. Recent research, however, has shown

that hypothesis to be false and the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that

grooming park roads has had nothing to do with the increase of bison above earlier

predictions.

As bison numbers have grown, the animals have steadily overgrazed the range.

It should come as no surprise then that bison are simply leaving Yellowstone because the animals are looking for something to eat. The Park Service has admitted

that bison are at what is termed ‘‘ecological carrying capacity.’’ By definition this

means the animals are short of food and that grazing has altered the park’s vegetation. As explained in a recent book, ‘‘Yellowstone’s Destabilized Ecosystem’’ published by Oxford University Press, Yellowstone is seriously overgrazed and ‘‘natural

regulation’’ is a failed management philosophy.

My own research has shown that Yellowstone contains some of the worst overgrazed riparian areas in the West. Early photographs show that historically Yellowstone’s aspen and willow communities were ungrazed. Based on 120 repeat

photosets that I have made, dating to as early as 1871, tall willows and aspen have

declined by more than 95%, since Yellowstone National Park was established, due

to excessive ungulate browsing by unnatural concentrations of elk and bison. Not

only has Yellowstone’s bison population not self-regulated, as originally predicted by

the Park Service, but no ungulate population anywhere in the world has been

shown to self-regulate without first causing extensive resource damage.

Instead, the natural state of the Yellowstone ecosystem included native hunters,

who kept bison and other ungulate populations at very low levels, and thus maintained biodiversity. Native people, not wolves, were the system’s keystone predator.

It was not until native populations were decimated by European-introduced diseases

and the survivors banished from Yellowstone that bison and elk populations irrupted to unnatural levels. It is important to remember that after the Nez Perce

incident in 1877, Yellowstone’s second superintendent had the park’s original inhabitants forcefully removed and then created the myth that native people never lived

in the park—all in the name of promoting tourism. Unfortunately, the Park Service

has done nothing in the last 90 years to correct that situation.

So what then is the solution to the bison over-population problem? I suggest that

Congress and the Park Service revisit the Treaties of 1851 and 1868, which predate

the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, and under which various tribes already claim hunting rights in Yellowstone. Thus, one way to reduce overgrazing and

to keep bison from leaving the park would be to honor the United States’ previous

commitment to Yellowstone’s original owners and allow them to hunt in the park.

After all, aboriginal hunting has been a natural ecosystem process for more than

12,000 years and as such is in keeping with the Park Organic Art and subsequent

regulations to maintain natural conditions. For how this might be accomplished, I

suggest we look to our northern neighbors.

Parks Canada has the most stringent environmental protection statutes of any

Park Service in the world for they added an amendment to their Organic Act which

says that ecological integrity shall be given first priority in all management

decisions—shall, unlike will or may, mandates compliance. So based on extensive

archival and ecological research, including my Parks Canada publication on ‘‘Longterm Ecosystem States and Processes in the Central Canadian Rockies,’’ Parks Canada has developed ecological integrity standards that include both native hunting

and native burning. First Nations already are allowed to hunt in various Canadian

National Parks and under the bison restoration program that is being planned for

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Banff National Park, First Nations will be allowed to hunt bison in the park to

maintain ecological integrity. Native hunting will be used to prevent bison from

leaving the park, as well as to prevent overgrazing. Parks Canada is also working

on a directive to allow First Nations to hunt elk and other animals in national parks

to prevent resource damage from unnaturally high ungulate populations. Again, we

must remember that parks with native hunting are natural, while parks without

native hunting, like Yellowstone, are entirely unnatural and totally outside the

range of historical variability.

Wouldn’t giving bison additional land outside Yellowstone solve the

problem?

Unfortunately, inadequate land has never been the problem. Instead, the present

situation is a direct result of ‘‘natural regulation’’ management under which the

Park Service assumes that bison will self-regulate, and that predation, including

that by native people, is unimportant in limiting ungulate numbers. No matter

where the line is drawn, under ‘‘natural regulation’’ bison will continue to increase

until they are forced by overgrazing and starvation to again cross that line. In fact,

giving the bison more land will only make the situation worse.

For the sake of argument say that bison are given all the land west of Yellowstone Park in the Madison drainage from the Continental Divide down to Quake

Lake. While to the north, bison are given all the land along the Yellowstone River

down to Yankee Jim Canyon. Would that not solve the bison problem? It might for

a few years but during some future winter, instead of 5,000 bison coming out of the

park, we would have 10,000 or 15,000 bison heading for Ennis, Livingston, and

Helena—bison that would still be infected with brucellosis. This would mean killing

even larger numbers of bison or never ending calls for additional land.

Moreover, this option has already been tried and has been a dismal failure. In

1932, land was added to Yellowstone Park in an attempt to solve the elk over-population problem. This is called the Boundary Line Addition, or BLA, and is now one

of the most overgrazed areas in the park. It did not work then, and it will not work

now. It is also likely that bison will start summering on any new range, as has happened in other bison population build-ups. After all, bison once summered on the

northern Great Plains, so there is no biological reason for them to move back into

Yellowstone. Ecologically, it would be much better and more natural to simply let

Native Americans hunt bison in Yellowstone National Park.

Is there a solution to the brucellosis issue?

First, it is important to note that bison in Yellowstone Park are heavily infected,

while the elk in the northern part of the park are not. That is to say, the disease

can be maintained in free-ranging bison but apparently not in free-ranging elk. This

is why elk migrating north of the park are not a problem. Second, there is a separate bison herd south of the park in Jackson Hole, which also is heavily infected

with brucellosis. In addition, elk on the one federal and 22 state feedgrounds in

northwest Wyoming are infected with brucellosis. So we have two infected bison

herds and one larger infected elk population, but only where elk are artificially fed

during winter south of the park—some of those elk, though, do summer in Yellowstone.

Based on the available scientific literature, the only proven way to eliminate brucellosis from an ungulate population is test and slaughter. It must be remembered

that the elimination of brucellosis from the United States is national policy. Thus,

the only known way to comply with this national directive is test and slaughter. In

fact, the State of Wyoming is now running an experimental test and slaughter program on one of its elk feedgrounds because previous attempts at vaccinating elk

have not eliminated the disease. In the coming years, Wyoming plans to extend its

test and slaughter program to two additional elk feedgrounds. Test and slaughter

have also been successfully used to eliminate brucellosis from bison in various other

national and state parks, including Elk Island in Alberta and Custer in South Dakota. Test and slaughter were also used to eliminate brucellosis from the National

Bison Range in Montana.

If test and slaughter had been instituted in Yellowstone 20 years ago, we now

most likely would have disease-free bison and elk herds—and the problem would be

solved. Instead, the problem has gotten worse, while millions of tax dollars have

been wasted. I suggest it is time to stop squandering the public’s money and solve

the problem. The solution has been known for many years, only the will has been

lacking.

In closing, I thank the Chairman and Subcommittee for your time and consideration.

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Attachment A—Figure 11 from Meagher, M.M. 1973. The bison of Yellowstone

National Park. National Park Service Scientific Monograph Series Number One. 161

pp.

Attachment B—Kay, C. E. 1998. Ar ecosystems structured from the top-down or

the bottom-up: A new look at an old debate. Wildlife Society Bulletin 26:484-498.

NOTE: Attachments to Dr. Kay’s statement have been retained in the Committee’s official files.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you, sir. Let me just ask some quick questions, and I think they are going to call us for a vote, and we would

like to get some information. Let me ask Mr. Osher, does the Buffalo Field Campaign support—because that has been part of the

discussion—to support the continuation of the management plan

that exists now? Let us say if there was to be some progress—I

know we are still caught or trapped in phase one—but some

progress toward phase two, phase three, or do you feel that that

plan just needs to be abandoned and deal with something else?

Mr. OSHER. No. We do not support the continuation of the current interagency plan. We believe that the plan is not the product

of sound science. That it was created as an adaptive management

plan but the agencies have not been able to adapt the plan based

on the new knowledge and information, including specifically genetic information that suggests that there are the three distinct

subpopulations of bison in the Park. It is not in the management

scenario to manage to make sure those populations remain viable.

We need a new plan.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you. Mr. Pacelle, I grew up until I was

about five, six, seven, I grew upon a cattle ranch in southern Arizona, and although my memory is limited but I remember my father’s discussions about the three most important things. First for

the cattle was control of the disease, and the other was of equal—

if not more important value—is the grazing space that cattle need

and then control of predators was the other one. It brings back the

point you made that maybe the concern over the disease is secondary to the space required for grazing for cattle. Could you expand on that if you would?

Mr. PACELLE. Well let me just say on the matter of disease I

mean we do not like to see any animal contract a disease. I mean

this one the main impact is on the pregnancy for the animal but

you know the test is basically measuring antibodies. It is measuring exposure, and if you or I had a measles you know at some

point in our life, we would have some of the antibodies.

I think the point that I was making about the spacing and that

others have made is that we are talking about an ecosystem with

relatively few cattle. It is very cold you know. Yellowstone is at a

high elevation. They do not over-winter cattle there for the most

part. So we really have an ideal set of circumstances to allow bison

to range freely, at least to some limit. Most of the cattle herds are

not even within 45 miles of the Yellowstone border when the bison

leave the Park, and they just go you know to small areas outside

of the Park.

So I think that the space management issue is crucial. I understand the Governor’s concern about brucellosis-free status. I think

we really need to ask USDA some hard questions about why it is

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so rigid in its definitions and why there cannot be you know a subregion there that they select.

Mr. GRIJALVA. I appreciate that. Mr. Hagenbarth, let me pose a

what if. In your opinion, could the Royal Teton Ranch move to a

steer only operation? Would such a transition be difficult, expensive? That is part of the question. But the other part of the question, would not moving cows off the ranch solve the problem?

Mr. HAGENBARTH. To solve the problem you have to solve the disease. You could use steers because they are not susceptible to brucellosis. Whether or not you could run them there economically is

another question because on running steers are different than running cows because you need a lot more infrastructure to keep them

there, and if you run steers in an open country—like we did in our

Forest Service allotment although we had spayed heifers—it cost

us six-tenths of a pound a day. Over a 100-day grazing period, it

is 60 bucks a head.

But the real issue is disease. Disease is what is causing the

bison, which causes us to manage the bison the way we are. But

it is the elk that are causing the problems. The elk are all over the

greater Yellowstone area.

There is 20 million acres there, 20 million acres, and those acres

are open, and if we destroy the infrastructure of the ranching community and they sell out—and I will guarantee you those folks are

just waiting with the money. You will destroy that 20 million acres.

We cannot make that sacrifice. We have to lift up our eyes, open

our ears, get a sharper vision to see what the real issue is.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you.

Mr. PACELLE. Can I just say something with the elk very briefly,

Mr. Chairman? You know I agree with Mr. Hagenbarth to a degree. I mean we are not talking about bison as the only theoretical

transmitters of this disease. There are more than 15,000 elk. Even

if they have a lower incidence rate the absolute numbers of infected

animals may be comparable, and why are we allowing this no

movement policy for bison yet elk range throughout the ecosystem?

And I think the reason is that there is a stronger constituency

for the elk. There are hunting guides and outfitters and lots of

Montana hunters who want to have the elk there.

Mr. GRIJALVA. My time is up. Mr. Bishop.

Mr. BISHOP. Yes, I will try and be quick and let you have another

shot at these guys again. I appreciate you all being here, and I appreciate your testimony.

Mr. Hagenbarth, you established a unique picture. That is something that we do not all visualize sometimes, and I assume you are

very serious when you say that if indeed the ranching industry

fails in this particular area it will sell out not to other kinds of

open space but it will sell out to housing developments, it will sell

out to cabins and those types of situations. So when you talk about

how you actually are the last link of an open space in this particular area, I think it is a compelling argument that we do not

hear that often.

Dr. Kay, can I ask you a couple of simple questions that I tried

to get from the Forest Service? Is there in your studies a historic

high or historic size of the buffalo herd that traditionally was in

the Park and Park area? Like pre 1900s.

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Mr. KAY. Well there are early estimates of two to 300 bison when

the Park was first established on it but I mean there is more bison

in there now than there has ever been, and this is all after the natural regulation thing because up until 1968 the Park Service was

concerned about overgrazing. They controlled the numbers of bison

in the Park.

Mr. BISHOP. Let me quit being cute with these questions.

Mr. KAY. OK.

Mr. BISHOP. I think I read in some other stuff you had done in

other places that in the 1920s there were about 400, 500 head of

bison there. In the 1800s there was as many as 600 head. But certainly you know when the Director said there should be 7,500—and

I saw the Governor start to gag over there——

Mr. KAY. Yes.

Mr. BISHOP.—that is 10 times higher than I think we have ever

talked about the number of bison that this particular piece of property can adequately maintain.

Mr. KAY. That is certainly true. I have not actually ever seen

that number. In this book here, when you calculate out when the

reproductive rate falls to zero, it is about 6,000 bison. OK. But

what happens and there is some physiological data on the condition

of bison, they can take this by testing the urine for protein catabolism where they start using their muscle mass and everything,

when it gets about 3,000 bison the bison are in bad shape, and they

start leaving the Park. OK.

Mr. BISHOP. In the Canadian Parks when they developed a bison

reintroduction plan——

Mr. KAY. Yes. They are still working on that. They have not——

Mr. BISHOP. If there were like two or three things we could take

from their experience that we could probably transpose and use in

Yellowstone that would be effective, what would you say those

would be?

Mr. KAY. Well the main thing is their different views on what

structured the ecosystem. What were the important players in the

ecosystem, and it turns out to be it was native hunting and native

burning. It turns out lightning fires are basically unnatural. All the

burning in this country for the last 12,000 years has been native

burning. Depending upon which ecosystems you were, it was anywhere from 270 times to 35,000 times more frequent than known

lightning fire ignition rates.

So Parks Canada has looked at these various data sets. They

have talked to anthropologists and archaeologists, and because

they have a stronger native presence up there in that country, I

mean they call them First Nations that is the politically correct

thing to do when you talk about native people in Canada. You

know they are a lot more open to the ideas of you know letting native people hunt in the park to control the animal numbers.

Mr. BISHOP. They have more active management style of management plan up there in Canada?

Mr. KAY. That is right. What they have done is develop ecological

integrity standards. Unfortunately like natural regulation, I mean

how do you ever hold the government bureaucrats accountable?

There is no standards you know it goes to this many bison or that

many bison or this many elk, and they just say it is all natural.

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So what they have done is based on the archeological record, the

first person historical journals, and all the other data sets they can

find, pollen records and everything else, come up with we in this

country would call a range of historical variability, and you also

have to understand what are the main processes that drive the ecosystem.

Mr. BISHOP. I am sorry.

Mr. KAY. That is fine.

Mr. BISHOP. No. I appreciate——

Mr. KAY. It is an entirely different approach than down here in

the United States, and unlike our Park Service that has never

asked me to take them on a field trip in Yellowstone, the chief scientist from Parks Canada has come down and gone with two Yellowstone field trips with me, and of course he also goes out and

looks at the Yellowstone people. But they are not doing natural

regulation in their parks. OK.

Mr. BISHOP. I appreciate that. I appreciate also your comments

on the boundary line addition of 1932 and the impact that that actually had. I think that historical input is significant. Did you do

any study with the brucellosis eradication program starting in

1934?

Mr. KAY. Well I have not done any studies. I mean there was

some part of my written testimony which I did not have time to

get to had to do with the only known way of eradicating brucellosis,

and that is test and slaughter, and that as been accomplished in

various state and national parks.

Mr. BISHOP. Right.

Mr. KAY. To remove brucellosis from bison. And previous witnesses have already alluded to that fact. Everybody is sort of looking for a silver bullet which is this vaccine that has not been developed.

Mr. BISHOP. That was probably the wrong term to use when you

are talking about this issue. I have about 10 seconds left, and I

knew we have a few that is coming up. Let me yield back but I

appreciate the panel, and I appreciate your responses, and I am

sorry we did not have more time to ask more questions.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Thank you very much, Mr. Bishop. With that, I

would just like to inform the panelists there were some follow-up

questions, and we will be submitting those in writing to you, and

appreciate your responses so they can be part of the record, and be

distributed to the other members of the Committee as well.

Last closing comment. There is no doubt that there are more

bison in the Park now because it is a protected area, and as a consequence of that there are more bison, and if you put it in the historical context the bison used to roam from Canada to Mexico, I

think that is not a good comparison. Anyway, thank you very

much. The meeting is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:23 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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