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A plan five years in the making to relocate brucellosis-free bison from Yellowstone National Park to other Western lands is on shaky ground in the Montana Legislature.
At midpoint of the 2009 Legislature, the state Senate passed a bill to prevent the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks from relocating the bison to other parts of Montana. The animals have spent the past few years in a quarantine facility near Gardiner, where they've been extensively tested for brucellosis, a disease that causes cattle to miscarry and in rare cases can be harmful to humans.
The FWP, working with the national park, the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and state livestock officials, has increased the quarantined herd's numbers through breeding and now has 41 bison it intends to relocate as early as April. Those first bison are bound for the Eastern Shoshone Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.
Potential locations for the next 40 bison, likely to be released in 2010, included the Fort Peck and Fort Belknap reservations of northeast Montana.
Lawmakers opposed to moving the bison to other areas of the state said this week the plans were too risky, given that brucellosis was found in Montana cattle in consecutive years, costing the ranching industry its brucellosis-free status.
Full text here.
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