Buffalo Field Campaign - Update from the Field - 02/01/06

* Update from the Field

Last Friday, Yellowstone National Park sent the last of the 672 captured wild buffalo to slaughter. The trap - located inside the boundaries of Yellowstone - is empty. Unfortunately, that's just for now. In contrast to the empty trap, the Corwin Springs bison quarantine facility is at full capacity with 100 wild baby buffalo that will never be with their family members again, will be used in a scientific experiment, and half of which will be slaughtered. All in the name of the Holy Cow.

On Tuesday, BFC volunteers traveled to Bozeman, MT to attend the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee (GYIBC) meeting. GYIBC representatives are the architects and executioners of the current buffalo slaughter and the ongoing threat to the viability of wildlife in the region. These bureaucrats operate as if the public voice were only a nuisance to be ignored as they carry out their draconian plans. Our voices were not ignored on Tuesday. Buffalo and elk (elk are now suffering test-and-slaughter programs, too) advocates filled the chairs before the Committee's table. When the time for public comments came, we spoke in defense of the wild. We pointed out that brucellosis is a cattle-borne disease and the focus should be on cattle, on the disease, and not on our native wildlife. Josh showed BFC's video footage from the day the DOL ran the buffalo through the ice on Hebgen Lake, demonstrating just a fraction of what their management scheme looks like in reality. Silence filled the room. The footage is that powerful, the truth is that profound, the management scheme that cruel and ugly.

During the meeting, GYIBC representatives from the National Park Service (NPS) proudly revealed that they have been cooperating, protecting livestock interests with their recent capture, slaughter and quarantine of 672 wild Yellowstone buffalo. They said though the trap is empty, there are at least 700 buffalo moving north, underway with their natural migration, heading towards the Park's boundary - towards lands owned by the Church Universal & Triumphant (CUT). With numerous hazing operations underway, they confess capture will begin again soon. And so will slaughter.

The NPS engages in wild buffalo slaughter for the sake of a handful of privately-owned cows across Yellowstone's northern boundary in Montana. These cows graze and ruin Yellowstone's rich northern range in the Gardiner Basin, critical winter habitat for wild buffalo, elk, pronghorn, and also a significant migration corridor for these and many other wildlife species. Portions of the wild Yellowstone River - the longest undammed river in the contiguous United States - is being trampled and defiled by the CUT ranch cows. The buffalo are being slaughtered for them. Wild rivers and wild buffalo, it seems, share a common threat.

Please be sure to join us today - and until the slaughter stops - in calling the Park Service and CUT (info above) to urge more habitat for wild buffalo and an end to their slaughter. As Margaret Mead's famous quote reads: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

For the Wild,
~Stephany

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* No More Baby Buffalo in Quarantine! Send Comments!

One hundred wild baby buffalo have been hazed, captured, separated from their mothers and herd members and sent to prison in the Corwin Springs quarantine facility. Here they will be raised like livestock, confined and fed hay, used in a government experiment to "create a disease-free herd" of buffalo. More than half will be slaughtered.

The government has plans to expand their quarantine facility which would enable more wild buffalo calves to suffer the same fate. It's a joint state-federal plan designed by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) and USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). These agencies are currently accepting comments from you through February 13. Please take action for the wild buffalo calves and express your opposition to this nefarious plan. More information, talking points, and contact information can be found at http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/actnow/actionalerts.html#bisonquarantine. You can also contact Josh at bfc-advocate at wildrockies.org with questions. Please send him a copy of your comments!

Visit our video gallery to see what bison quarantine looks like: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/media/bisonvideogallery.html

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*BFC Web Site Breaks Records in January!

The BFC would like to thank PlanetMind Internetworks for hosting our web site on their solar powered server. 25,000 visitors turned to http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org in January to learn about the plight of the Yellowstone buffalo and BFC's efforts to bring them lasting protection. To learn more about Planetmind, please visit: http://www.planetmind.net

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* Last Words

"And one by one, driven to exhaustion, trapped by fence and horses and bewilderment, under an immaculate sky the mythic creatures died. They died not in mercy, not in the majesty which was their due, but as the least of life, accursed of nature. They died in the dust of insult and the spittle of lead. There was more here than profaned the eye or ear or nose or heart. There was more here than mere destruction. The American soul itself was involved, its anthropology. We are born with buffalo blood upon our hands. In the prehistory of us all, the atavistic beasts appear. They graze the plains of our subconscious, they trample through our sleep, and in our dreams we cry out our damnation. We know what we have done, we violent people. We know that no species was created to exterminate another, and the sight of their remnant stirs in us the most profound lust, the most undying hatred, the most inexpiable guilt. A living buffalo mocks us.... It is a misbegotten child, a monster with which we cannot live and which we cannot live without. Therefore we slay, and slay again, for while a single buffalo remains, the sin of our fathers, and hence our own, is imperfect. But the slaughter of the buffalo is part of something larger. It is as though the land of Canaan into which we were led was too divine, and until we have done it every violence, until we have despoiled and murdered and dirtied every blessing, until we have erased every reminder of our original rape, until we have washed our hands of the blood of every other, we shall be unappeased. It is though we are too proud to be beholden to [the Creator]. We cannot bear the goodness of [the Creator]."

~ Glendon Swarthout, from Bless the Beasts & the Children, a must-read story about a group of cast-away youth that try to save a herd of buffalo.

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Media & Outreach
Buffalo Field Campaign
P.O. Box 957
West Yellowstone, MT 59758
406-646-0070
bfc-media at wildrockies.org
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org

BFC is the only group working in the field every day
to defend the last wild herd of buffalo in America.

STOP THE HUNT! Call Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer:
Phone #: 406-444-3111

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Send your email address to Stop-the-Slaughter-on at vortex.wildrockies.org

BOYCOTT BEEF! It's what's killing wild buffalo.

Speak Out! Contact politicians and involved agencies today!
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/actnow/politicians.html

Write a Letter to the Editor of key newspapers!
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/actnow/lte.html

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It's free and easy. http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/support/recycleprint.html.