Dear Buffalo Friends,
As the buffalo fall migration begins, your tax dollars have been hard at work this week with Department of Livestock (DOL) agents out scouring the landscape for “rougue” buffalo. Of course, any that they find they will attempt to chase back into Yellowstone National Park. As luck would have it, the buffalo are good at making themselves invisible and avoiding the wrath of the DOL. They are quite good at using the dense willows and forests of their native habitat to their advantage, enabling them to exist in relative peace for a while. The agents have either continued to come up empty-handed, or have just outright been foiled again by the wily giants.
We find the DOL’s behavior quite interesting since Montana’s canned hunt starts November 15. Imagine the outrage from the hunting community if livestock agents were out harassing elk or deer just before the start of hunting season. If the people who want buffalo safe and alive behaved the way the DOL are (moving buffalo out of the ‘hunt’ area), we’d be cited for hunt sabotage. The DOL’s behavior plainly underscores the state and federal government’s prejudice against wild buffalo. They want to lock the buffalo inside Yellowstone, denying them of their natural instincts and right to survival and freedom, except, of course, during the months (Nov-Feb) they can be shot by gunners at the Park’s boundary. For that time, the buffalo are “welcome” on a handful of acres within Montana’s borders.
Continue Reading →It ‘s a case of buyer’s remorse. Oregon voters were suckered into passing a proposition like that before ten states this November, only Oregon did it in 2004. Now the state’s much praised land use lies in ruins and the Oregon taxpayers owe billions of dollars to developers whose “rights” were taken away by sound, […]
Continue Reading →The post on the lack of cougars resulting in damage to the ecology of Zion National Park has prompted a lot of comments.
I thought I’d post a photo I took of the Virgin River in Zion Canyon last March. The streambanks are trampled and bare or are calving off where the silt is deep. […]
Continue Reading →“In Montana, we said it’s a bad idea to pen up a bunch of elk, feed them oats and have fat bankers from New York City shoot them while they’ve got their heads in a grain bucket,” Schweitzer said Wednesday during an interview in the Boise offices of The Associated Press.
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