Governor Brian Schweitzer, along with Bill Hedstrom, Chair of the Board of Livestock and Christian Mackay, new Executive Officer of the Department of Livestock today called an emergency meeting of the Board of Livestock in light of 7 Montana cows testing positive for the disease brucellosis last week.
“This is a very serious issue for Montana,” said Governor Schweitzer. “We need to discuss and act upon alternatives to what we are doing today. Our livestock industry is too important to let this disease dictate its future.”
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
I just returned from the meeting and it was just full of the typical garbage you hear. The immediate response of the Board of Livestock was to go from talking about how the cattle in Bridger got brucellosis (not buffalo) to deciding how they would handle the 250 to 300 buffalo in an area near West Yellowstone, where there are not and will not be any cattle this year. The ultimate decision is to capture all of the buffalo and send them to slaughter.
In an odd twist, Suzanne Lewis, the Superintendant of Yellowstone Park, said that hauling the buffalo back into the Park using trucks would not be an option under the IBMP while Rob Tierney, the Department of Livestock’s manager of buffalo, said that it would be feasable and if they could take them to the Lamar Valley or Hayden Valley they would not likely come back out of the Park.
The Board left the decision to Jeanne Rankin, the State Veteranarian, as to how these buffalo should be treated. She made the decision that all of the buffalo should be captured and sent to slaughter.
Do you have Jeanne Rankin’s phone#?
Jeanne Rankin Acting State Veterinarian
LIVESTOCK
(406) 444-2043
Thanks—she’s not in yet–gets in at 8 AM
I am in Colorado, but I keep up with this story. I called and gave the vet a piece of my mind. Everyone do the same. This has got to be stopped.