Montana officially loses its brucellosis free status. Billings Gazette. By Matthew Brown. AP
This is entirely a problem of their own making, or I just I should say the Montana Stockgrowers Association, who bulldozed away efforts to split the state into two zone when it came to brucellosis.
It’s hard to have sympathy when such a obvious course in the wrong direction was chosen. On the other hand, this is hardly a disaster for the Montana cattle industry. As the article says “The testing of cattle is expected to cost ranchers in the state’s billion-dollar cattle industry an estimated $6 million to $12 million.”
They have taken that much of the taxpayer’s money to kill Yellowstone bison to no positive effect for themselves or anyone else.
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.
Will this development change the way Montana manages its bison or elk? Or will the same plan that didn’t work once remain in place?
It seems like I have heard a little more sense coming from Montana Ag politicians now that the “most awful thing in the world has happened.”
I hope it isn’t just my imagination.
I’ve been following this story for a while and it’s sad that the bison population is being neglected again.
Interestingly, an editorial in Norman, Oklahoma, has suggested killing all bison and elk. No one in these parts has suggested this kind of “final solution” yet.
Check this nonsense out – there’s a discussion about it that I feel the need to jump in on when I get time (just got back from several days in the parks) on National Parks Traveler.
That’s pretty pathetic, wild animals do not equal domestic ones, and we shouldn’t want them to equal domestic animals, domestication makes animals more susceptible to disease and spreads disease around a lot more than wild animals, and that’s just common sense and observation.