Montana Bison Hunt: Why This is News in Poland

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” G. Santayana, philosopher

Montana’s controversial bison hunt started with a bang on November 15; 90 minutes after sunrise, the first bison was shot near Yellowstone’s northern boundary at Gardiner, Montana. Witnesses report that at least four bullets over a 24-minute period were required to dispatch the bull. He was surrounded by distressed herdmates, whom hunters drove off with rocks.

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) officials previously assured the public that this would be a “fair” hunt; with 460,000 acres of public land over which to roam, Yellowstone’s bison would not be easy targets, they claimed. But Montana has never tolerated wild bison under the Big Sky, offering them no habitat outside the park, and relentlessly pursuing a program of haze-capture-slaughter administered by the state’s Department of Livestock (DOL). The hunt is merely a three-month interlude in an on-going tragedy funded by American taxpayers.

That the first bison to die was killed while grazing just beyond the park’s boundary does little to validate FWP’s specious claim of a wide-ranging hunt offering genuine and fair pursuit. The second animal to die later that day was just outside the park’s boundary near West Yellowstone; a DOL agent escorted the hunter to his “fair chase” prey. Bison sighted-in through rifle scopes on Tuesday were most likely ogled through tourists’ binoculars in the national park on Monday.

The hunt has attracted both national and international attention, drawing interest from reporters in Italy, France, Germany, and Poland, according to an article in the Bozeman (MT) Daily Chronicle. Mel Frost, spokesperson for Montana FWP in Bozeman, is quoted saying, “Poland… I was thinking, this is really news in Poland?”

You can hear the incredulity in Ms. Frost’s voice as she singles out Poland. (If I sound a bit testy, note my last name.) Perhaps it’s simply providence that this bison advocate of Polish descent read her comment and can explain exactly why killing wild bison in Montana is indeed news in Poland.

The American bison’s European relative is the wisent. Although alike in many ways, the wisent is more streamlined, with longer legs and smaller hump. Also, while bison graze on grass, wisent browse on trees and shrubs. But they share more similarities than differences, including their complex social organization in families and herds, and a history of persecution which drove them both to extinction’s razor edge. Wisent simply arrived there sooner.

Wisent once roamed most of temperate Europe, until loss of habitat brought on by expanding population decimated their numbers toward the end of the Middle Ages. They disappeared from France before 1400, from Germany by the 1700s.

When World War I broke out, 700 wisent – the largest remaining herd – lived in northeastern Poland’s Bialowieza Forest. Their dwindling numbers, wartime chaos, and the accompanying poaching doomed them, and by 1919, every wisent in Bialowieza was dead. Europe’s last wild, free-roaming bison herd was history.

Long story short: 54 wisent survived the war, none in Poland. The Poles acquired a few and reintroduction began in 1929. Protected under penalty of death, they made it through WWII and have been restored today to a herd of 300 in what is now Bialowieza National Park. They are provided food during the winter.

Ms. Frost can certainly be excused for not knowing this interesting bit of ruminant history. At least now, however, she can better appreciate Poland’s interest. These are people who’ve been around the block with bison.

When America’s shameful page in history had finally turned in the late 19th century, some 50 million bison had been reduced to 23 survivors who found refuge in the northern Rockies. From them, our nation’s wild heritage lives on in Yellowstone, the only place on earth where a wild herd has survived continuously since prehistoric times. Yet Montana, bowing to pressure from the livestock industry, doesn’t even regard bison as wildlife. Animals considered a national treasure within the park are designated a “species requiring disease control” by the state.

Buffalo Field Campaign, a bison advocacy group based in West Yellowstone, MT, opposes this latest hunt incarnation because of the premise on which it is established. Any discussion of hunting is premature until bison management is grounded in science, not politics. Specifically, Montana must recognize bison as wildlife on both sides of Yellowstone’s boundary, designating ample habitat to re-establish a native population under the Big Sky. Montana must allow these migratory animals the freedom to access winter range and birthing grounds on lower-elevation public land outside the park. And Montana must relieve livestock handlers of management jurisdiction and return it to wildlife professionals.

Can we learn from history – both Poland’s and our own? Santayana offers hope: While there are those who cannot learn, there are those who can. Will we be among the latter? Or will Montana’s policy of intolerance toward America’s last wild and free bison herd prove the darker vision of George Bernard Shaw, that “we learn from history that we learn nothing from history”?

Americans must decide.

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Readers can visit http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org, where video and photo documentation on the hunt is available, as well as in-depth information on the broader issue.

Kathleen Stachowski serves on the Board of Directors for Buffalo Field Campaign.

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Contact:
Media & Outreach, Buffalo Field Campaign, P.O. Box 957, West Yellowstone, MT 59758
406-646-0070
bfc-media [at] wildrockies.org