The annual round up and slaughter of bison in Yellowstone National Park has claimed over 400 wild buffalo so far. The Park Service and participating native Americans capture the animals in corrals and ship them in stock trailers to slaughterhouses. This outrage is part of the "Interagency Bison Management Plan" which is essentially a cull to control the number of buffalo living in Yellowstone. At least 900 wild buffalo will be hunted or slaughtered this year to reduce the population from 4900 to less than 3000 animals, a token number determined by Montana's livestock industry. Brucelosis is no longer used as an excuse to kill buffalo by the Park Service. According to Park Service studies, the Park alone can sustain upwards of 6,000 buffalo. Tens of millions of acres of public lands surround Yellowstone and could provide habitat for an even more wild buffalo if it were not for the concerted opposition of Montana's influential ranching industry.
The National Park Service knows its buffalo culling operations are unpopular with the American public; so it responds by enforcing secrecy about the cull. The agency will only give out public reports every two weeks, and it has denied conservation groups access to witness the roundup on public land. The Yellowstone herds are the last wild, migratory herds that exist in the United States. Re-introductions elsewhere depend on Yellowstone's buffalo to provide genetically pure animals. The International Union for Conservation fo Nature recognizes the bison as being threatened with near extinction by placing them on its "Red List". Yet 'Merica continues to kill them unecessarily.
