I have mixed feelings about this news, because while it’s good to have more genetic diversity, it makes it easier to justify culling animals. Having multiple herds with distinct breeding populations means each herd is more likely to get protected.
The us government culls bison from the Yellowstone herd every year, to discourage them from leaving them park and competing with cattle grazing on public lands.
Bison are managed completely differently than other wildlife in the area like moose and elk, because they compete with cattle. They’re forced to stay inside the higher elevation park boundaries, even when the snow is too high for them to forage effectively. They get hazed by helicopters, chased by DOL agents and rangers on horseback, and forced to run miles through snow to cross that invisible line back in Yellowstone. I’ve seen newborn bison calves with broken legs from getting hazed back into the park.
If they were allowed to migrate seasonally and breed normally, they would have a much larger range and population.
Source: I used to live on the park boundary and was part of a group documenting bison management.
Does the land they keep the bison from going to happen to be federal land the cattle farmers lease? Since you say DOL agents it sounds like. So lame. Prioritizing private ranchers on the peoples' land.
It’s a mix of federal, state, and private land. There was a group of private landowners that fought for years to keep the DOL from hazing bison off of their PRIVATELY owned land on Horsehead Butte.
And yes, that’s the Department of Livestock. There’s an interagency management group that handles bison in the area, including the Department of Livestock and at times Homeland Security. They also run catch pens near Gardiner, where they round up wild bison and send them to slaughter houses.
There's actually LESS genetic diversity in a single breeding population than in two separate ones. When you have two, they can drift in different directions or be subject to different selection pressures. With just one, all of that stuff is swamped out.
That takes a really long time though. Most domestic dogs can still breed with wild wolves after ~14,000 years of being pretty well separated by humans, and after some fairly substantial phenotypic shifts.
The us government culls bison from the Yellowstone herd every year, to discourage them from leaving them park and competing with cattle grazing on public lands.
Bison are managed completely differently than other wildlife in the area like moose and elk, because they compete with cattle. They’re forced to stay inside the higher elevation park boundaries, even when the snow is too high for them to forage effectively. They get hazed by helicopters, chased by DOL agents and rangers on horseback, and forced to run miles through snow to cross that invisible line back in Yellowstone. I’ve seen newborn bison calves with broken legs from getting hazed back into the park.
If they were allowed to migrate seasonally and breed normally, they would have a much larger range and population.
Source: I used to live on the park boundary and was part of a group documenting bison management.