Ghost Bull, named for his ability to avoid tribal hunters outside of Yellowstone National Park. Photo by George Wuerthner
I watched Ghost Bull grazing just outside of Yellowstone National Park’s northern border. Ghost Bull is a name given to the bison by wildlife advocates because he seems to come and go, eluding tribal shooters who sought to kill him.
The big bull continued to graze contently near some private homes, which created a “no-shooting” zone, and afforded Ghost Bull protection from the tribal members who sought to end his life.
After a while, I noticed a pickup down the road and learned what it contained from another bison advocate. I later learned that some Blackfeet tribal members were there. If Ghost Bull walked just 100 yards from where he was grazing, he would be dead meat. He would then be “legal” to kill.
Ghost Bull grazing in the “safe zone.” Photo by George Wuerthner
I just sat in my car for over an hour, occasionally getting out to flourish my camera to appear like a tourist photographing the bison. Eventually, it grew so dark that I knew that the shooters (I do not call them hunters) could not legally kill Ghost Bull. I drove away, but in my rearview mirror, I saw the pickup driving down the road to where Ghost Bull still grazed. I waited down the road to see if I could hear rifle shots.
At that point, I ran into a National Park ranger, who I told about the Indians’ suspicious behavior. I don’t know what occurred after that. Perhaps the ranger talked to the shooters, but the Ghost Bull was still alive the following day when I arrived at the killing fields.
I found a small herd of bison, including Ghost Bull, across the road into a “legal” hunting zone. One of the same Blackfeet shooters I had seen the night before was approaching the herd with a rifle. The herd looked up curiously at the approaching human but showed no alarm.
The shooter stands by a dead bison. Used to tourists with cameras, the herd showed no fear of the gunner. The herd was unable to determine why the bull didn’t move. Photo by George Wuerthner
Remember, these bison lived their entire lives in the protective sanctuary of Yellowstone National Park. They were used to humans. Countless tourists had likely approached them to photograph them. They showed no fear of the shooter.
One shot rang when the shooter was within 30 or 40 feet of the herd. Nothing happened. The herd did not move. Nor did I see any animals fall. Two more shots, and a bull dropped to the ground. The confused herd members surrounded their fallen comrade. A few nuzzled the dead bison. They stood there not knowing what to do.
Photographing his trophy, a tribal shooter poses with the dead bull he killed. Photo by George Wuerthner
The shooter approached them, brandishing his rifle as if to threaten them. He chased them away from his “trophy”. A fellow tribal member came over with a camera to record photos of the successful “hunt” and, together, they began dismantling the dead bison.
At this point, several law enforcement officers from the Forest Service and the State of Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks approached the shooter. I presume to check whether he had a “tag” for the bison. Several other bison advocates and interested people milled about close by.
Meanwhile, Ghost Bull had walked maybe 100 yards away where he was sniffing at some other gut piles left by previous tribal kills. He snorted. He tosses around some sagebrush. His tail was lifted high in the air—a sign of distress or agitation in the bison.
The bison herd led by the Ghost Bull approaches the dead herd member as he is being skinned out by tribal members. Photo by George Wuerthner
Then he began to move ponderously and slowly back towards the dead bison. Ghost Bull appeared ready to attack the Indian and his partner. The rest of the herd slowly followed him until they were within ten feet of the shooter. The bison hunter’s partner grabbed the rifle ready to shoot.
Tribal shooters skin out bison. Photo by George Wuerthner
At this point, I left the scene.
The following day, Ghost Bull was again grazing in the “safe” no-shooting zone. However, some Nez Perce tribal members approached the bull and threw rocks at it to get it to move across the road into the kill zone.
Once the bison were in the shooting area, a gunman approached Ghost Bull. Eight shots rang out. Ghost Bull dropped to the ground but struggled to get up, but fell and did not rise again.
The entire spectacle, in my view, is illegal. More on that below. But even if tribal killing of internationally significant wildlife is legal, it is hardly ethical. It degrades wild bison and tarnishes all those who participate in and support this slaughter.
ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF BISON REMOVAL
Understanding that the Yellowstone bison aren’t just any buffalo is critical. They are the last remnants of wild bison in the United States. Nearly all other bison are domesticated to one degree or another. Unlike their captured cousins on private ranches, tribal herds, and other public lands, Yellowstone’s bison have been subject to evolutionary processes for decades. Predators prowl and attack their weak members. Harsh winters or drought cause some to starve. Natural population and social structure dictate their breeding.
Domesticated bison on a Montana ranch. Domesticated bison are treated like livestock. They are fenced in so they cannot migrate, are protected from predators, fed hay in the winter, and other measures that degrade wildness. Photo by George Wuerthner
The non-park bison are often subject to selective breeding, removal of “aggressive” bison bulls, supplemental feed in winter or droughts, inoculation against diseases, confinement in small pastures by fences (thus eliminating migration), and other management that degrades the wild bison genome.
The Yellowstone bison is of international biological significance.
Despite this essential significance, the annual killing spree of tribal hunters, along with the culpability of conservation groups, the state of Montana, and, unfortunately, even the participation of the Park Service, are all culpable for the demise of what is the last wild bison in the country, which I will relate below. (Note that a few small bison herds in Alaska are more or less wild as well.)
THE ONGOING DESTRUCTION OF YELLOWSTONE BISON
Starting in 1985, more than 13,958 bison have been massacred just outside Yellowstone or transferred from the Park, either to slaughter or to boost tribal herds. This has significant consequences for the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and wild bison.
First, bison that are captured and/or killed outside the park are those most likely to migrate. Migration is one of bison’s elemental evolutionary traits that has permitted the bison to survive for thousands of years. The continued slaughter and removal of the bison year after year most likely eliminates this trait.
Second, by removing bison from the herd, the tribal slaughter and transfer removes food from the park wildlife, from grizzly bears to wolves to scavengers like coyotes, ravens, and magpies. If bison were not killed or removed, competition for food and space would make some bison vulnerable to predators or death from natural evolutionary processes like harsh winters, drought, or inter-rivalry breeding.
Third, the Park herd has suffered periodic genetic bottlenecks from its earliest foundation, when populations were severely reduced. Since bison are “tournament breeders,” with one male impregnating as many as 10–20 females, the effective breeding population is much lower than total bison numbers might indicate, thus reducing overall genetic diversity.
This is one reason I recommend creating a larger meta-bison population for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Bison, calf and cow. Photo by George Wuerthner
Fourth, at higher populations, the bison grazing, wallows, and other effects influence plant communities in the park. Whether this is good or bad is debated, but there is no debate about whether it occurs. And one cannot assume that this influence doesn’t play an essential ecological role.
Further, the shooters who kill migrating bison do not have the same selective factor as natural predators. Instead of killing the weak or the old, tribal shooting tends to take the most healthy animals, further eroding their gene pool for living in the wild.
Tribal hunters are immune from state wildlife laws. They set their own rules and can hunt year round, and without limits on the number or sexes killed. Photo by George Wuerthner
Sixth, tribal shooters are not required to follow Fish and Game wildlife regulations. As “sovereign nations”, they can kill wildlife throughout the year, shoot any animals, and without limits other than those imposed upon themselves.
There is a reason we have Fish and Wildlife laws. Modern weapons, equipment, whether pickup trucks or all-terrain vehicles, high-powered spotting scopes, and just the sheer number of people that could potentially kill animals require limitations. Just as we need stop signs, traffic lights and speed limits today, because vehicles can go much faster than a horse, we need hunting regulations to preserve wildlife. Unfortunately, these scientifically devised rules designed to limit human exploitation are not necessarily adopted by tribal entities.
PROBLEMS WITH THE NEW YELLOWSTONE PARK BISON PLAN
This past summer, Yellowstone National Park finalized a bison plan. Overall, it has some good points, such as recognizing that the park can sustain thousands of bison and that preserving the wildness of bison is desirable.
However, under political pressure from Secretary of the Interior Haaland and NPS Director Chuck Sams, both of whom are part Indian, throughout their tenure, they favored tribal interests over public interests. With regard to Yellowstone, they pressured the Park Service to overlook the welfare of the bison, make animals available for tribal slaughter outside the park, and transfer Park bison to tribal entities. The plan prioritizes human cultural desires over the need to protect the bison’s evolutionary and ecological role and future.
Is Yellowstone a refuge for bison or merely a buffalo “hatchery” to produce a target for Indian gunners? Photo by George Wuerthner
When did it become the role of the National Park Service to raise wildlife for specific people to kill them? Is this the mission of Yellowstone NP?
A further problem with the current management plan is that it essentially privatizes public wildlife. When bison are transferred to tribal herds, they are no longer available to the public.
These bison are essentially public assets being given away. Rather than transfer to tribal privatization, the federal government could send bison to other federal lands like the Charles M. Russell NWR in Montana or the Red Desert in Wyoming, as the Montana Wild Bison Restoration Coalition proposed.
I have some empathy for the Park’s dilemma. Yellowstone National Park would rather see bison permitted to migrate beyond the park border just as elk, mule deer, and other park ungulates do. However, the Park is under the gun from two political influences: the Montana livestock industry and tribes that, by “happy coincidence,” are united on the same outcome—the killing of the public’s wild bison.
MONTANA OPPOSITION TO WILD BISON
Despite their tremendous biological value, Yellowstone bison are treated as persona non grata by the Montana livestock industry, which seeks to bottle up the animals in the park.
The state of Montana (with a minor tolerance zone north of Yellowstone and near West Yellowstone) has outlawed wild bison. This is a concession to the livestock industry, recognizing that if bison become numerous on public lands, the public might demand that livestock grazing be curtailed. (I think the livestock folks are correct in this assumption.)
Their rationale for opposing wild bison in the state is that some bison possess brucellosis, a disease initially transmitted to bison from domestic livestock. Brucellosis can cause abortion of the fetus in cattle. Historically, brucellosis caused undulant fever in humans who consumed unpasteurized milk.
By the 1980s, brucellosis had largely been eliminated from most US sources. However, the bison (and other wildlife like elk) in the Yellowstone ecosystem remained a reservoir of potential.
Indeed, every occurrence of brucellosis transmission to cattle outside of Yellowstone was due to elk. But we don’t slaughter elk at the park border to keep them locked up in the park.
However, by killing bison at the park border or accepting bison captured for transfer in Yellowstone NP, the tribes are enabling the state of Montana’s livestock industry to avoid bad publicity that would result if they sought to remove or kill thousands of bison.
I am convinced that even if the state position were changed, and Montana welcomed wild bison within its borders, the tribal slaughter of Yellowstone bison would continue. To me, the issue is whether we protect these unique and globally significant animals or whether we allow human desires to continue to compromise the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and desecrate wild bison.
TREATY RIGHTS– DO THEY EXIST?
The tribes involved in the annual slaughter of bison (and other wildlife like elk, bighorns, even wolves and so forth) on the public lands adjacent to Yellowstone Park cite “treaty rights” to justify their actions.
Tribal members using a crane to hoist a dead bison, along with a snow machine resting on a truck. Apparently, the use of such “traditional” machines preserves traditional cultural experiences. Photo by George Wuerthner
However, as best as I can tell from a review of the treaties, no treaty rights allow tribal hunting specifically in the area north of Gardiner. (They do have hunting rights in other parts of the West.) I have asked Indian hunting advocates to respond to the following points I cite that would appear to negate hunting wildlife north of Gardiner, Montana.
I recognize that many tribal members may believe they have legal rights to kill bison, as do many of their supporters in the conservation community.
Three primary rationales are given to support the assertion of treaty rights—none of which I believe is valid.
The 2019 Herrera vs Wyoming Supreme Court decision is the first reason for treaty rights. When the federal government signed treaties with tribal groups, they usually designated a specific area for a reservation whose boundaries are described in each treaty.
In addition, specific lands off the reservation but within the accepted territory of the particular tribe that was “ceded” to the federal government. Like reservation lands, the boundaries of ceded lands are described in each treaty. In ceded lands, the tribes retained the right to hunt, fish, camp, and so on, though they could not permanently occupy these areas.
The “ceded” lands phrase is critical. The case defined these rights. It involved a Crow tribal member who killed several elk outside the hunting season and off the reservation in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains.
However, the hunter and his legal team argued that he was within his rights to hunt at any time and any place off the reservation on public lands, with the qualifier of “ceded” lands.
Here is a summary of that court decision: In May 1868, the United States and the Crow Tribe (Apsáalooke) signed the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie. In the treaty, the Tribe ceded a large piece of its reservation lands to the United States. However, tribal leaders reserved the right to hunt on those lands, even though they were no longer part of the reservation.
The treaty clearly states that the tribe could continue to hunt on the ceded lands, as they had always done, so long as the lands remained unoccupied by settlement and the tribe maintained peace with the United States.
The qualifying sidebar is that the decision explicitly mentions “ceded lands,” not just any public lands.
And here is the rub. There are no “ceded” lands north of Yellowstone NP where tribal hunters are killing bison. Attached is a map showing all the ceded lands of tribes around the West. The white areas have no ceded land. You will note there is none by the Park boundary or even the entire upper Missouri River basin of SW Montana.
The white area in the center of this map represents an area without any ceded lands next to Yellowstone’s northern entrance.
A second treaty often cited by tribal supporters is the 1855 Lame Bull Treaty. That treaty created a “common hunting ground,” which allowed tribes, including the Blackfeet, Nez Perce, Flathead, Kootenai, and Gros Ventre, to hunt on unclaimed public lands for 99 years. However, that right was extinguished in 1954.
Here is the specific wording: The Blackfoot Nation consent and agree that all that portion of the country recognized and defined by the treaty of Laramie as Blackfoot territory, lying within lines drawn from the Hell Gate or Medicine Rock Passes in the main range of the Rocky Mountains, in an easterly direction to the nearest source of the Muscle Shell River, thence to the mouth of Twenty-five Yard Creek, thence up the Yellowstone River to its northern source, and thence along the main range of the Rocky Mountains, in a northerly direction, to the point of beginning, shall be a common hunting-ground for ninety-nine years, where all the nations, tribes and bands of Indians, parties to this treaty, may enjoy equal and uninterrupted privileges of hunting, fishing and gathering fruit, grazing animals, curing meat and dressing robes.”
This provision would seem to extinguish any common hunting ground more than 70 years ago, including the area north of Yellowstone, where tribes have been killing bison.
Tribes along the Columbia River retained the right to use specific off-reservation fishing sites.
Finally, some tribes, like the Nez Perce, Yakima, Umatilla, and others whose territories include the Columbia River and tributaries, argue that a clause specific to their treaties (known as the Stevens treaties for Issac Stevens, who negotiated them) permits hunting in “open and unclaimed lands” which has been interpreted to mean national forest lands in ceded territories.
For instance, this right allows the Nez Perce tribe to hunt ceded lands on the Clearwater and Nez Perce National Forest, which lies on the Idaho-Montana border. But it doesn’t permit, in my view, hunting anywhere in Montana, especially since the “Common Hunting Ground” of the Lame Bull treaty is extinguished.
In addition, the Columbia River tribes obtained an additional right to fish, hunt, and so forth at the “usual and accustomed places” outside ceded lands. This provision was designed to permit tribes to capture salmon at traditional fishing sites like waterfalls. However, as with other treaties, there are sidebars to this wording.
To determine the existence of the original Indian title to land, and the right to hunt and fish following that title, courts have generally required a showing of actual use and occupancy over an extended period of time. In Mitchel v. United States [34 U.S. (9 Pet.) 711, 9 L.Ed. 283 (1835) ] the United States Supreme Court said: a requirement of exclusive use and occupancy has been satisfied by showing that two or more tribes jointly or amicably occupied the same area to the exclusion of others․
This treaty clause refers to using a specific spot, such as a waterfall, for netting salmon. Use of this spot must be demonstrated for as stated, “an extended period of time.” When discussing hunting mobile bison herds on the plains of Montana or adjacent mountain valleys, no tribe can demonstrate exclusive use to the exclusion of others.
Finally, the United States Supreme Court has held that the treaty right to hunt, like the treaty right to fish, may be regulated “in the interest of conservation.”
If applied to the Yellowstone bison, which are unique among bison remaining in the United States due to their long history as wild animals, no hunting or transfer of bison should be permitted in the interest of conservation.
As with all treaties, interpretation of vague references or phrases may require further review. However, in my view, it is stretching the actual intended meaning of treaty wording to suggest that any tribes have a “right” to kill bison by Yellowstone.
It’s not 1850 anymore. Few could have predicted the nearly complete footprint of humanity over the planet when these treaties were negotiated. We need to save and preserve every last wild place we have left and the wild inhabitants that reside there to the greatest degree possible.
CONSERVATION GROUPS FAVOR HUMAN INTERESTS OVER BISON
Finally, both shooting and the transfer of wild buffalo harm bison and the Yellowstone Ecosystem. This is where I hold conservation groups who support tribal hunting culpable in the degradation of wild bison. View this video of the bison slaughter by tribal shooters and ask yourself why anyone would support such butchery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrmoEZsZzJE&t=60s
What don’t these groups understand? It is not the state of Montana that is killing thousands of bison, it is tribal members. It is not the state of Montana sending bison to tribal domestication programs. It is tribes demanding the transfer of public bison to reservations.
SHOULD BISON SUFFER FROM PAST HUMAN ABUSES?
While there is no doubt that, historically, tribes suffered greatly from the advent of the Euro-American movement across the continent. But no group is perfect, and I have presented in previous essays plenty of evidence that demonstrates that tribal people are just as willing to participate in ecological and environmental destruction. All people have imperfections and group or personal failings are not the sole possession of the dominant culture.
There is no reason the bison should suffer because of this past human trauma.
As for the argument that tribal bison hunters “need” to kill bison to feed their families, it fails to acknowledge that no one will starve today. There are 29 tribal herds scattered about the West where Indians could obtain buffalo, including among some of the very tribes currently killing Yellowstone bison. Not to mention, there are opportunities to kill deer, elk, bear and other wildlife on ceded lands or reservations throughout the West.
Domesticated bison can be purchased from ranches and, in many cases, obtained from other public domesticated herds where culls occur. Many tribes, including the Blackfeet, Fort Peck, and others, have tribal herds. Non-Indians can pay to kill these bison.
Yellowstone’s wild bison are a global biological heritage. We should protect them entirely and encourage evolutionary processes, rather than bullets and transfers to degrade the park’s wild buffalo.
Suppose tribes tried to log the last “old growth” redwoods in California or dismantle the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde to obtain building materials to construct homes. Would we accept this destruction of these global heirlooms? Yellowstone’s bison are part of the world’s biological heritage—we should treat them as such, not as so much dead meat.
The Alliance for Wild Rockies, Sage Steppe Wild, Montana Wild Bison Restoration Coalition, Roam Free Nation, Yellowstone Gallatin Wilderness Alliance, and the Gallatin Wildlife Association are organizations working to save Yellowstone’s wild bison. Please support these groups.
It is appropriate to note that, like any controversy, there are numerous perspectives. At least some tribal members are opposed to the continued slaughter of Yellowstone bison.
On the “choice” between slaughter or quarantine, Roam Free Nation co-founder Jaedin Medicine Elk said, “There is no ‘lesser’ evil. Government and Tribes are manipulating the buffalo, serving only human needs. The buffalo are being denied their perspective and freedom. Die at the boundary by gunfire, or get rounded up and captured for slaughter or domestication. All of it serves the human, not the buffalo. The buffalo need more protection and room to roam, not this disservice by a conglomerate of selfish humans. Dead or in jail is no way to live.”
I could not have said it better.
