Dagny McKinley
http://www.onnotextiles.com
organic apparel

Or perhaps it’s better to take these wild animals that have known nothing but freedom their entire lives – and round ‘em up, put ‘em in pens, load ‘em into stock trucks and bring them to another location that has ROOM and FEED for them. How many would die or kill themselves out of sheer panic and resistance? What would you be adding to their thread of instinct that isn’t there now – trucks and engines and roads and confinement and god knows what else? Probably vaccines and feed supplements like the ones at Custer State Park – the first steps toward domestication.

The real facts here are that the bison are competing with the Elk on the National Elk refuge, for feed. The Refuge is right next to Grand Teton Park, which is SEVERELY overgrazed – if you saw the damage and thought it was domestic cows, you’d be up in arms.

The Elk are fed through a government program because their range (traditionally the entire plains area of North America) has been encroached upon by all of us. To stop feeding the bison, we must stop feeding the elk. To stop feeding the elk, we must endure a decade or more of death by starvation until the herds are reduced by great amounts and/or stop wintering in this location due to lack of feed. This would cause the deaths of numerous (reintroduced) wolves, and scatter them around the country as they followed the elk, who at this point would be just trying to survive.

It’s easy to place all the blame on the hunters, but the money from the license fees goes back into the winter feed program, allowing the remaining bison and elk to continue with their wild existence. The bison herd is reduced in size to allow the land to recover – it will grow steadily again if the remaining bison are in a healthy state – ie, if there’s enough feed to keep good winter weight on them.

I’m okay with all of this. But then, I like organic meat.