Should bison be treated as wildlife?

Tasked with exploring the feasibility and desirability of establishing a population of wild bison in Montana that would be regulated through hunting, Arnold Dood has found himself pondering their absence from the state’s grasslands.

Deer, elk, antelope, wolves and grizzly bears roam the state of Montana, crossing public and private lands, but bison do not and have not for more than a century.

“People have a hard time looking at bison as wildlife,” Dood said Wednesday at the Montana Bison Summit at Flathead Valley Community College.

“Can we have bison as wildlife?” asked Dood, who is the native species coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “Why did they get left behind? I don’t have an answer.”

In the early part of the last century, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks went to great, sustained lengths to restore depleted big game populations, but there were no such efforts for wild bison other than in Yellowstone National Park

After bison were nearly hunted to extinction, the animal numbers recovered but only in reserves and private stocks. They were effectively fenced in and over time, the iconic animals increasingly were viewed as a form of livestock.

Dood said the legal status or definition of bison varies: They can be livestock, a game species or a species in need of disease management. That also contributes to the impression bison are not wildlife, even though the animal is a native prairie species and an iconic symbol of the West.

Now it’s difficult to imagine a wild bison population in Montana, Dood said.

“None of us are familiar with what that would look like,” said Dood, who has been preparing a background paper on the potential for Fish, Wildlife and Parks to manage such a population. That is a growing interest for many of the summit’s participants, which included conservation groups and tribal representatives as well as bison ranchers.

“We’re just trying to evaluate it. What are the opportunities? What could it look like?” Dood said.

He noted there is no evidence of substantial pre-settlement bison populations west of the Continental Divide, so a population would most likely be located somewhere in Eastern Montana.

Would there be a single large population or scattered clusters? Would their numbers be regulated by hunting only? They would likely share the same grasslands with cattle, and that would raise the stakes for regulating them for brucellosis, a disease that can cross species and cause pregnant cattle to have miscarriages.

The disease is the main reason Montana has gone to great lengths to prevent Yellowstone bison from entering the state. But groups such as the Buffalo Field Campaign contend that while the disease is real, the actual risk of transmitting it from bison to cattle is very low.

Hal Herring, a contributing editor for Field and Stream, joined Dood in his contention that an Eastern Montana bison population, as a big game species, would require buy-in from nearby private landowners. And for hunters to regard them as a legitimate big game species, bison would need to move around just like deer and elk, Herring said.

“I just think they need to be free to do what they want to do,” he said.

Currently in Montana, there is a popular perception that the Yellowstone model of containing bison is the only model.

“That’s the model we’re working with and it doesn’t work,” one participant said.

Keith Aune, a representative of the Wildlife Conservation Society, noted that there is considerable opposition to the concept of “conservation bison,” mostly from the livestock industry.

The state Legislature is considering seven “mostly anti-bison” bills, he said.

There was one bill, however, that would clarify the conservation and management responsibilities of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in regard to bison.

That bill was tabled, he said, after a committee heard from about 40 proponents, including tribes and conservation groups, and from three opponents, which included the Montana Farm Bureau and the Montana Stockgrowers Association.

Dood has looked into the population of free-roaming, hunted bison in Utah’s remote Henry Mountains. The herd was derived from a group of Yellowstone bison that were transplanted north of the mountains in the 1940s. The herd eventually occupied the mountains as their favored habitat.

And the herd is unlike the highly approachable bison that are hunted elsewhere.

“They are very difficult to approach,” Dood said. “It’s a legitimate fair-chase hunt.”

While the bison there are free-roaming, the Henry Mountains are surrounded by terrain that keeps them in place. Participants at the summit said it’s not likely there is similar “island” habitat in Montana.

“In Montana,” one said, “wherever you put them it’s a different game.”

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.