Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Yellowstone seeks to cull 900 bison from famed herd

Yellowstone National Park plans to reduce its bison population this winter by as many as 900 head, or a fifth of the herd, by killing off those animals that stray from the park in what would be the largest such culling in seven years, the park's wildlife chief said on Tuesday. The plan was unveiled a day after conservationists filed a legal petition demanding the Obama administration end annual culling exercises that have resulted in thousands of Yellowstone bison being shipped off to American Indian tribes for slaughter during the past decade. In recent years, wayward bison have been removed through a combination of special round-ups and hunting. The latest quota would cut the size of the country's last pure-bred band of free-ranging bison, also known as buffalo, to 4,000 animals from an estimated 4,900. The new push to cull the herd is tied to a long-standing management plan hammered out among federal and state wildlife and agricultural agencies that sets the target population at between 3,000 and 3,500 bison...morefed

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