The buffalo can roam freely again on Kodiak Island.
The state Board of Game had previously decided that free-ranging bison were considered "feral" when the animals strayed from state or federal lands. Then in 2007 the board authorized a hunt of escaped bison on Kodiak. But the late rancher Charles Dorman, who raised bison that were prone to roam on Kodiak Island, sued to stop the hunt. Dorman originally lost, but the state Supreme Court overturned a lower-court ruling against him Friday, the Alaska Dispatch News reported.
The court said the board was wrong when it deemed the bison feral.
Bison ranching on Kodiak is a relatively recent development in the centuries-long history of livestock rearing on the island. Russians brought the first cattle to Kodiak in the late 1700s, but ranchers lost dozens each year to the island's hungry, gargantuan bears.
Then in the 1990s, the ranchers turned to bison as an alternative, according to Larry Van Daele, a regional supervisor for the state Department of Fish and Game...more
There were commie cows in Alaska? Wonder if my buddy Ric Davidge knew this? Actually, if the Ruskies brought them in the late 1700s, they must have been czarist cows, wrangled by Catherine The Great's cowboys. That's much better than a herd of marxist mavericks.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Monday, December 29, 2014
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