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.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Judge keeps bison-hunting season open
A federal judge yesterday declined to impose an emergency stop to bison hunting near Yellowstone National Park. On the eve of Montana's bison-hunting season starting today, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell rejected a temporary restraining order request by Montana resident Bonnie Lynn and her group called Neighbors Against Bison Slaughter. Since actual hunting isn't imminent, Howell declared the "plaintiffs
fail to demonstrate the exigency" required for a temporary restraining
order. In another blow to Lynn, Howell also granted the government's
request to move the case from the District of Columbia to Montana. "The citizens concerned about the hunt's intensity are citizens of
Montana," Howell noted. "Many of the citizens who will be denied the
chance to hunt if plaintiffs succeed are from Montana as well." Howell, who was appointed by President Obama, added that "the
plaintiffs' choice to have this important local dispute be resolved
hundreds of miles from its center risks undermining the important
interests animating the Supreme Court's view that local controversies
are best resolved locally." Lynn runs a real estate business in Bozeman, Mont., and owns property
near Beattie Gulch, a slice of the Custer Gallatin National Forest
close to Yellowstone's northwestern border. While bison hunting is prohibited within Yellowstone's 2.2 million
acres, it's permitted just outside park boundaries in Beattie Gulch,
which bison pass through in their wintertime search for forage. "That concentrated hunting risks killing local residents, their
guests, and visitors, who live and stay only yards away," Lynn's lawsuit
filed last month stated. "Sooner or later, the government-sanctioned,
bison hunt is going to kill someone." The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and several other tribes
have sided with the federal government, citing treaty-protected hunting
rights. "Their members travel hundreds of miles each year for the
opportunity to exercise their treaty rights and harvest a bison as their
ancestors did," the tribes stated in a legal brief, adding that the
hunt provides "an opportunity to re-establish cultural and spiritual
connections to a majestic animal."...MORE
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