By: Steve Kelly (former writer for POM)
60 million wild, migratory buffalo once wandered freely across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Many are unfamiliar with the immense collective violence visited upon wild buffalo under the doctrine of Christian discovery and Manifest Destiny, as first imagined and articulated by Pope Alexander VI in his papal bull (Inter Caetera) of 1493 to the ‘royal’ Christian ruling families of Portugal and Spain.
In the 19th century the United States government violently supported the systematic extermination of buffalo with deliberate genocidal intent to remove Indian peoples’ food source, or in other words, eliminate their means of survival. From a buffalo’s perspective genocide is an apt description.
By the 1890s buffalo had been slaughtered to near extinction, their heads and hides sold at market, their bones ground into fertilizer. When the gun smoke cleared, only 23 wild, migratory buffalo avoided extirpation by finding peace and seclusion in Yellowstone’s Pelican Valley.
Today, two wild sub-populations roam the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Central herd (descendants of the remnant 23) and the Northern herd.
Both herds are being hunted and harassed mercilessly as they seek food in Montana when deep snow in Yellowstone National Park drives them North to Beattie Gulch near Gardiner, and West to the Hebgen Basin near West Yellowstone.
Yellowstone is mostly high country, primarily summer range for large grazers like buffalo. Access to their historic winter range is critical to their survival.
The violence inflicted upon this unique buffalo population destroys their physical, social, and mental health and represents nothing less than buffalo genocide.
Last winter, more than 1,000 bison were massacred (shot with high-powered rifles) outside Yellowstone National Park’s boundary with Montana by state-licensed killers and killers from Indian nations claiming 19th-century treaty rights.
By the spring of 2023, 27% of Yellowstone’s total buffalo population had been removed from their homeland, shot, or relocated. 282 live “surplus bison” were relocated onto reservations under the Bison Conservation Transfer Program, a state-federal cooperative.
No surplus wild Yellowstone bison exist.
Domination is the paradigm of western nation states and Christendom. The action of domination leads to a justification of categorical subordination, the justification for moral inequality between two groups, one over the other.
Colonial dominion over buffalo persists not simply as an historical right, but an ongoing, contemporary right to conquer in the present.
The metaphorical belief in superiority isn’t based on the U.S. Constitution but the idealized cognitive image of the colonial conqueror seizing and domesticating a promised land for a chosen people.
This colonizing adventure against wild Yellowstone buffalo has entered a new dimension without due consideration of the potential for buffalo genocide, possible extinction and/or human loss of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Beattie Gulch has become Montana’s killing fields. Emergency action – a permanent cease-fire – is warranted to protect Yellowstone’s wild, free-roaming buffalo and restore public safety.
Systematic, state-sponsored barbarity isn’t a glitch, it’s a feature. The whole bloody mess strikes a devastating blow to any kind of morality.
It’s time to end this potentially deadly risk to Yellowstone’s wild buffalo, Gardiner residents, visitors, recreationalists, and ‘hunters.’
The so-called “hunt” on federal public lands managed by the Custer Gallatin National Forest, USFS-USDA is a genocidal program which must cease.
Stop buffalo genocide. Close Beattie Gulch to all shooting now.
Steve Kelly is an artist, gardener and environmental activist who lives in Bozeman, Montana.
Piece of Mindful 
I’m not familiar with this issue, but when you mention bison, it brings to mind all the climate change propaganda about cows and their methane. I read one recently that actually claimed grass fed cows were worse than industrial operations. Less efficient you see, so they emit more methane before getting to market. The insanity, it makes my brain ache. And these are Very Serious People writing this cow manure.
Anyway, I have to assume bison had faulty four chambered stomachs as well. Sixty million buffalo gonna belch a lotta methane. So perhaps those 19th century colonialists were progressives at heart. Or inadvertently. Think what damage those wild herds could’ve done to the climate. We’d have gone past the tipping point before the Model T even got here, I’m sure.
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Living in Montana, as Steve does and I did, bison are always controversial. The catch is brucellosis, a bacterial infection said to be spread by bison, which is used as justification for quarantining them in the park and slaughtering them if they leave. Steve can write a thesis on this matter, but my take is that it nothing more than an irrational fear campaign, as there’s never been a recorded case of transmission of brucellosis from bison to cow (except on the TV show Yellowstone, blatant propaganda). Still, cattlemen are touchy and in Montana have wrested control of public lands for their own use using bison as the lever.
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It sounds pretty suspect from what you say. I sort of recall the Yellowstone plotline. Why would they push it though? If it helps cattlemen? My sense is the show views their way of life as romantic but anachronistic. Maybe the writers just believed the brucellosis myth and saw it as good story material?
And, are you not astounded that the whole climate narrative doesn’t just crumble entirely, when people learn that our top minds believe cows are inherently flawed creatures, a major contributor to “climate chaos”? Not to go on and on… I just can’t get past the brazen insanity of this bit of the story. I mean I can see how people would buy into factories etc as some sort of global catastrophe. But cows? And other ungulates? How do these people not get laughed out of the room…
Cows are part of “nature,” no? Who needs this reminder? The story shouldn’t last five minutes, but it fills speeches and articles and academic journals.
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I wondered too why Yellowstone would push that line, as Montana ranchers are only powerful within Montana, and have no pull in Hollywood. I suspect that in their research, writers stumbled on it, asked around, but asked the wrong people.
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Bless the Beasts and Children one of best movies EVER
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Like Henry Kissinger reportedly said, “who controls the food, controls the people.” This is just one example of this principle in effect. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they’re using the wild buffalo population as test subjects to demonstrate the effectiveness of their other genocide programs, which include attempts to cull the human population. There’s nothing these evil vermin won’t do to achieve their goals, and so long as the masses go along with them, it’s all fair game to the psychopaths.
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