Re-Bisoning the West. Kurt Repanshek

finally found it at Montana State University, where he obtained both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in land resources and environmental sciences. Driving his interest in that field was a desire to see bison returned to the reservation. It was a thought that burrowed into his mind in 1997 when he and his father traveled to East Africa and witnessed a massive wildebeest migration. The idea wasn’t simply to see bison as part of the reservation’s landscape, but as a cultural, ecological, and nutritional fixture. What he calls “life’s commissary.”⁶⁸

      Baldes worked to develop the draft management plan for bringing bison back to the reservation with the goal of establishing a genetically pure, disease-free herd that would be managed as wildlife under the Shoshone and Arapahoe Tribal Game Code. Working with the National Wildlife Federation and the Eastern Shoshone’s Boy-Zhan Bi-Den (Shoshone for “buffalo return”) effort, Baldes saw the regeneration of a reservation herd in 2016 when ten bison from the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa were freed. Another ten, from the National Bison Range in Montana, arrived in 2017. Both arrivals were momentous occasions, but the 2017 transplant was an afterthought in light of the birth early that year of the first bison calf on the reservation in 130 years. That calf’s arrival was a significant event for the two tribes that have shared the reservation since 1878. Three more calves were born in 2018. The reservation herd is still small, fewer than two dozen animals early in 2019, but the hope is that eventually the Eastern Shoshone will once again be able to rely on bison for both cultural and dietary needs. Though other native cultures with bison also supplement revenues by selling bison meat and robes, Baldes views the animals more holistically, more reverently.

      “If we have the cultural appreciation for this buffalo, why would we want to treat it as a monetary commodity?” he told me. “It’s more important than that for me. Of course, economic development is a huge issue and tribes need access to capital, but for me, we have the opportunity to treat buffalo as wildlife with the greatest respect potentially available of any reservation. The cultural benefit for having buffalo and having access to them for sustenance, that’s more important than the monetary gains of marketing the meat.”

      With 2.2 million acres on the reservation, acreage in the form of prairie as well as forest and mountains soaring to thirteen thousand feet, the plan is to grow the bison herd to one thousand or more and let it wander across four hundred thousand acres. Baldes would like to see reservation bison return to the nearby Wind River Mountains to the west and even the Owl Creek Mountains to the north. It’s a vision of sustainability, both ecologically as well as for the health of Eastern Shoshone members. The average life expectancy of tribal members is just forty-nine, more than a quarter-century less than that of Wyoming’s general population. Infant mortality, at nearly fifteen out of one thousand births, is more than double of that experienced by white Wyoming residents. As bison meat is higher in protein and lower in cholesterol than beef, making it a mealtime mainstay could help combat type 2 diabetes on the reservation. But there are other problems on the reservation that Baldes believes bison can help cure. High youth suicide rates, high school dropout rates, and unemployment rates.

      “We have a lot of social problems that affect us. Buffalo is always seen as a way to help us heal from some of these atrocities of the past,” he told me. “We’re doing everything we can to create opportunities for our young people, who will become our leaders. And so whether it’s language, whether it’s substance abuse, health, we’re doing everything we can socially to improve the lives of people on the reservation. Buffalo are integral to that, because it’s not just an animal to us. It’s kin. Every tribal member knows innately how important this animal was to our ancestors. We likely wouldn’t be here if not for the buffalo, and so it’s central to our ceremonies, the Sun Dance, the sweat ceremonies.”

      The same can be said at Fort Peck, where the integration of bison back into daily life involves programs for schoolchildren that connect them with the traditional, as well as modern-day, role of the animals. More than 1,500 children have participated. If state and federal authorities ever approve the quarantine protocol that Yellowstone officials developed and which in early 2018 gained the National Park Service’s final go-ahead to put into operation, more tribes could see bison back on their lands. The Fort Peck quarantine facility, the first in North America operated by a tribal government, could once again be holding bison to complete the infection-monitoring period. Other sources of brucellosis-free bison include Elk Island National Park in Canada and, according to National Park Service officials, Wind Cave National Park. But the purity and historic content of genes from Yellowstone bison, their rich diversity that would benefit herds that lack those genes, make the park’s bison highly sought. But Montana officials don’t seem interested in seeing Yellowstone bison leave the park and cross their state to Fort Peck. They worry for the well-being of their livestock, even though there have been no documented cases of bison transmitting brucellosis to cattle. The problem, Robbie Magnan told me, is that Montana officials are “basically anti-buffalo.” The cattle industry’s grip on the state’s livestock and wildlife interests is too strong. He’s convinced that Montana officials “don’t want to see buffalo on the landscape. And they use brucellosis as a scapegoat. They make it sound like it’s so contagious it’s almost like yellow fever.”

      A National Academies of Science report released early in 2017 supports Magnan’s contention. A genetic mapping of brucellosis in northwestern Wyoming and into Montana traces the disease’s spread to elk, not bison. The scientists found that while there has been no conclusive transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem since 1998, “direct contact of elk with cattle is more prevalent than contact of cattle with bison. As a result, the risk of transmission from elk to cattle may be increasing.”⁶⁹

      “Montana makes me laugh because they make [bison brucellosis] sound so bad,” Magnan told me. “If it was really that bad you would prohibit the movement of elk. But they don’t. [Elk hunting] is such a big industry, they leave it alone.”

      The maligning of Yellowstone bison goes further when you consider that Montana does a poor job monitoring cattle in the greater Yellowstone area for brucellosis. Magnan cited an audit into how the state Livestock and Fish, Wildlife and Parks departments oversee the disease. Those studies documented that nearly 40 percent of the cattle shipped from ranches near Yellowstone was not tested for brucellosis. “The state really failed bad on it, but yet they can predict to us that it’s not safe for us to bring buffalo up here,” Magnan said with a sigh.

      Perhaps in recognition of the National Academy of Sciences’ report, Montana officials are quick to point out that a two-thousand-pound bison standing in the middle of a road in the middle of the night can be a pretty deadly object. Bison don’t immediately flee from an approaching vehicle like elk or deer. A resulting collision can be deadly for both motorist and bison. Of course, a black Angus bull in the middle of the road can be just as deadly. Another issue is that bison usually go where they want to, and eat what they find. Defenders of Wildlife, a nonprofit wildlife conservation organization, along with some other conservation groups has created a compensation program for property owners who can prove bison damaged their property, whether it’s a mailbox they pushed over or a field they wallowed in. If landscaping is damaged, gardens rototilled by hungry bison, or trees damaged by an animal looking for a scratching post, these conservation groups would step up with as much as one thousand dollars per landowner to compensate for the damage. It’s one small way to buy some tolerance for free-range bison.