Government at work 3.3 million for one buffalo

Meanwhile, a $3.3 million initiative to give a small number of bison more to roam outside the park was down to a single animal by Thursday.

It has been just two weeks since 25 of the burly animals were herded onto the Gallatin National Forest, where bison had been prohibited for decades. But some of them repeatedly left the 2,500-acre patch where they were supposed to spend the winter. One was shot after entering private property, and 23 were captured and shipped back to the park or returned there on their own.

http://ap.cjonline.com/pstories/us/20110204/780754854.shtml


Now who could have predicted that bison would leave an area with no food or fences?

I dont know how many millions Missouri is spending to bring in Elk, but the area they are stocking them in has NO food. It is all national forest, hardwood forest. Almost no grass.

The word is the Cons. Department tried to hurridly plant some grass and food plots, (in the rocks) as part of the deal was that the Elk had to support themselves on the Nat. forest land and not wander off. Yeah, right!

Gene

Souther Indiana has/had an elk farm. Big high strong fences. It looked like rolling grass with forest. I hear they do pretty good. You will never see one from the road. They keep a low profile.

Bison and Elk are both very tasty! Much better than venison.

I wonder if the one that was shot was shot by park officials or the land owner.

Must have been park officials since the story didn't include anything about the shooter getting arrested!

Elk don't eat a lot of grass. Mostly browse on saplings, brushy stuff. Not to say that they won't turn down some good hay, but they prefer to chew on small trees. They have a problem up here in Michigan, a worm that is endemic to the whitetail deer, kills the elk. It doesn't kill the deer, but the deer acts as a host. I read that if the deer population is high, the elk will die off.

I read about this in the NatGeo. Private groups paid some church for access to the land. Not the government.

The federal government doesn"t have the intestinal fortitude to manage any animals on land that they are responsiible to manage. Yellowstone was overrun with elk and bison and rather than cull the excess animals to match the carrying capacity of the range, they want to turn them out to the nationl forests. Never mind that they are open range animals. So what will happen is they will break down the ranch fences and start grazing on private land. They won"t allow hunters to come in and cull the animals. So they introduced wolves which have cut the elk population drastically but the big, shaggy bison and he** on wolves. They allow a limited number of Native American hunters to cull a few bison but not nearly enough to get the population to where it should be. The bison drift out of Yellowstone on to the surrouding natioal forest where they acan come into contact with cattle on grazing allotments.
Cattle are a big part of Montana"s economy and the stockmen are really nervous because the elk and bison can carry Brucellosis. Then we have all the enviromentalists who want to re-introduce buffalo back to the range. How you gonna" keep theose buggers hwere you want them? If they managed them like they do on the National Bison Range where I live,(behind an 8 ft high electric fence)I suppose that would work but then they woudn"t be "free roaming".
They"ve introduced wolves and put them under federal protection as an endangered spiecies never mind thet we"ve had them here drifting down from Canada for forever) and they"re killing stock and causing low weaning weights and slouhed calves and limiting grazing on PRIVATE PROPERTY WITH NO COMPENSATION. We were supposed to have 300 wolves in the three state ID-MT-WY area and we have over 1700 and growing.

Let me tell you folks, it"s really nuts here in Montana! People don"t count. Wild animals do.

Yearsa go they implanted some moose in the national parks at a real expensive cost. I think it was around three thousand each, (can't remember). One fell through the ice, and some campers tossed a rope around it's rack, then to a 4 x 4 pickup, and tried to save it from drowning. A park ranger happened by, and made them cut the rope, as it was a act of nature, and the moose died. The event was all filmed by a private party. It caused a real stink, but they inforced the rangers opinion as being right.

Seems the tax payer isn't smart enough to understand the logic.

I believe it is the moose / deer combination that doesn't work. I don't know about elk.