BS item #1: Me being easy to spot last Saturday.

BS item #2: Spurious “breakthrough agreement” on Bison management in Yellowstone

As I’ve written before, the argument that brucellosis is carried by bison to cattle with detrimental results is a red herring. Ranchers dislike bison because they stomp their fences and generally disrupt the illusion that we as humans hold hegemony over the land. I haven’t been able to find a map of the so-called Gardiner Basin, but I’m pretty sure it’s something close to this area.  Problem is, as a two-minute perusal of the existing hunting regs will tell you, bison already hang out in that area during winter.  If this agreement amounts to anything, it would seem that Montana wants to allow more bison to be shot by hunters in an area where hunting has been legal for several years.  Problem is, in 2009 only one bison (out of over 100 tags) was actually shot in that area.

I have no problem with wild bison being hunted.  I do have a problem with management decisions being made on the basis of misinformation.  Unfortunately, the places bison actually want to go during harsh winters are the flat plains along the Yellowstone River between Gardiner and Livingston, land “owned” (and thus, fenced) by ranchers  and rich people.  The conflict is thus directly between our modern, arrogant conceptualization of property rights and a one ton critter that wants to find grass uncovered by snow.  Hunting and management are tertiary concerns.