Two of the state's largest livestock groups are turning up their opposition to Gov. Brian Schweitzer's proposals regarding the management of bison that leave Yellowstone National Park each year.
The Montana Farm Bureau issued a new study that maintains the threat of the spread of the disease brucellosis to cattle is too great to allow bison any extra room to roam outside the park. And the Montana Stockgrowers Association separately issued a policy statement saying it opposes removing any cattle from areas outside the park to accommodate wandering bison.
The documents outline positions both groups have expressed previously. Members of those groups and others have concerns about allowing park bison to roam outside the park, for fear the animals could spread brucellosis to cattle and threaten the state's brucellosis-free status.
I am glad to see the Farm Bureau coming in on this issue like they are. I didn't expect it. The Stockgrowers doesn't surprise me, it's there job to protect Montana's livestock industry and that is what they are doing, protecting us from a proposal that could cost us a lot of money.
Losing the state's brucellosis-free status would cost the ranching industry somewhere between $4 million and $16 million in extra expenses, mostly for labor and disease testing, the Montana Farm Bureau report concludes.
In addition, because brucellosis carries such a stigma among ranchers, the presence of the disease could reduce cattle prices by somewhere between $5 million and $26 million, the report says.
Be truthful, if you were facing a proposal that had the potential to cast you this kind of money, you would oppose it to. If the Federal government would just do something about their animals carrying the disease, this wouldn't be a problem. Until the Federal Government owns up to the problem, we ranchers are faced with dealing with the situation. The funny thing is, the reason ranchers so fear Brucellosis, is what the Federal Government will do to us if it's found in the state.
So, they will punish us if it's in the state, but won't do anything about animals under their control who have the disease and have the potential to pass it to animals in the state. It's a catch-22. They're bound and determined to give us the disease but yet will punish us for having the disease around. The only solution? Keep the animals out of the state until the Federal Government fixes the problem either by fixing the Brucellosis laws or cleaning up the Brucellosis problem in their herd.
Everybody blames the ranchers for this problem. People need to look at the Federal government avoiding the issue as the problem. If the Feds would work on their end of the situation this would have a lot easier solution.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. Abraham Lincoln
Now that Namibia is independnet, the fence remains. In order to provide beef to the EU, cattle must be certified as disease free, and the fence, although reinforcing the economic disparity of the previous, racist regime, allows Namibian beef to compete in foreign markets. Nor does the fence come down to provide wildlife corridors, unless an elephant gets the notion to push straight through has sometimes happens. The only way to remove the fence is to dramatically increase the amount expended on vaccinations and veterinary services in the communal areas, and the resources and political will to do this do not exist.
Tough situation.
So we should manage Yellowstone Park like a RANCH?
Can you say: clueless?
Good.
So you'd like the Feds managing things. Perhaps you should ask some WY ranchers about that. The ones who had APHIS show up at their gates telling them they were ready to bleed their herds? That didn't go over very well at all down there.
Good luck with that.
Have you met Arnold Gertonson, APHIS Head of Veterinary Services, and former MT State Vet?
We're talking the sort of blind arrogance that thinks they can come in and eradicate the wildlife of Yellowstone Park, in order to "protect" a few dozen cows.
But hey, if you want to turn global public opinion overwhelmingly against your industry, be my guest.
Or, you could have the foresight to see that a few buffalo outside Yellowstone could be an huge money-producing asset to our state, and assertions that it will be the death of the cattle industry are patently ludicrous. All illusions are eventually revealed, remember?
But no, all APHIS has to do is rattle the "we'll pull your status!" saber, and suddenly it's the end of the world as we know it.
Hysteria does not become you, Sam. You're smarter than that.
I am trying to keep APHIS from showing up on my doorstep to bleed my cattle. You obviously want to see APHIS show up and devastate the cattle industry in Montana. That's what will happen if Bison are allowed to run free from the Park into Montana. Might not happen right away but given enough time it will.
I just want the Government to take responsibility for thier problem, the bison of the Park. There is work going on in that direction as seen here:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jun06/cattle0606.htm
but they need to own up to the situation and admit it's thier fault and that the cattle producers of Montana have every right to be scared. Fix the problem with brucellosis and I have no problem with the Bison coming out of the park into Montana. As long as APHIS is holding the "saber" over our heads, can you blame us for our reaction?
It behooves certain interests to perpetuate the idea that if buffalo set foot outside Yellowstone that Montana's cattle industry is certain to suffer loss of B-free status.
You ranch in a big chunk of country. I pass through the vicinity occasionally, heading a bit further east to where the deer live a bit longer. This area adjacent to Yellowstone we're talking about is quite a bit bigger, and a hell of a lot more mountainous, with basically next to no cattle at all.
And if you're talking about the time frame the Governor is considering, you can just about count them on the fingers of a careless butcher! Essentially none. Very damn few, at least.
Those people have the right to raise zebras, as far as I'm concerned, but I daresay it borders on obstinance (a valuable quality in ag oftimes) to turn down twice the money you could conceiveably make with cows, and you could still have, say, horses. With which one might actually turn a buck also. And if one must have cows; Buffalo Fence.
Beyond these handful of cows we have vast areas of public lands, wildlife management areas in cases, that either don't have any cattle at all, or at most a handful of season grazing allotments.
I've long maintained those allotments don't have to pose an obstacle to bison. There is voluminous research that shows brucellosis is at worst seasonally contagious, existing turnout dates are well beyond the window, and anyone with a lick of sense would vaccinate anyway. Of course, that would require a tweak of THE PLAN, which is verily cast in stone.
But if you spend any time on this issue, it soon becomes apparent that this isn't really about disease, because the actual risk of transmission is statistically nonexistent.
It's about power. And the times, they are a'changing.
I just got in off the tractor. A bit of evening plowing. Also worked on my "new" $1000 haybine. It's not as shiny as your baler, but will pencil quicker!
Besides some bookings, I also spent part of the day bleaching buffalo skulls, which paid better by the hour than any of the rest. So I'm a little more open to the possibilities.
But there's this element in the Stockgrowers, and yes, also the Farm Bureau, that maintains Buffalo Are Evil. Someday, we'll get past that, and it might be sooner than some think.