YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Yellowstone National Park (YNP)’s Bison Conservation Transfer Program has upgraded its facilities, the Park announced Friday.
“Alongside our partners at the InterTribal Buffalo Council, Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, Yellowstone Forever, and Greater Yellowstone Coalition, and with support from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Park Service and U.S. Department of the Interior, we celebrated the expansion of our Bison Conservation Transfer Program facility,” YNP posted to Facebook.
“These upgrades will double the number of animals sent per year to Tribes as an alternative to slaughter,” the post said. “We look forward to our continued progress with our partners and Tribes into the future, with our shared goal of restoring the national mammal to its homeland.”
YNP established the program in 2017 to divert bison away from slaughterhouses and back onto Tribal lands. The Park says that since 2019, they’ve relocated 294 bison to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, from which the InterTribal Buffalo Council transferred 170 bison to 23 other Tribes in 12 states. In January, 112 of those bison were transferred to Fort Peck, marking the largest transfer in the program’s history.
Bison must be put through a series of health tests before being transferred, mainly to ensure that bison infected with brucellosis are not introduced into other herds. Brucellosis is a bacterial disease that affects birth rates in bison, elk and cattle; the disease has been eradicated in bison in most of the United States.
July is National Bison Month. On Monday, a woman visiting YNP was gored by a bison and suffered severe injuries.
