WYOMING – A conservation group has claimed responsibility for recent arrests made in Yellowstone National Park where protesters have attempted to disrupt bison capture, testing and shipping from the Stephens Creek facility.
Calling it “Stephens Creek Trap,” a press release from a Montana-based group heralded the headline: “Wild Buffalo Defense Strikes Again.”
After being discovered blocking the entranceway to the facility, Wild Buffalo Defense claims the Park Service “mobilized nine police vehicles, along with a bulldozer, a tractor, and an excavator” in order to create a new illegal road “for livestock trailers to take more bison to slaughter.”
WBD’s account of the incident on March 16:
Hours before dawn, two members of the Wild Buffalo Defense collective arrived at the gate of Yellowstone National Park’s Stephens Creek Buffalo capture facility. They blocked the gate with three 55-gallon drums filled with concrete, locking their arms inside the barrels.
The three 1,000-pound drums blocked access to the facility, preventing livestock trucks from taking the wild buffalo to slaughter. This action came in the wake of a similar event last week at the Stephens Creek Trap, where two buffalo protectors locked themselves to the hydraulic squeeze shoot using a metal pipe.
Wolf, the first individual locking down, described why he was taking the action: “My father is from Michaocan, Mexico, so I have both native and colonizer blood. Since I wasn’t raised in a native setting, this is my way to give back to the native community.
I’m from Illinois—it’s called the Prairie State, and there’s less than one one-hundredth of the prairie left. It’s all strip malls and cornfields. I don’t like seeing just concrete and steel. Seeing how peaceful the buffalo are and how strong they are, they go through enough hardship in their lives in the forest and the plains and then with what Yellowstone National Park is doing to them they still carry on. They inspire me to keep going.”
Coyote, the other individual blocking the gate, said, “I’m doing this to get a better understanding of what is really going on and to protect the buffalo and the lands that they roam. I feel like I have been lost inside…but now that I’m here I feel more combined with myself, with others, and with knowledge and understanding. Whenever I’m with the buffalo I feel like my heart runs with them. When I’m with them they already know the questions, they already know the answers, and I don’t have to respond because they already know.
I think it’s a good thing for people to learn. There’s not a day in this world where you’re not able to learn something. What we’re doing is something we love to do and we only live once so we should do what we love to do and if anybody wants to come out and join and learn this experience then they should.”
