Word: bisons
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WASHINGTON, D.C.: Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has embarked on a mission to end the slaughter of buffalo outside of Yellowstone National Park in Montana. "There's no logical reason to pick on the bison to shoot and slaughter," Babbitt told reporters. To combat brucellosis, a disease found in bison that causes abortions, infertility and reduced milk production when transmitted to cattle, Montana officials are permitted to shoot any buffalo that wander outside of the park. Babbit advocates a different approach in the fight against brucellosis: more research, less guns. Specifically, the Interior Secretary has asked the National Academy of Sciences...
...protest the slaughter. Many are blaming Yellowstone's snowmobiling tourists for the massacre. By opening the park to unrestricted numbers of the machines, they say, and meticulously grading and packing the deep snow on the roads to accommodate riders, the Park Service has inadvertently made it easier for the bison to move around in search of food, thus increasing their survival rate and boosting their population (from 400 in 1970 to 3,500 last fall). Now the matter has come to a head. Ice and snowdrifts piled high by the fiercest winter weather in 50 years have buried the buffalo...
...huge, hairy beasts--some weighing as much as a Volkswagen--ambled right down the middle of the road, often forcing drivers to hit their brakes to avoid a meaty collision. "We got within 5 ft. of them!" says an excited John Purcell. "I've never seen so many bison...
...that's a problem--as much for the bison as for the snowmobilers. In a desperate search for food beneath 4-ft.-deep snow, the animals are using routes that are maintained for the snowmobilers to make their way to forage areas at the park's perimeter and on into Montana. That state's livestock agents, fearful that the animals will infect beef cattle with a disease called brucellosis, are shipping the animals to slaughterhouses as soon as they cross the border. Or sometimes, with the help of park employees, shooting them on the spot...
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has embarked on a mission to end the slaughter of buffalo outside of Yellowstone National Park in Montana. "There's no logical reason to pick on the bison to shoot and slaughter," Babbitt told reporters. To combat brucellosis, a disease found in bison that causes abortions, infertility and reduced milk production when transmitted to cattle, Montana officials are permitted to shoot any buffalo that wander outside of the park. Babbit advocates a different approach in the fight against brucellosis: more research, less guns. Specifically, the Interior Secretary has asked the National Academy of Sciences...