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Yellowstone National Park agreed April 19 to a down payment of $1.8 million to the Church Universal and Triumphant, plus additional payments of $76,500 a year for 20 years, totaling $3.3 million for a 30-year narrow bison corridor easement and the removal of CUT’s small, recently acquired herd of cattle.

This would allow 25 bison, tested and fitted with transmitters, to walk the easement and keep the bison from acting like wildlife. They must obey the impossible strictures of the stockgrowers’ written Interagency Bison Management Plan and stay within its restrictive zones.

We are paying $3,300,300 twice for a single easement along a Park County road that has a public right-of-way.

• To mask the fact that our governor has allowed the elimination of 1,600 bison in 2008, on his watch, more than at any time since the late 1800s.

• It perpetuates a falsehood that bison are being allowed to widely roam in Montana.

• It is a ruse to brag that adaptive management is practiced under the IBMP.

• It is a public relations stunt to divide and quiet the questioners.

• To hide the fact that the population is below 2,500 bison within YNP.

• To obscure the recent congressional audit by the General Accounting Office, which is harshly critical of the IBMP and recommends drastic revisions of the plan.

The $3.3 million deal supports and reinforces the stockgrowers’ IBMP.

It will lead to bison slaughter in the future and does nothing for a solution. Bison are a gift to Montana from YNP. Millions of acres of National Forests and acquired wildlife ranges in the Gardiner, West Yellowstone and Gallatin basins can accommodate these adoptive animals managed by Montana as native wildlife.

Please write, call, e-mail the GAO and request an audit on this deal.

Joe Gutkoski, Vice president, American Buffalo Foundation, Bozeman

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