Excellent Letter to Colin Campbell

Here is a comment I received to a previous post. There was no attached map.

My letter to Colin and the Park Service;

Sir;

First lets start with supposedly 3,900 Bison in the park(a number that is WAY too high, with all the hunter kills, over 100, still about a month of hunt left, not to mention the winter kills happening daily) "They" say 50% of Bison are infected or test positive. How can they say that when the only Bison they have tested in the past many years, are the ones they just did at Stephens creek and only 1/3 tested positive? With their numbers, it comes to less than 2,000 being positive (again their numbers are way off the mark) Then we look at the elk and they are supposed to be 5% positive. At over 30,000 elk in and out of the Park year around, not to mention the tens of thousands in the Madison Valley, even at 5% positive, you have way more infected animals traipsing farther than Bison, and mingling with livestock, (Bison rarely if ever mingle). It has been proven Bison are NOT the culprit for the transmissions, yet the focus is still all on the Bison.
 
It's known these animals are 'genetically' pure,(THREE different, distinct, genetically pure herds in Yellowstone Park) yet the powers that be want to contaminate them with vaccines, and domestication. Heck they can't manage the domesticated cattle, how in the world do they think they can manage wild animals? 

In the mean time there is a lot of money being thrown down the chute, because the Livestock industry is too embarrassed to admit Brucellosis is NOT a threat to humans. They want that budget, so they can continue wasting the money on hazing Bison where there are no cattle ever(Horse Butte Peninsula), they capture the bison before they leave the Park so the hunters holding tags are left out in the cold. This is like a Ponzi scheme, and we the taxpayer are losing our you-know-what.

In February of 2009 the Medical world released the fact that Brucellosis is EASILY curable in humans.
These Bison belong to every citizen of the United States of America, NOT the Department of Livestock nor Yellowstone National Park I have a piece of each and every Bison out there, and you are taking it away from ME.
Why do the Elk get a reprieve and the Bison don't?

When will you National Park Service People start protecting our animals and parks for future generations, instead of destroying them?

I have attached a map showing the Horse Butte Peninsula, so you can see the peninsula is just an extension of the Park, and Bison can contaminate absolutely no cattle on that Peninsula.

Ann 

Temporary Halt to Slaughter

Bison slaughter on hold as park reviews lawsuit

By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Matthew Brown, Associated Press – 

BILLINGS, Mont. –

Officials halted plans Friday to ship bison to slaughter from Yellowstone National Park after saying they first had to review a court challenge filed by wildlife advocates. Almost 400 of the animals were being held in corrals inside the park for testing to see if they have been exposed to the disease brucellosis.

Colin Campbell STOP the SLAUGHTER!

Here's a letter my mother wrote to the acting superintendent of Yellowstone National Park.

Stop wasting taxpayers hard earned money abusing and killing members of the Yellowstone Bison Herd.  The brucellosis excuse is a LIE to U.S. taxpayers.  You already know that there has not been even one documented case of genetically pure, wild bison giving this disease back to the cattle who brought it here to begin with.  Cattle imported from Europe by our European immigrant ancestors.

You are perpetuating the Dept. of Interior's racist war from the 1800's, when the complaint was that Indians and Buffalo are taking grassland away from cattle.  Stop carrying on in the dysfunctions of your predecessors.

Let the Buffalo Roam!

                    Take Action!

Please take a moment right now and urge Yellowstone's Acting Superintendent Colin Campbell and your US Senators and Representative to stop the slaughter of the Yellowstone bison, America's only continuously wild population. 

Colin Campbell, Yellowstone National Park
PHONE: 307-344-2003
EMAIL: colin_campbell@nps.gov

BISON TO BE SLAUGHTERED-ACT NOW!!

BFC Photo

Yellowstone Park Rangers captured 340 of America's last wild bison this week, including the one in this photo. Park officials say they will send some of the buffalo to slaughter and hold some in the pens until spring. 

Please take action now and urge the Park Service to set the buffalo free:
CONTACT: Acting Superintendent Colin Campbell
PHONE:    307-344-2003
EMAIL:    colin_campbell@nps.gov

Reply From Colin Campbell

Here is Colin Campbell's reply to my mother's letter word for word. He really side-steps the issue.

Yellowstone National Park and the National Park Service appreciate your recent email. You can find information on bison and bison management in the greater Yellowstone area by using the links listed below. At the Yellowstone National Park website you can find information on topics like bison ecology, adaptive management and an historic bison study. The link is:
http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/bisonqa.htm will take you to the Greater Yellowstone Science Learning Center, where you can find more facts, references and research on bison. http:/ibmp.info will take you to the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) information repository. The IBMP guides bison management and disease management of brucellosis in bison, in and around Yellowstone National Park. The cooperating agencies operating under the IBMP are the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the Montana Department of Livestock, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council, the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes, and the Nez Perce Tribe. More information on the IBMP can be found at http://ibmp.info/.

From a Montana "Native"

This is a letter my mother wrote to the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, Colin Campbell.

My name is Julia Vincent. I live in Helena, Montana. My grandparents were Montana homesteaders. My mother's family settled on Indian Lands in Daniels County. My father's parents homesteaded along the north fork of the Flathead river. My grandfather, Ray Vincent, was acting superintendent of Glacier National Park. My father, John D. Vincent, was a foreman and a ranger in The Park.

More genetically pure bison are being sent to slaughter. Continued reduction of the size of the herd is weakening them through inbreeding. In the 1800's, the D.O.I. was complaining that Indians and Buffalo are taking grassland away from cattle. This mentality remains in control to this day. The attacks on genetically pure bison are fueled by fear, not by reality. Taxpayers' money continues to be misused to fund an archaic, racist war. Giving Yellowstone Bison to Ted Turner while refusing to give them to local indigenous nations was borne out of the live$tock indu$try's fear that Indians are going to bring back the Buffalo.

And, as you already know, there is not even one documented case of bison giving brucellosis back to the cattle who brought it here to begin with. More taxpayers' money being spent on a lie.

Get out of the 1800's. Let the genetically pure buffalo roam.

Here's BFC's update on the current situation with the Yellowstone Buffalo.

There are at least 64 buffalo in the Stephens Creek trap currently, and with all the snow accumulation there will likely be more captured. There's a large mixed group of at least 50 that were hazed to Powerline Flats yesterday.... YNP & DOL agents have also been hazing other groups of buffalo into the Hunt Zone, and buffalo have quickly been shot after being hazed there. At least 80 buffalo have been killed by hunters so far.

PLEASE TAKE ACTION! Contact Yellowstone's Acting Superintendent Colin Campbell and tell him not to allow any buffalo slaughter and to set the buffalo free!

PHONE: 307-344-2003

EMAIL: colin_campbell@nps.gov

Our supporters that have already called have told us Yellowstone is saying they never "promised" not to slaughter, but that's a game of semantics. They said they would not. They are also telling people to contact APHIS, but they are simply trying to pass the buck. This is Yellowstone's decision to make. Put the pressure on.

Also, you should know that the some of the 25 buffalo that were hazed through RTR lands have already left! They have crossed the Yellowstone river, and have already been hazed a few times. Right across the street (Hwy 89) from Cutler Meadows is one of the Corwin Springs quarantine pastures with buffalo in it - surely the RTR buffalo went to visit some quarantined relatives. This RTR scheme was doomed to fail, and the buffalo are letting these agencies and NGO's know that you cannot box them in. Who knows what will become of them... we are watching and will let you know.