Livestock-Industry

March 16th 2018 For Immediate Release Media Contact: Talon Brings Buffalo 406-404-9131 Stephens Creek Trap, Yellowstone National Park March 16th 2018 Hours before dawn on Friday March 16th, 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 1000 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. ...

Featured image: A single mom with seven calves who she is caring for. More than likely, only one of these calves are hers, and the rest of these babies are buffalo she adopted after their mothers were killed by hunters. BFC photo by Stephany Seay. by Stephanie Seay / Buffalo Field Campaign It’s just below zero as we trek through freshly fallen snow on an unusually windless early morning, in the high hills above the Gardiner Basin. Taking advantage of the calm air that won’t rock our scopes and cameras, our patrol is on the way to a lookout spot high above Yellowstone’s Stephens Creek buffalo trap. The trap is miles away. The spot we’re at is one of the few places that we can see even a far-away glimpse into the industrial size monstrosity that has entrapped more than 450 of the gentle giants in the past couple of weeks. Yellowstone initiates a massive seven-mile public closure around their trap, obviously wanting to hide the horrible things they are doing to this sacred species, our national mammal. On our way to the lookout, our footsteps squeaking through the freezing cold snow, one of our crew shouts out, “wolves!” We all stop dead in our tracks. To the south of us, we can hear them, the beautiful, haunting serenade of a wolf pack, singing blessing songs to the morning, or, more like mourning songs to the travesty unfolding before us. The wolves know. We get to the lookout spot and it’s as bad as we thought: hundreds of buffalo in the trap, huddled together, eating hay rations, trapped on death row. Four park wranglers on horseback, and a white SUV are coming into the northernmost paddock of the trap which holds approximately 60 of the country’s last wild buffalo. This paddock is the veritable end of the line before the buffalo go in even deeper, to places they will never return from. ...

Featured image by Buffalo Field Campaign by Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Two days ago, three of last wild bison were shot and killed illegally in a no-shooting zone in a campground barely 100 yards from the boundary of Yellowstone National Park. The next morning, I skied out of the woods with a patrol from Buffalo Field Campaign and found the buffalos’ butchered carcasses; ribcages, stomachs, patches of hide, and a few leftover chunks of flesh parting the slowly flowing water of the Madison River. ...

by Buffalo Field Campaign Mark your calendars and plan to join Buffalo Field Campaign for some winter rallies for wild buffalo! Yellowstone, Montana, and other bison managers have aims to kill upwards of 900 of the gentle giants this winter, all to appease Montana’s infamous livestock industry. The country’s last wild buffalo — a sacred and keystone species who is our National Mammal — are in dire straights and we must rally together to demand that they are protected and allowed to flourish, not be slaughtered to satisfy the whims of the cattle industry. ...

Editor’s note: On January 8, 2018, a federal judge dismissed US government’s criminal charges against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, two of his sons and another man linked to militia groups, over procedural errors made by the prosecution. This is a history of the Bundy grazing allotment. by Center for Biological Diversity • The Bundy family began grazing on federal public lands near Gold Butte, Nevada, in 1954 – lands located in the recently designated Gold Butte National Monument – some of the driest and most fragile desert in North America. ...

by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance A windmill blade knocks the head off a Cooper’s hawk interrupting the late afternoon peace in Spring Valley, just outside Ely, Nevada. The blade tosses the hawk’s body onto yellow gravel the power company spread, over living soil, in circles around their windmills. The ever-present Great Basin breeze, who usually whispers with a soothing tone through pinyon needles, juniper branches, and sage tops, becomes angry. Grazing cows pause their chewing and look up to consider the scene. ...

Featured image by David Mattson by Louisa Willcox / Grizzly Times Last Tuesday, in the shadow of Yellowstone’s Electric Peak, I watched National Park Service employees herd, prod, shock, immobilize, poke, and corral bison that had only shortly before spent their lives roaming wild. That day, 45 animals were shipped for slaughter and 62 “processed” in preparation for being sent to death next week. So far this winter, almost 1,000 out of a total of roughly 5,500 bison have been sentenced to death by government agents or dispatched by hunters. ...

by Buffalo Field Campaign YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK / GARDINER, MONTANA: Yellowstone National Park has initiated wild bison capture operations in their Stephens Creek bison trap, and plans to send hundreds to slaughter in coming weeks. Yellowstone asserts that these actions are necessary to appease Montana’s livestock industry which claims wild bison pose a threat. Bison were recently bestowed with the honor of being designated as the United States’ National Mammal. “Bison were recently granted national mammal status by the U.S. Congress because they embody such monumental significance in this country, as a symbol of the wild, untamed land, as the true shapers and stewards of native grasslands and prairie communities, and for their profound cultural importance to many indigenous tribes,” said Stephany Seay of Buffalo Field Campaign. “Yet here we have the supposed care-takers of the country’s last wild, migratory herds shipping them to slaughter to cater to the whims of producers of an invasive species - the domestic cow.” ...

Featured image: The Wixárika community of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán or Wuaut+a is preparing to send 1,000 members to the remote Nayarit community of Huajimic to take back from the ranchers lands that the courts have ruled belong to the Wixárika. Photo from Facebook/San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán. by Tracy Barnett / Intercontinental Cry A contingent of at least 1,000 indigenous Wixárika (Huichol) people in the Western Sierra Madre are gearing up to take back their lands after a legal decision in a decade-long land dispute with neighboring ranchers who have held the land for more than a century. ...

Featured image: Members of the Paraguayan Ayoreo-Totobiegosode group on the day they were contacted for the first time, in 2004. © GAT/Survival by Survival International The Paraguayan government has failed to act to protect a group of uncontacted tribal people, despite having been ordered to do so in February of this year. Six months ago the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights demanded that the government stop the deforestation of the Chaco, which suffers the highest rate of deforestation in the world, and protect the vulnerable uncontacted Ayoreo Indians who live there. ...