Yellowstone Bison Population Management Activities Report

Buffaloed on Jun 18th 2008

The latest Yellowstone Bison Population Management Activities report is out. There are reports that a population estimate was to be done but there is very little with regard to how many bison are left after the massive slaughter and winter kill of this past season.

Could the Park Service have killed far more than they had planned by not taking winter kill into account? Might there be fewer than the 2100 threshold in the IBMP?

PARKWIDE DISTRIBUTION:
*The information in the following paragraph is not intended as a population estimate. This information provides an approximate number of bison in certain geographic areas that have been surveyed in the past month. In no way is this information complete and accurate enough for a population estimate.

Approximately 200 bison are still utilizing the Blacktail Deer Plateau area. Nearly all of the other bison on the northern range are east of Tower Junction. In the central portion of the park, there are a few dozen bison in Pelican Valley (primarily adult males) and about 150 bison in Hayden Valley. The bulk of the central breeding group is still located in the Firehole Geyser basin and the Madison River Valley (approximately 200 west of Madison Junction).

Download the report here: YNP report_6_15_08.doc

Filed in Buffalo, National Park Service, Yellowstone Buffalo | 2 responses so far

2 Responses to “Yellowstone Bison Population Management Activities Report”

Indamani Jun 18th 2008 at 11:22 am 1

Can we trust the NPS to give an accurate count? I remember Bob Jackson said the NPS have a tendency to fudge the numbers. For us to really know how many buffalo are left, we need an independent team to give us an unbias and accurate count.
Jim Macdonald Jun 18th 2008 at 04:07 pm 2

They don’t give an estimate of bison east of Tower. But, even assuming it’s a few hundred - one would have to presume that the undercount was about twice that of their non-population estimates. That seems ridiculous.

These idiots have managed to kill over 2/3 of the buffalo, methinks. Based on these numbers, it seems the 1300-1400 total is probably pretty generous.

At the very least, they need to be more transparent about their counts and their methods and assumptions for determining a census - and it would help if they had a breakdown on calves, males, and females in these groupings.