Below are the notes taken by Darrell Geist, the Buffalo Field Campaign Habitat Coordinator, on the IBMP Meeting that occurred over two days in Bozeman, MT.

Interagency Bison Management Plan Meeting Notes 8/6-7/08

For what they are worth, sending these notes along to you all.

I used my 3 minutes to formally request that a management alternative
that designates Horse Butte as wild buffalo habitat be placed on the
agenda at one of their planned Interagency Bison Management Plan meetings for public deliberation
and decision making. The clearly definable objective: allow wild
buffalo to roam and occupy Horse Butte without government harassment
and harm. My two cents in three minutes time.

The meeting process had its faults: the public could not pose
questions to the presenters about what they were presenting on; and
the handouts the agencies had were for themselves and not the public,
though they said this would go up on the web site they are working on.
Glenn Hockett, Gallatin Wildlife Association made a good point that most of the best ideas come from the
public. The guys at Gallatin Wildlife Association and Louisa Willcox at Natural Resources Defense Council
did a very good job of covering the flaws, shaming the agencies, and
raising their passions for wild buffalo. I am not sure what Amy
McNamara Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Tim Stevens National Parks Conservation Association were doing complimenting the
agencies. I missed something. There was a record buffalo slaughter
this past winter.
A belated Happy Birthday to Joe Gutkoski! American Buffalo Foundation who gave some rousing public
comments today that articulated what these agencies can do for wild
buffalo - in less than three minutes no less. Thanks Joe!
Darrell Geist
Habitat Coordinator
Buffalo Field Campaign
PO Box 957
West Yellowstone MT 59758
phone: (406) 646-0070
fax: (406) 646-0071
email: z@wildrockies.org
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/habitat.html

Interagency Bison Management Plan MEETING NOTES 8-6-08
Jerry Diemer, Associate Regional Director USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
* Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service contractors shipped 1,276 buffalo to slaughter houses in Montana and Idaho
* 59 tribal groups and food banks received meat (525 tribal inquiries)
* Tissue samples were taken for brucellosis and Johne’s Disease; a serum bank was set up for future studies
* 42% to 47% buffalo seropositive (blood test for presence of antibodies); (66/104 bulls seropositive)
* Overall sampling 217/545 buffalo seropositive
* Buffalo calves 31/209 seropositive
Slip N Slide buffalo quarantine
* 43 buffalo at Slip N Slide (the government is taking project proposals to relocate these buffalo, who will be quarantined and tested repeatedly over the next five years)
* 22 of 23 cows calved
Brogan buffalo quarantine
* 4 deaths: 2 chute mortalities; 1 neuorological death; 1 dead unknown
* 85 buffalo currently held in quarantine
Mary Erickson, Gallatin National Forest Supervisor
* Scoping complete on Horse Butte buffalo trap operated by Montana Dept. of Livestock on public lands; decision expected in Fall
* Scoping on 30 year lease of Church Universal and Triumphant lands underway; environmental review
is a federal decision to allow the activities to occur, i.e. fencing; Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks commitment of funds is subject to National Environmental Policy Act
* Nez Perce did field trip with U.S. Forest Service to look at on the ground treaty concerns

Tim Reid, Yellowstone National Park
* 2007/08 operations; mind numbing numbers; 127 buffalo hazings in Gardiner
Basin; late May early June last one; longest haze 10-11 miles from
Yankee Jim to Stephens Creek; largest haze 200 buffalo; tried to
respect tribal/Montana hunters on the ground
* 1,636 buffalo captured; 1,276 slaughtered; 112 calves to quarantine;
538 tested; 24 vaccinated; 45% seropositive overall; 10 mortalities
inside Stephens Creek trap: 3 euthanized pre-capture injuries
(snowmobilers), 1 goring, 6 natural cause mortalities; 7 buffalo shot;
333 released - slightly over one month longer then they have ever been held due
tolate spring, hard winter severity; 83 calves of the year
* Winterkill bumped the conservation population threshold of 2,300; and adapted
modality to prevent further mortalities
* Snowpack most severe in the last 10 years; late green up
* Lesson learned in West Yellowstone basin: buffalo hazing strategy, phased approach,
staging buffalo in a staggered manner, all the way to Madison
Junction/Firehole.

Pat Flowers, Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks Region 3 Supervisor
* 44 Montana hunting permits; if we get more than 60 buffalo on the landscape at any
one time, Fish Wildlife & Parks will call its call-up list for additional hunters who
are randomly drawn; 16 of those 44 tages go to tribes via Montana statute. 100
conditional cow/calf pairs licenses available on an annual basis.
* Second year of Tribal Treaty rights exercised; Salish and Kootenai, Nez
Perce, submitted claims Montana Attorney general who reviewed and found their claim
legitimate, Fish Wildlife & Parks concurred; Fish Wildlife & Parks met with Tribes again this past spring
* 166 buffalo hunted; 63 Montana tags; Salish and Kootenai hunted 39 buffalo; Nez
Perce hunted 64 buffalo; Nez Perce also hunted 7 elk. Fish Wildlife & Parks does not recognize
this hunting of other wildlife than buffalo as legitimate.
* Trying to get MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding) on paper with the Tribes to guide all of this.
* Salish Kootenai not gonna hunt the Royal Teton Ranch 30-year lease lands this year (if they come available)
* Shoshone Bannock haven’t provided enough info to validate Fish Wildlife & Park’s
concerns of a legitimate treaty right.
* Environmental Assessment is operating under limited Montana hunters to 25 buffalo on the landscape
at any one time - about 225 under the original time period.
* A revised Environmental Assessment on Montana’s bison hunt - to account for the tribes and
other changes - is going to be issued in the coming months.
Suzanne Lewis, Yellowstone National Park raised the point that she expects the Tribes to ask to be part
of the Interagency Bison Management Plan
Christian MacKay, Executive Officer Montana Dept. of Livestock Marty Zaluski, Montana State Vet
* Haze back successful; minimized hazing; very safe operations for the
partners and the public
* Number of buffalo distributed: 69% went to tribes; 12% to food banks;
5% to volunteer fire departments (I missed the other figure)
* Held off on hazing in West Yellowstone basin longer, staged hazings when they
think they can keep buffalo where they haze them
* Legal action filed by Montana Stockgrowers stemmed from buffalo being on
Horse Butte beyond the dead line of May 15
Mary Erickson, Gallatin National Forest Supervisor: Are those dates adaptive in the plan?
Christian MacKay: Evidently not.
Marty Zaluski: The entire plan is subject to adaptive management.
Suzanne Lewis: The people who wrote that plan (and those hard and
fast dates) had not implemented nothing on the ground.
Marty Zaluski: May 15th represents the farthest date; is the last dead line
for that range, as the plan is currently written.
ASSESS EFFECTIVENESS AND OUTCOMES OF Interagency Bison Management Plan ACTIVITIES 2007-2008
* Glenn Plumb, Yellowstone National Park: Not desirable to have calves born in captivity;
negative, holding buffalo into calving season was not considered in
the Interagency Bison Management Plan
* Suzanne Lewis: unintended consequence, disease concerns stemming from
holding buffalo beyond when they considered it, and allowing calves to
be born in captivity
* Pat Flowers: concern that they had hit the conservation threshold in the
plan; that’s something we ought to address before the season begins
* Marty Zaluski: is there room for more than 100 buffalo to be outside the
park on the west side? is it black and white?

Hi folks.

Sending you my notes from today’s meeting in Bozeman, Montana. Several briefing papers were presented by the agencies, and will supposedly make it onto the new web site they are creating in the next week or so: http://ibmp.info

Rick Wallen, Yellowstone National Park biologist did a good job of presenting today. The agencies are already anticipating that this coming season the buffalo population could fall below their conservation threshold of 2,300.

There was no discussion that one of the two goals set out in the plan (protect MT’s brucellosis free status) has not been met by following the Interagency Bison Management Plan. No discussion of the $20 million plus spent to slaughter or permanently remove over 3,700 wild buffalo since the plan began in 2000. In my three minute comment today I did raise the prospect that the other goal (free roaming buffalo herd) is also in jeopardy.

The meeting structure was designed to serve the agencies and not the public. Ground rules excluded discussion of elk and other potential sources of brucellosis infection, and scrapping the plan altogether. Initially, the briefing papers handed out on the first day went only to the agencies and not to the public until I bitched about it. Three minutes goes by fast to foster dialogue and not just make comments. The public was not allowed to ask questions of the presenters. They didn’t even ask what might the public want to see on their web site repository that would be of use.

There’s more of these meetings planned. If you can handle the fog that seems to accompany them, I encourage you to go and see for yourselves.

Darrell Geist
Habitat Coordinator
Buffalo Field Campaign
PO Box 957
West Yellowstone MT 59758
phone: (406) 646-0070
fax: (406) 646-0071
email: z@wildrockies.org
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/habitat.html

http://ibmp.info/calendar.php
August 28-29 (12 noon into the afternoon, and 8 am or so into the afternoon)
Location: Mammoth School Community Room, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park
Host: National Park Service/Yellowstone National Park
Contact: Al Nash (Al_Nash@nps.gov), (307) 344-2010

Interagency Bison Management Plan NOTES 8-7-2008

* Lot of table discussion about being verbally attacked/intimidated at previous meeting by one individual who was not present at the meeting today
* Suzanne Lewis, Supervisor and Glenn Plumb Yellowstone National Park: Clarify hard and fast rules: 3,000 population number, haze back dates, target eligibility for vaccination, other items agencies want to review from the Record of Decision
* Pat Flowers, Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks Region 3 Supervisor: We need to first define objectives as GAO called it
* Mary Erickson, Gallatin National Forest Supervisor: Forest Service will put template of baseline data together on what types of changes occurred since 2000

RICK WALLEN, Biologist Yellowstone National Park
* Status of Yellowstone bison population
* Environmental Impact Statement is based on a number of predictions; National Park Service monitoring program is checking those predictions
* 3,000 buffalo counted July 2008
* 2,500 adults and yearlings survived winter 2007-08
* Less winter kill than expected of around 400 buffalo; 500 calves of the year
* Central interior range: 1,500 buffalo; 1,300 adults and yearlings; 200 calves
* Northern range: 1,500 buffalo; 1,200 adults and yearlings; 300 calves
* Population reached conservation threshold in 1980’s above 2000
* Buffalo abundance peaked in 1997 and 2005
* Central range herd declined since 2000; Northern range herd more than doubled
* Buffalo population is changing and how they use the land; responding to these eruptive slaughters; 6 buffalo that have moved were once breeders in the central range are now breeders in the northern range
* Age structure and sex structure: decline male to female ratios; byproduct of risk management bias towards female removals
* Pregnancy: 90% of seronegative (blood test for antibody presence) buffalo produced calves; this figure is 20% less in seropositive buffalo, byproduct of brucellosis in population
* 80% of buffalo births occur between April 25 to May 25
* Streams influence buffalo movements; roads influence some buffalo movements
* Central range winter movements: vary widely, among routes buffalo used 50% ended up in West Yellowstone basin, 31% move to northern range to Blacktail Plateau and Gardiner Basin, 8% of buffalo do both; 10 to 11% of buffalo never make it to a boundary area
* Few buffalo stay in Hayden/Pelican valley during winter
* Madison to Norris used frequently; at least three corridors used by central range herd to travel to northern range
* Movement is not linear; buffalo are crisscrossing same pathways, going back and forth
* Great deal of mixing of herds in winter months; early arrivals in Gardiner Basin coming from Central interior range
* Key uncertainties: how Central herd responds now may change based on how they respond to a declining population (2,700 counted in 2007; 1,500 counted in 2008)
* Population subdivision: removals affect genetic diversity, two projects produced documented evidence of genetic subdivision, unique things going on that the Park doesn’t know precisely; there’s either 2 or 3 unique subgroups, how unique is still to be figured out; genetic diversity plays into how to conserve the population; it’s really hard to monitor over time
* Looking at effects of diversity values via implementation of risk managment program
* 2008 seroprevalence rate @ 45% (variable by age); 400 buffalo culture sampled; 1,600 serology (blood test antibody) sampled; culturing in progress; lymph node tissues taken
* Real story: a trend is emerging, as buffalo age to prime breeding age over 60% are seropositive
* Interagency Bison Management Plan metric projections and status today are quite different from 2000
* Interagency Bison Management Plan short term implications: start this coming winter with 2,900-3,000 buffalo; population parity among central and northern range; winterkill and predation @ 10% of population; Montana’s hunt and treaty hunt take about 150-200 buffalo; increased probability of large movement to northern range; therefor risk management removal is limited to a total of less than 300 buffalo before the agencies reach the conservation threshold we had last winter/spring

COMMENTS/RESPONSES
* Bison females show fidelity to breeding areas; explains subdivision or evolution towards it, don’t know the magnitude of it; three sources of genetics: the endemic population, brought in two introduced herds in the early 1900’s is the competing argument
* Pat Flowers: Are management actions changing movements/mixing of herds: is this a positive or not? Rick Wallen: what would be valuable is to protect a high level of genetic diversity, the end game is analytic thought on whether the 2,300 number is enough to protect buffalo; Are we close enough or do the agencies need to change this conservation threshold for each breeding area to 2,000 each? We do not have the complete details
* Marty Zaluski: What is the minimum for the population to thrive?
Rick Wallen: Smallest number is like 400 to 500, but the consensus is four to five times that based on the risks the population faces (which are wide ranging in Yellowstone)
* What we don’t know is how much diversity would have existed before the bottleneck - 23 founders in the native herd
* Higher percent of females and calves showing some bias towards moving to the Park boundaries
* Ideal sample size is 60 buffalo for monitoring; 2/3 are currently GPS (satellite) collared
* COMMENT from unknown agency person: collected over 50 tissue samples from buffalo and very few were culture positive and shedding bacteria through birthing materials
* With a population abundance above 3,000, the probability of high movement to boundaries is great; greater winter severity equals a greater probability of movement; when northern herd > 1,200 buffalo and/or central range > 2,500 buffalo, those metrics can drive the same process of movement towards Park boundaries

DISCUSSION FROM RICK’S PRESENTATION
* Suzanne Lewis: Complex, rapid changes on landscape, wide open uncertainty; need a vulnerability assessment - most significant challenges and a focus on the most vulnerable; we can expect buffalo population to grow 12% a year; what contingencies are in place for buffalo population that is likely to reach 2,300 number this winter?; she wants Montana’s Environmental Assessment to be revisited to fully integrate hunting into the plan, hunt more buffalo to respond to an expanding population
* Pat Flowers: Do we want to create an operational quarantine facility to take excess buffalo? It’s a big financial commitment, long term effort to think about.
* Rhyan Clarke, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service: Saving some of that Congressional appropriation in the event the quarantine becomes a program. We could expand the class and age of buffalo and not take just calves.
* Mary Erickson: What are the tools in the tool box? Increase habitat suitability, expand hunting, quarantine, what is the social and political context for these options?

Government Accountability Office report DISCUSSION: REPOSITORY FOR ALL DOCUMENTS RELATED TO Interagency Bison Management Plan
* Steve Merritt, Montana Dept. of Livestock, presented web site: http://ibmp.info
* Glenn Plumb, Yellowstone National Park: idea is to create a web site like a check out library and not make it into a gateway to the decision makers by putting email addresses and contact information for each agency online
* Create a portal and not an interactive web site
* (The public was not solicited on what information might be helpful to post to this site)
Government Accountability Office report DISCUSSION: ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS
* Annual Report out August 1
* Marty Zaluski, Montana State Vet: it’s the federal agencies that require a report, not the state
Government Accountability Office report DISCUSSION: LEAD AGENCY TO COORDINATE
* Create committee to write reports; set up a technical group and public affairs group
* Suzanne Lewis: Oversight, coordination, administration handled via subcommittee and in finalizing the annual report
* Suzanne Lewis: The likelihood of new Congressional legislation is pretty high

NEXT Interagency Bison Management Plan MEETING
* Review objectives, vulnerabilities, uncertainties, monitoring metrics
* Glenn Plumb: annual genetic reports are not likely
* U.S. Forest Service is going to put together a template of baseline data: livestock time/place/numbers/herd plans; habitat suitability analysis was asked for by the public; a suite of current information to guide decision makers on what’s happening on the landscape

For what they are worth, sending these notes along to you all.