National and Montana Wildlife Federations Petition for CMR Bison

 

 

The National Wildlife Federation and the Montana Wildlife Federation have sent a joint petition to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, requesting “a more active role” by the Fish & Wildlife Service in restoring wild “buffalo” on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.

NWF/MWF use of the name “buffalo” is a deference to the preference of Montana Native American Tribes for identifying bison. A previous NWF brochure used “bison”.

The two NGOs note the Refuge “represents a tremendous opportunity for buffalo conservation and restoration” and propose that the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service take “a more active role in the species recovery.”

They request an open, public NEPA process to “determine what a herd would look like”, source of founding animals, and “what entities would be engaged in management.”

They note that “American Indian Tribes should have a significant role in the restoration of buffalo on the CMR Refuge” and recommend that “tribal partners” be engaged in reintroducing buffalo to public lands. The latter recommendation could support a broad application of some unstipulated administrative and management roles for Tribes on other National Parks and Refuges, beyond the CMR.

The petition fails to define if “restoration” includes long-term management, or what bison-herd characteristics would constitute “species recovery.” Since NWF has previously sent the Department of Interior an extensive document outlining a CMR bison restoration with abundant intertribal administration and management by Tribal biologists, the vagueness of this current petition provides tacit support for any or all details of that document. To our knowledge, the 2020 document was never distributed publicly. (See News, June 19 for our concerns with the 2020 document.)

Since Montana has rejected bison restoration on the CMR (News, May 23) we welcome NWF/MWF support for independent FWS action. However, we stand by our position that “We need a public-trust wild bison herd on the Russell Refuge to fulfill the egalitarian mission of the Refuge System, particularly under mandates of the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act, to benefit the general American public, including Native Americans” (News July 1).