A Reliable Future for Public, Wild Bison Depends on Only 10 Herds

 

 Recent NEWS items presented two different numbers for plains bison herds with reliable mandates to restore and maintain wild, public bison. March 13 NEWS referred to 13 herds; upon further study, March 27 NEWS referred to only 10 herds. Here we clarify this change.

To qualify, a herd must be managed as public-trust bison, with primary management to develop and maintain natural selection that is preponderant over artificial selection and genetic drift. Only Department of Interior herds, under the Park Service or under Fish & Wildlife Service Refuges qualify under relatively dependable legal mandates for wildness enacted by Congress.

Previous news releases from the Department of Interior claimed as many as 19 federal bison herds with 11,000 bison are managed for biotic diversity and biotic integrity – the equivalent of “wildness”. Subsequent news releases by this and other organizations have reduced this number to 16, 13, and now 10. Nine of the alleged 19 public, wild herds are:

2 herds in Alaska -- Not on native plains bison range.

1 herd on the Bison Range in Montana -- Recently ceded to the Kootenai/Salish Tribes.

2 herds in Utah -- Book Cliffs and Henry Mountains herds: spend some or much time on federal lands; but are managed and limited as state game animals and (Book Cliffs) by the northern Ute Tribe.

1 herd in Wyoming -- Jackson Hole herd: co-managed as state game; recently reduced from 1000 to 500.

1 herd in Arizona -- Has habitat in Grand Canyon National Park: co-managed as state game to limit numbers and consequent damage to Park’s prehistoric relics.

2 herds in Colorado and Kansas -- co-managed with The Nature Conservancy; have some federal habitat, but most habitat is TNC.

Likely, Department of Interior has collaborative agreements to exchange animals between these 9 herds and Interior herds to limit loss of alleles to genetic drift. However, excluding 2 herds in Alaska, the management priorities for these herds include production as game or for sale, limiting competition with private livestock, or other priorities that detract from managing for wildness.

Thus, the future of wild plains bison genomes, south of Canada, depends upon the remaining 10 herds, with approximate herd sizes totaling 7,880 bison and only 2 herds with at least 1000 bison to forestall weakening of natural selection by genetic drift. These herds are:

Yellowstone National Park: 4800 bison, not welcome in surrounding states.

Badlands NP: 1000 bison (new management plan coming).

Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge: 650 bison.

Theodore Roosevelt NP: 525 bison (south herd: 350; north herd: 175).

Wind Cave NP: 400 bison.

Fort Niobrara NWR: 350 bison (includes separate “Sully” herd of 60).

Neal Smith NWR: 70 bison.

Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR: 55 bison.

Whitehorse Hill Nat. Game Preserve: 20 bison.

Chickasaw Nat. Recreation Area: 10 bison.

These 10 herds are critical to preserving examples of genetically wild bison within the public trust. In the long run, they will be inadequate. Herds less than 100 must be enlarged. Additional large herds on large, diverse landscapes are needed.

Three large or growing private herds¹ may contribute some to saving “wild” alleles; but their management today includes some artificial selection, and limited natural selection, and they are not public-trust herds. There is no evidence that any Tribal herds have management priorities to retain wildness of bison. One impressive Tribal attempt was abandoned in 2004².

¹TNC Tallgrass Preserve in OK; TNC Medano Ranch in CO; American Prairie in MT.

²Braun, F. F. 2008. Buffalo, Inc. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK. p. 235.

“Eco-cultural Restoration” of Bison: A Euphemism Disguising Incompatible Goals

 

 

“Eco-cultural restoration” has been suggested for returning plains bison to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Montana. The term can be a slogan for proposed co-management of a Refuge bison herd by an Intertribal Council with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Such attractive slogans can develop public support without revealing conflicts inherent in the proposal.

We interpret ecological restoration of bison as fulfilling the mandates of the Refuge Improvement Act (1997) to restore biodiversity and biological integrity of the Refuge’s biotic community. More, we consider this mandate to be a restoration of “wildness”. Wildness is the opposite, in a continuum, from domestication. Here, wildness includes bison and their genome, and their relationships with their surrounding biota.

Cultural restoration refers to bison management focused on needs and goals of Tribal nations. Tribes would influence to what extent such needs and goals would be emphasized in co-management on the Refuge. However, recent history indicates that nutrition and economic benefits are overriding needs of the Tribes. A current publication (Shamon et al. 2022) concurs and suggests that management practices for wildness and for Tribal needs are not mutually exclusive and can be merged on federal lands.

However, restoring and maintaining wildness of a bison herd requires maximizing natural selection (to the extent practicable, a standard in the Refuge Improvement Act). This requires minimizing genetic drift and artificial selection that weaken and replace natural selection. Minimizing genetic drift requires a large herd. Minimizing artificial selection requires foregoing most management activities that increase annual production of animals. (Only human harvest of bison facilitates both production and natural selection. Human predation has been a major selective force in the evolution of the modern bison species, as discussed elsewhere on this website.)

Across existing Tribal bison herds, numerous management interventions constitute artificial selection. These are: much constrained bison mobility on monotonous ranges; pasture rotations; frequent capture and handling; selective culling; a skewed herd sex/age structure; forced weaning, frequent or emergency feeding; vaccinations and other disease management; lack or control of predators; and maintaining a stable herd at only a moderate ecological density. These diminish restoration and maintenance of wildness, for both the bison genome and its associated biota.

Co-management of federal bison is a false panacea. Efforts to enhance overriding Tribal goals will diminish achievement of “ecological” goals, as interpreted here. Efforts to achieve ecological goals will diminish attainment of important Tribal goals.

In contrast, Tribal goals for bison should be maximized on numerous Tribal lands; whereas biological diversity and integrity – wildness – is reliably mandated only on National Parks and Federal Refuges. Currently, there are only 13 such federal bison herds, and only 2 of these have at least 1000 animals to effectively limit genetic drift. The few opportunities to achieve these mandates on federal lands should not be compromised.

Shamon et al. The potential of bison restoration as an ecological approach to future Tribal food sovereignty on the northern Great Plains. Frontiers in Ecology & Evolution. 28 January 2022. 

 

 

Interior Department’s Bison Conservation Initiative May Accept Defeat Redefining “Wildness”

 This decade of the 2020’s, with a focus on endangered species, has brought what environmentalists describe as a “war on wildlife”. Centered in this war are two Department of Interior agencies, the Park Service and the Fish & Wildlife Service. The battles are politically difficult. Rather than lamenting defeat, and informing Americans of our continuing demise, the Department of Interior may simply redefine “victory”.

The Park Service is mandated to save ecosystems and species “unimpaired”. The federal Refuge System is mandated to preserve biodiversity and biological integrity on refuge lands. These mandates were generated by an American interest and passion for “wildness”.

But as our human population grows, requiring occupation and conversion of ever-more landscape, many components of the natural world either disappear or adapt to and become dependent upon domesticated environments. Wilderness and wildlife are disappearing. In public dialogue, failing to reveal and emphasize this trend fosters public indifference, allowing an ever-faster demise of natural resources.

We define “wild” as one extreme in a continuum from the other extreme of domestication. Wildness requires a preponderance of natural selection over the forces of artificial selection and genetic drift. As preponderance of natural selection declines, wildness is lost by degrees. “Wild” is a qualitative, not absolute, condition. The decline of wildness is a gradual, insidious process.

In its Bison Conservation Initiative, the Department of Interior commits to maintaining the wild character of bison, allowing forces of natural selection to operate – to the extent possible. But a recent Department release (Foundations for Recognizing Bison as Wildlife) emphasizes that “not all forces of natural selection” are necessary for bison wildness. It provides little discussion of how human-caused artificial selection and genetic drift diminish and replace natural selection, of the many management practices that comprise artificial selection, that loss of natural selection leads to domestication of the species, or that possibilities for natural selection are “impossible” only because of economic or political constraints. A commitment to maximizing biological wildness, to the extent practicable, is not emphasized. Gradual depletion of wildness is not recognized. The Foundations document allows federal bison managers to rationalize and accept artificially maintained bison as “wild”.

The Foundations document implies that what is politically possible in preserving wildness is “good enough”. We see too many non-government conservation organizations embracing this idea. The public, often unwittingly, gives government agencies mandates while also providing little decision-space for their fulfillment. The legacy of wildness to future generations is at stake.   

Fish & Wildlife Service Manual Requires Federal Restoration of Biological Diversity and Biological Integrity on Charles M. Russell Refuge

 

 

In previous Coalition News items, going back at least 9 months, we have noted that restoration of public-trust, wild bison on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge has been mandated, supported and confirmed by Congress in the Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act (1997), by the Department of Interior’s 2008 Bison Conservation Initiative (recommitted in 2012), and by goals of the Refuge Conservation Plan (2012). Here, we add the Fish & Wildlife Service Manual (2008) as a source for these clear commitments.

The FWS Manual summarizes policy, and guides employees in the management of resources under Service supervision. Appropriate sections are based largely upon mandates of Congress in the Refuge Improvement Act. The Act mandates maintaining and restoring, where appropriate, the biological integrity and diversity of the federal Refuge System.

The Manual defines biological diversity as the variety of life and its processes, including genetic differences and the ecosystems in which they occur. It defines biological integrity as the composition, structure and functioning, at genetic, organism and community levels, comparable with historic conditions, including the natural biological processes that shape genomes, organisms and communities.

These mandates cannot be fulfilled on the CMR Refuge without restoring a large population of bison, as a keystone species managed for wildness and influencing habitats for other plants and animals over a large and diverse landscape. Despite persisting opposition to bison restoration in Montana, the Service has never claimed that such restoration is “not appropriate”.

The Manual states “biological diversity and integrity are critical components of wildlife conservation” and “We will restore lost or severely degraded elements of integrity and diversity at the refuge scale.” Despite these mandates and repeated commitments, the Service has been waiting many decades for the state of Montana to reintroduce public bison on the CMR Refuge.

That said, the Manual states that the Service will coordinate with the state wildlife agency in a timely and effective manner and will ensure that federal management plans are, to the extent practicable, consistent with state laws. Clearly, Refuge coordination with Montana on restoring bison to the CMR has not produced timely or effective results. Moreover, any such restoration of bison cannot be consistent with recent state laws and therefore could not be practicable.

It is time for the Fish & Wildlife Service to proceed, without Montana’s blessing, with restoration of bison on the CMR Refuge -- obeying Congressional mandates and fulfilling the Service’s stated commitments. No doubt, the current Montana administration would appeal to the courts. But past courts have established a federal prerogative over management of resources on designated federal lands (Nie et. al 1917), and the Refuge Improvement Act should supersede state laws.

For many years, federal natural resource agencies have ceded most of their management authority and obligations for wildlife population management on federal lands to the states, even to the extent of ignoring Congressional mandates. Restoring bison to the CMR Refuge is a clear and extreme case and deserves bold action that would result in a landmark court decision. The legal door to bison on the CMR is open; only a closed political door prevents federal action to fulfill federal mandates and, so far, empty written commitments of the Fish & Wildlife Service.

Nie, M., C. Barns, J. Haber, J. Joly, K. Pitt and S. Zellmer. 2017. Fish and wildlife management of federal lands: Debunking state supremacy. Environmental Law 47 (4): 1-126.