Yellowstone Bison

Bull Bison Yellowstone N.P., originally uploaded by rlw5663.

The bison that leave Yellowstone National Park are being killed at a record pace this year.

At first light on Tuesday, at the end of a closed road, past a boneyard of junk cars, trailers and old cabins, more than 60 of the park’s wild bison were being loaded on a semi-trailer to be shipped to a slaughterhouse.

With heavy snow still covering the park’s vast grasslands, hundreds of bison have been leaving Yellowstone in search of food at lower elevations. A record number of the migrating animals — 1,195, or about a quarter of the park’s population — have been killed by hunters or rounded up and sent to slaughterhouses by park employees. The bison are being killed because they have ventured outside the park into Montana and some might carry a disease called brucellosis, which can be passed along to cattle.

The large-scale culling, which is expected to continue through April, has outraged groups working to preserve the park’s bison herds, considered by scientists to be the largest genetically pure population in the country. It has also led to an angry exchange between Montana state officials and the federal government over a stalled agreement to create a haven for the bison that has not received the needed federal financing.

“When they leave the park they have nowhere to go,” said Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a Democrat. “This agreement would have given them a place to go.”

A 1.5 million dollar appropriation was killed by Montana's republican congressman.