Tens of millions of wild buffalo, or bison, once thundered across the Great Plains in herds several miles wide. By the early 1900s, however, just a couple of dozen remained in the wild, and they were protected inside Yellowstone National Park. The Yellowstone population numbers roughly 3,000 today. These animals are the only continuously wild buffalo that remain in America; they are the last direct link to those epic herds of the past. Yet each spring, many of Yellowstone's free-roaming buffalo, including pregnant females and newborns, are "hazed" and sometimes slaughtered by government agents when they wander out of the Park in search of food and calving areas. In 2008, nearly a third of the buffalo population was wiped out.

The five federal and state agencies that oversee Yellowstone's buffalo – National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, and the Montana Department of Livestock -- justify their "haze and slaughter" approach on the grounds that wild buffalo might transmit the disease brucellosis to domestic cattle -- but there has never been a single documented case of such transmission. There is also significant habitat near the Park where cattle are never present (e.g., the Horse Butte peninsula), yet buffalo are also cruelly hazed from these areas -- and precious resources and taxpayer dollars are wasted along the way.

As part of our Yellowstone/Rockies BioGems campaign, NRDC is fighting to stop the senseless hazing and killing of Yellowstone's buffalo and working to put in place a sensible, compassionate long-term management plan that would allow this national icon to survive and thrive. Tell the U.S. Forest Service to be the buffalo's guardian and provide year-round habitat for the animals.