Restoring Bison to Montana’s Public Lands
February 18, 2025
Cottonwood has asked a federal court to allow it and the Sierra Club Montana Chapter to intervene on behalf of the National Park Service to defend a legal challenge to the 2024 Yellowstone Bison Management Plan brought by the State of Montana. The 2024 Plan is the result of a court order that Cottonwood secured in 2020 that required the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (“APHIS”) to prepare additional analysis for the 2000 Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) in light of new information and science. The National Park Service offered public comment, prepared new analysis, and issued the 2024 Bison Management Plan. The U.S. Forest Service and APHIS have violated the 2020 court order by failing to complete additional analysis for the 2000 IBMP. Cottonwood has asked the federal court that issued the 2020 order to re-open the case and require the federal agencies to complete the analysis.
The State of Montana was originally named as a defendant in Cottonwood’s lawsuit that resulted in the 2020 order, but repeatedly told the court that it did not have jurisdiction to require the state to prepare new analysis. Now the State of Montana has filed a lawsuit that complains it was not adequately consulted. Montana’s shenanigans border on bad faith. Montana’s lawsuit says it is foreseeable that it will reduce the area where bison are allowed to roam on federal land in Montana. The State’s allegation ignores the science that says elk, not bison, are transmitting brucellosis to cattle all over Montana. Brucellosis is a disease that causes cattle to abort fetuses. Cottonwood seeks to allow Yellowstone bison to freely roam on public land anywhere elk are allowed to go. Cattle originally brought brucellosis to America and transmitted it to wildlife. There has never been a documented case of a bison transmitting brucellosis to cattle in the wild. The State of Montana previously told the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the area where it allows bison to roam on federal land in Montana is based on an “admittedly arbitrary political boundary.”
Montana’s threat to reduce the small area on federal land north of Yellowstone National Park where bison are allowed to roam has serious safety implications. Tribes from all across the United States gather in an area known as Beattie Gulch to shoot bison. Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks has said the hunt is dangerous and threat of death or injury is real. At least one hunter has shot another. Bullets whiz across the road and a hunter has previously been charged with criminal endangerment. This situation would be fixed if the State of Montana allowed bison to freely roam on federal lands in Montana.
In addition to working to defend the 2024 Bison Management Plan, Cottonwood has also filed a cross-claim against the Park Service for failing to consider the science that it prepared with APHIS that indicates bison do not need to be quarantined for more than 300 days before they can be transferred to Native American Tribes. Every year, the Park Service captures, quarantines, and tests bison for brucellosis. Bison that test brucellosis-free are then transferred to the Tribes. The quarantine period has previously taken up to 900 days, but the new science says bison do not need to be held for longer than 300 days. The study found that it would take 30 years to potentially miss one brucellosis-positive bison out of over 8,000 bison enrolled in the quarantine program. Reducing the quarantine days from 900 to 300 would allow for better management of bison in line with the seasonal movement of herds, and triple the amount of bison available for tribal distribution, thus increasing tribal access to an important resource while effectively managing bison population.
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