!["Big Medicine, Sacred White Bison: born, lived, died on the land of the Flathead Nation, his sacred body now in the State Capitol (Helena, Montana) must be returned to his rightful place, our Tribal homelands as a symbol of Montana's willingness and intent to maintain respectful relations with all Indians." "Our people's Treaty Rights are not being honored by capture and slaughter and artificial limitation of bison range and habitat. No wholesale trucking and slaughter of bison can be substituted for Treaty hunting rights, which include a healthy range and habitat for the original pure strain of bison to survive," Dubay continued, adding: "Bison are not cattle. Limiting or fencing the bison or isolating herds in quarantine to appease the cattle industry is not good management policy. Range for bison should be expanded to include all usual and customary lands and territories that our peoples inhabited and used in a balanced and respectful way since time immemorial." Yellowstone buffalo are America's last wild, migratory herds and the most important bison population that exists. They are the last to identify as a wildlife species and ecologically extinct throughout their native range. They've been added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List for being "threatened with near extinction," and even Montana designates the species "in greatest conservation need" with conditions "making [bison] vulnerable to global extinction."](http://protectthewolves.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/yellowstone-wolves-whats-at-stake.jpg)
Twenty years ago this month, biologists in Yellowstone National Park set radio collars on six wolves, opened the door of their pen, and watched them bound away. Today, 95 wolves in 11 packs live in Yellowstone, hunting elk, deer, and bison. The wolves’ return set in motion a natural—and therefore uncontrolled—experiment that is still unfolding, and which offers biologists a rare opportunity to observe predator-prey relations among large mammals. Yet the wolves are only one of many such natural experiments playing out in Yellowstone, and some scientists are cautious about attributing all the park’s recent changes solely to these carnivores. Although most people think of Yellowstone as a pristine wilderness barely touched by people, at least in its early days, nothing could be further from the truth. Since its founding in 1872, the park has been treated as a living laboratory, subject to shifting biases and ideas about how best to manage it. From shooting every last wolf to managing the bison like livestock, each intervention has had long-lasting consequences that scientists are still trying to understand and correct
How wolves have—and haven’t—transformed Yellowstone | Science/AAAS | News.