A highly anticipated update to how Yellowstone National Park manages bison is setting the stage to expand the animal’s range in Montana, tribes and conservationsts say.

After years of work, Yellowstone released its new bison management plan this summer. More than 27,000 people commented on the document, which calls for more bison compared to the previous plan from 24 years ago. It also incorporates management changes that have been put into effect over the past two decades, including a surge in bison hunting near park boundaries and a new program to transfer live, disease-free bison to tribal nations.

“We have come a very long way since the last bison management plan was signed in 2000,” Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly said in a release. “This new plan solidifies much of the progress made over the past two decades and provides a foundation for future decision making.”

The plan, written as an environmental impact statement, has raised questions about what an increased herd size in the national park means for management outside the park. 

Yellowstone analyzed three alternatives in developing the new plan and chose to use existing hunting and transfer efforts to manage for a herd size of 3,500 to 6,000 bison. The population has averaged about 5,200 for the past decade.

Tom McDonald, vice chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, called the new plan a step toward restoring buffalo on the larger landscape. 

Expanding where Yellowstone bison can go would help make tribal and state hunting safer, McDonald told Montana Free Press. Most hunting occurs outside the park’s north entrance, in Beattie Gulch, where bison are shot as they leave the park in winter searching for food. 

Each year, CSKT members receive between 100 and 400 hunting tags to harvest buffalo outside the park. More than 1,000 tags are distributed across all tribes that hold treaty rights to hunt buffalo, and that number has grown over the decades. 

McDonald said safety concerns necessitate seasoned hunters. Last year, a Nez Perce hunter was grazed by a stray bullet that ricocheted across the narrow gulch. Some groups have organized to stop the hunting, pointing to dangers for humans and high bison mortality in years that feature large migrations.

“As more people crowd the landscape, we do get hunters that just don’t want to go. They just don’t want to risk the headache of too many folks there,” McDonald said. “Which also points to the fact that we need to have more buffalo all over the landscape and be able to provide that, because the demand is there.” 

Josh Hemenway, wildlife program manager for Custer Gallatin National Forest, said Forest Service officials are supportive of having bison present on the forest year-round.

Currently, bison are allowed in tolerance zones outside northern and western Yellowstone. But allowing bison to disperse beyond those zones could help improve hunter safety in the “bottleneck” of Beattie Gulch, Hemenway said in an interview.

That hasn’t happened yet, but the 2022 Custer Gallatin Forest Plan outlined bison grazing as a future management goal. The new Yellowstone plan supports that vision, Hemenway said.

Hemenway said a combination of factors is limiting bison distribution currently. Balancing tribal treaty hunts with state regulations aimed at containing brucellosis creates “a complex challenge to try and sift through,” he said.  

Yellowstone Bison have historically been confined to the park due to concern that they can spread brucellosis to cattle. But as the new plan notes, updated research found has found that elk — whose movement in and out of the park is not restricted — have transmitted brucellosis to cattle more than two dozen times since 2000, while there has not been a single recorded case of bison-to-cattle transmission of the disease.

“I think that there’s a lot of interest in getting bison distributed out further. But everyone has their own concerns, intentions and ideas on how to make that happen. It just hasn’t quite lined up yet.”

Some preparation is already happening. Compared to 30 years ago, there are far fewer cattle grazing allotments on the forest that could conflict with bison, Hemenway said. Many allotments closed because of conflicts with grizzly bears, and the Forest Service has removed miles of fencing that could restrict migratory bison.

Future actions could remove more fencing and ensure that grasslands remain suitable habitat by addressing conifer encroachment and treating weeds, Hemenway said. Down the line, the agency would work to separate grazing livestock and bison both spatially and temporally. For example, bison could graze national forestland in winter while cattle are on lower-elevation private land.

Other groups are working beyond the public lands surrounding Yellowstone to return bison to tribes.

Chamois Andersen, a senior field representative with nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, said she’s thrilled the plan “explicitly describes the transfer program as being instrumental to Yellowstone’s ability to manage within that population range.” 

That opens the door to future private and government grant dollars to improve quarantine facilities and infrastructure for tribal herds, Andersen said. Defenders of Wildlife has helped fund wildlife-friendly fencing for the Fort Peck buffalo herd and paid for the truckers who drive the bison to Fort Peck. Other groups have supported the expenses too, including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Yellowstone Forever raising more than $500,000 to build the park’s quarantine facility for the Bison Conservation Transfer Program.

Since 2019, the program has transferred more than 400 disease-free bison to 26 tribes across the country. Bison are first quarantined in Yellowstone, then sent to the Fort Peck Reservation for assurance testing. From there, the animals are transferred to other tribes through the Intertribal Buffalo Council.  

Robbie Magnan, who runs the Fort Peck buffalo program, said expanding the transfer program would allow him to meet the high demand for buffalo. 

When tribes maintain their own herds, they can harvest buffalo year-round rather than having to go to Yellowstone in the winter to hunt. That’s significant because many ceremonies centered around buffalo take place in the summer, Magnan said. There’s also a year-round demand for meat to support programs on the reservation. 

Magnan said there is more demand for Yellowstone buffalo nationwide than supply. That’s true for Fort Peck, too—last year, nearly 500 people applied for the 50 buffalo hunting tags available on the reservation.

Alongside the praise, Yellowstone’s management of bison has also faced criticism.

Jared Pettinato, an attorney who filed litigation in 2019 to push the National Park Service to update the old plan, called the new approach “disappointing.” 

By continuing to limit their population growth and range, NPS and the Forest Service are not managing bison as wildlife and instead caving to the livestock industry and the state of Montana, he said.

“They had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something good for bison, for the tribes and for the American people, and they backed down in the face of Montana saying we don’t want to do that,” Pettinato said.

However, the Gianforte administration said the park service excluded state agencies from decision-making regarding the new plan and called it “yet another insult to the state of Montana.” 

Gianforte has previously threatened to sue over any plan that allows for a herd size over 3,000. A spokesperson for the governor told MTFP in mid-August the state was reviewing its options. 

This story was updated August 21, 2024, to clarify which groups have raised money for the Bison Conservation Transfer Program.

Note: This story originally appeared on Montana Free Press. It is published under a Creative Commons license.