BC

Locals mark 10 years since Mount Polley disaster

By Lauren Stallone
Posted August 5, 2024 

It’s been 10 years since the worst mine waste disaster in Canada’s history.

On Aug. 4, 2014, a massive tailings dam at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine in B.C.’s Interior collapsed. The incident about 56 kilometres northeast of Williams Lake sent over 20 million cubic metres of wastewater into nearby Quesnel Lake, Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek, and surrounding waterways.

Despite a decade having passed, residents in nearby Likely, B.C., say they’re still struggling with unresolved emotions about what happened and should be held accountable.

“The quality of the lake and the water have been and are continuing to deteriorate,” said Doug Watt, an area resident. “Frankly it’s a very strong feeling of frustration.”


Watt was there when disaster struck, and recalls the moments vividly.

“I was asleep and got a call around 6 o’clock in the morning from Likely Fire and Rescue and they told me that the dam had burst,” he told CityNews.

An aerial view shows the damage caused by a tailings pond breach near the town of Likely, B.C. Tuesday, August, 5, 2014, after the Mount Polley mine disaster a day prior. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

“I could hear it just like Niagara Falls from seven or eight kilometres down the lake.”

Watt says some residents have lived by the lake for over 50 years and are devastated to see what has happened since the collapse.

“The water’s cloudy, there’s algae bloom that never occurred before, there’s slime on the rocks,” he described.

He says many locals have opted to no longer drink the water from Quesnel Lake, which was their main water source. Despite these concerns, the government says the water meets drinking standards.

However, residents aren’t buying it.

“They’re polluting the lake, we are not going to drink it anymore,” said Watt.


Related articles:

Regulator fines engineers 8 years after Mount Polley disaster in B.C.
Mount Polley mine disaster five years later; emotions, accountability unresolved
Mount Polley mine disaster could happen again if laws don’t change: report

In a statement to CityNews, Minister of Energy, Mines, and Low Carbon Innovation Josie Osborne says “the government has taken significant steps to ensure the company responsible continues restoring and monitoring the impacted areas.”

“They have reformed B.C.’s regulations to establish what they say are some of the world’s most stringent safety and environmental standards,” Osborne continued.

The statement goes on to say “it was clear that B.C. had allowed a regulatory framework to exist that did not adequately protect the environment or people.”

“Economic development cannot happen without responsible management of industry, and we must maintain a world-class regulatory system to bring peace of mind to the mining sector and British Columbians,” Osborne’s statement concluded.

But even with the improvements made, the residents affected by the Mount Polley disaster are wary of the potential for things to go wrong.

“There are many mines in B.C. with very, very large tailings ponds. Every one of them is a liability,” said Watts.

 British Columbia

Residents worry about waterways 10 years after Mount Polley spill

'We're still picking up levels of metals like copper flowing down Quesnel River,' researcher says

Courtney Dickson · CBC News · Posted: Aug 04, 2024 

A aerial view shows the debris going into Quesnel Lake caused by a tailings pond breach near the town of Likely, B.C., on Aug. 5, 2014. (The Canadian Press)

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The local fire department was on the line when Doug Watt reached for his phone the morning of Aug. 4, 2014.  

"The lady at fire and rescue said that there's been an accident at the mine, the dam is broken, it's pouring into the lake, nobody knows what's happening so get your boat out of the water, don't drink the water and be prepared to evacuate because you don't know whether the lake is going to flood or not," he recalled. 

After he got off the phone with the fire department, Watt stepped outside and heard the roar of the dam breach about seven kilometres away from his home in Likely, B.C.

"It was quite disconcerting," he said.

The tailings dam at the Mount Polley mine, about 231 kilometres north of Kamloops, B.C., failed that day, sending toxic mine waste into nearby lakes and streams. It is widely regarded as one of the worst — if not the worst — mine disasters in Canadian history. 

Hazeltine Creek, B.C., on Aug. 27, 2014, three weeks after the Mount Polley Mine tailings spill. (Kieran Oudshoorn/CBC)

Mount Polley mine records filed with Environment Canada reported that hundreds of tonnes of arsenic, lead, copper and nickel flowed out in the sludge. 

• Mount Polley mine disaster 5 years later; emotions, accountability unresolved

On the 10-year anniversary of the spill, residents worry not enough has been done to remediate the site and prevent future disasters. 

WATCH | Perfect storm of problems, engineer says: 

Why the Mount Polley tailings pond breached

10 years ago

Duration2:25

Designers overlooked or dismissed test results

10 years later

Researcher Phil Owens said about 25 million cubic metres of tailings material ended up in Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake — the equivalent of 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, he said. 

And most of that is still sitting at the bottom of the lake, researchers have found. 

"This was an instantaneous catastrophic failure ... and yet still 10 years later, we're still picking up levels of metals like copper flowing down Quesnel River and getting into the water column of the lake," he said. "That is quite surprising."

WATCH | Fishers worry about salmon following Mount Polley spill: 

Mount Polley spill salmon concerns

10 years ago

Duration2:19

Fraser River fishermen say they're worried

Copper, he added, has been detected in zooplankton, a key food source for salmon and trout in the river.

"I would be concerned about eating the fish, particularly those fish that live in the system for a long time because it's now been 10 years," Owens said.

• Ecological impact of Mount Polley mine disaster confirmed by new study

Watt, who used to work in mining, said that while he still supports the industry, he believes the environment needs to be the top priority. 

"It's certainly opened my eyes to the immediate effect that a mine can have locally," he said.

WATCH | Residents raise concerns days after Mount Polley dam breach: 

Mount Polley: residents speak out

10 years ago

Duration2:26

People living near tailings pond aren't convinced it's safe

In 2014, B.C.'s environment ministry said it had repeatedly warned mining company Imperial Metals about the level of wastewater in the tailings pond at its Mount Polley mine prior to the breach, and then-NDP leader John Horgan said a previous report on Mount Polley's tailings pond noted a tension crack in the earthen dam.

A scathing auditor general report was released in May 2016, calling for an independent compliance and enforcement unit for the mining industry that would protect the environment from future disasters. 

Changes

Likely resident and biologist Richard Holmes said that shortly after the spill, he had high hopes for remediation and change in B.C.'s mining industry. But 10 years later, he said there's been little action. 

According to Imperial Metals, it has spent $70 million to clean up the Mount Polley spill site, which has gone toward removal of tailings and rebuilding the Hazeltine and lower Edney creeks, and building a new fish spawning and rearing habitat in Hazeltine Creek.

Mount Polley spill remediation work as seen from a back road near Quesnel Lake in August 2021. (Betsy Trumpener/CBC)

The company also says it repaired the Quesnel Lake shoreline, planted native trees and shrubs in the area and built an on-site rainbow trout hatchery to raise more trout for Polley Lake.

In 2021, two engineers were disciplined for actions that led to the breach. Engineers and Geoscientists B.C., the regulatory body that oversees engineers in the province, found that both had demonstrated unprofessional conduct. 

• B.C. could see more dam failures like Mount Polley without better regulation, report says

Last week, Minister of Energy, Mines and Low-Carbon Innovation Josie Osborne released a statement explaining what the province has done following the Mount Polley breach. 

Osborne said the province has created a chief auditor role, Mines Audit Unit and a Mines Investigation Unit. It has also established financial penalties for companies and, Osborne said, the province has reformed B.C.'s mining regulations. 

"For many people, that day 10 years ago is hard to forget," Osborne said in her statement, adding that the NDP government will continue to strengthen mining regulations and oversight. 

Damage caused by a tailings pond breach near the town of Likely, B.C., Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2014. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

But residents of the central B.C. community of about 350 people have watched Quesnel Lake continue to deteriorate in the years since the spill, Watt said. 

"People that have been here for 25 or 50 years can see that and lots of concern and very much frustration with the fact that the [province] is not listening to what we see out here."

Holmes said he would like the province to give legal standing to rivers and streams in B.C., similar to Magpie River in Quebec, which was granted legal personhood in 2021 for protection. 

Holmes also thinks provincial funding should be made available for independent research.

"Very little has changed as a result of this disaster and certainly not enough has changed, that's for sure."

Quakes Do Not Kill People, Bad Buildings Do

Infrastructure surge in the geologically fragile Himalayas

May 19, 2024 by Sci Dev Net Leave a Comment

 

By Ranjit Devraj

Early on Tuesday (April 23), Taiwan was hit by a series of earthquakes with the highest magnitude at 6.3. The latest tremor came less than three weeks after a magnitude 7.4 quake hit the island, damaging over 100 buildings and trapping dozens of people in collapsed tunnels

If an equally strong earthquake were to hit the tectonically unstable Himalayas, an even bigger catastrophe awaits with some 700 million people living along this gigantic fault line, an arc stretching from Afghanistan to Burma and taking in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India and Tibet.

The Himalayas, which separate Asian giants India and China, were created about 45 to 50 million years ago when the Indian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate to push up the world’s highest mountain range featuring Everest and K2.

“Earthquakes in the Himalayas pose a grave danger to thickly populated settlements in the alluvial plains of North India,” says C.P. Rajendran, adjunct professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, in Bangalore, India.

“Considering the current level of infrastructure and human activities in the region, the threat of earthquakes is of serious social and economic concern.”

Rajendran, an author of ‘The Rumbling Earth’, a newly released book on earthquakes on the sub-continent, warns that tunneling and road-building in the fragile Himalayas should be limited. It takes lessons from the 2015 Nepal quake which resulted in massive loss of infrastructure, as well as claiming 9,000 lives.

In November 2023, the Silkyara Bend-Barkot road tunnel being built in Uttarkashi, an important Hindu religious pilgrimage destination, collapsed. Rajendran said the tunnel was too close to the main tectonic fault line where the Indian plate had collided with the Eurasian plate.

The Nepal quake and the even more severe one that hit Pakistan’s Kashmir region in 2005 that killed more than 80,000 people indicate the need for preparedness. Rajendran says that while short-term predictions of quakes are not yet possible, their effects can be predicted and pragmatic measures such as seismically-sound building codes must be enforced.

The Rumbling Earth emphasises the need to enforce building codes in the densely-populated Indo-Gangetic Plains, a large bowl of alluvial sediment dotted with cities and towns powered by hydroelectric dams as well as thermal and nuclear power plants.

What drives the frenetic road and infrastructure building in the Himalayas?

Apart from popular measures to make it easier for Hindu pilgrimages to reach the so-called “abode of the gods” in the high mountains, there are strategic considerations along the disputed borders that India shares with China.

India and China are “locked in a frenzied infrastructure-building competition,” according to Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu, founder and CEO of the geopolitical and strategic cosmmunications firm, Magpie Advisory.

“The buildup suggests both sides have strategically decided to leverage peacetime to bolster their logistical capabilities for a potential war,” she writes in an article for the independent Liechtenstein-based Geopolitical Intelligence Services.

However, the issue of frenzied building activity in quake-prone zones is not exclusive to the Himalayas.

Safety non-compliance

Across the Asia Pacific region infrastructure and homes are rising up in seismically sensitive areas with governments seemingly reluctant to enforce safety codes for fear of slowing down development activity.

For example, a recent study conducted by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology and the Tokyo Institute of Technology on 100 high-rise buildings in Metro Manila and Cebu found several of them failed to conform to the national building code.

The Philippines falls in the ‘Ring of Fire’ around the Pacific Ocean rim which is marked by volcanic activity and seismic events as a result of overlapping tectonic plates. It includes Indonesia, Japan, the western seaboard of North America and Chile.

Studies of the Lombok and Plau quakes that hit Indonesia in 2018 showed that much of the damage caused to buildings and infrastructure was due to noncompliance with concrete reinforcement specifications.

A highly active faultline is the Great Sumatran Fault which, in 2004, generated a 9.3 magnitude earthquake and the Indian Ocean tsunami resulting in over 226,000 deaths and incalculable damage to infrastructure in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India, catching large populations and their governments unprepared.

In contrast, the September 2015 earthquake and tsunami that struck the central coast of Chile only caused 13 deaths. Chile and Japan are countries on the Ring of Fire where there are strict building codes and tall structures must be made to sway with seismic waves, rather than remain rigid.

If there is one lesson to be learned from past experiences of seismic events it is that, far more than quakes, it is poorly constructed buildings that kill people. Governments in the region must develop and enforce the necessary building regulations to prevent possible massive loss of life.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Asia & Pacific desk.

B.C. photographer captures snapshot of rare 'ghost bird' magpie

CBC
Fri, April 26, 2024 a

Clinton, B.C. photographer Amanda Nelson found herself in the right place at the right time when she captured a photo of what she believes is a leucistic magpie. (Submitted by Amanda Nelson - image credit)

Amanda Nelson says she found herself in the right place at the right time to capture a photo of a rare sight.

While visiting a friend, the photographer took a snapshot of what she believes is a leucistic magpie, often referred to as a ghost bird. Nelson, who lives in the Clinton area in B.C.'s Interior, said the bird had been living on her friend's property.

With white-coloured chests and grey wings, leucistic magpies stand out from their black-billed brethren.


"I've actually never seen one of these birds before. I've seen photos, but this is my first time actually seeing one in person," Nelson told CBC's Daybreak Kamloops with Shelley Joyce.

"I was so excited to get my camera and have it ready, but I wasn't prepared for it to take off like it did, so I only got two photos, but those two photos turned out so I was very excited."

Nancy Flood, an ornithologist and president of the Kamloops Naturalist Club, said leucistic magpies aren't to be confused with albino magpies.

"It's not an albino because it's not totally white and it doesn't have pink eyes," she said.

"Albinism, just like in people, is caused by a genetic mutation and it's really bad news for the birds. It causes blindness and causes their feathers to be weak, and they don't last very long … Although [leucism is] very rare, it's much more common than albinism."

Flood said leucistic birds are more common in larger cities because there are all kinds of contaminants in urban areas that can cause genetic mutations and damage melanin cells.

With white-coloured chests and grey wings, leucistic magpies lack the pigmentation of regular magpies, allowing them to stand out in comparison.

With white-coloured chests and grey wings, leucistic magpies stand out from their black-billed brethren. (Submitted by Amanda Nelson)

In 2015, Bird Studies Canada, the country's national bird conservation organization, named Edmonton, Alta., Canada's magpie capital due to its growing population.

In some cases, Flood said leucism can have advantages for male birds.

"Sometimes in birds, there's this thing called the 'rare male effect,' where if birds look unusual, for some reason, they're 'sexier' to the ladies," she said.

Nelson said her interest in photography started in her youth. She only recently got back to the hobby a couple of years ago. She also has a love for birds. It amazes her to watch them, she said.

"I never thought I'd see one," she said of the leucistic magpie.

"You never really expect to find something like this. A lot of the time, patience pays off, but sometimes [you've] got to be in the right place at the right time."

Global Pet Craze Is Becoming a Major

Contributor to the Extinction Crisis

BY PETER CHRISTIE   MARCH 6, 2024

Photo by Karina Vorozheeva

In 2019, an independent international science group—the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services—announced that about 1 million species around the world are threatened with extinction. The number, based on a consensus by hundreds of experts and other researchers from 50 countries, made headlines around the world when it was included in the group’s global assessment of biodiversity.

One in every five backboned species we know of is at risk of being erased from the earth, and each year, say scientists, about 52 different mammals, birds, and amphibians move one species-at-risk category closer to oblivion. Many biologists believe countless other species are vanishing even before science—so far familiar with about 1.7 million of the planet’s many millions of living species—knows they exist.

Take insects, for example. Estimates suggest four out of every five insect species remain to be discovered, but researchers fear that insect declines could put more than 40 percent of these at risk of disappearing within decades, according to a 2019 study. In 2017, a German study made news around the world—the favored headline was “insect Armageddon”—when it found that the abundance of flying insects in German nature reserves had fallen to just a quarter of what it was 27 years ago, as measured by weight.

Extinction Cascade: Ecological Tipping Point

It’s no small matter. Some warn of what they call an “extinction cascade,” whereby the loss of one species, such as a butterfly or a bee, leads to the secondary extinction of a plant it pollinates, which, in turn, means the end of a specialist plant-eating animal, and so on. As more and more of the living pieces in an ecosystem go missing, the system itself risks breaking down.

Try removing parts of your car one by one while still expecting it to get you somewhere. To Gerardo Ceballos, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, our general and seemingly growing disregard for the sanctity of life’s variety is like that. If we fail to stop more creatures from vanishing, the natural ecological functions of the world—the ones that keep our air and water clean and our food supply healthy—will most certainly falter. Some scientists warn that our mounting environmental insults may soon take us to a worldwide ecological “tipping point.” Wildlife may be feeling the worst of it now, says Ceballos during an interview, but the reckoning for our own species is probably not far off.

Ceballos, who helped introduce the world to the possibility that we’re seeing a sixth mass extinction, says that “many scientists in many different fields feel there may be a collapse in civilization if this trend continues in the next 20 to 30 years.” His matter-of-factness is chilling.

Population Explosion: Humanity Dwarfs the Wild World

Sometime in the mid-to-late 1800s—when Charles Dickens was chronicling the crowded squalor of London, and Charles Darwin was championing his queer notion of “descent with modification”—the size of humanity’s great mass eclipsed that of all the wild land mammals on earth.

The human population, according to one remarkable estimate, had grown until there were more of us by weight than the combined mass of all our wild mammal brethren. In the race to become the world’s greatest life force, we had finally streaked past nature. Soon, we will leave it behind in our dust.

By 1900, we weighed one-third more than wild mammals, and by the end of the following century—after the total weight of mammalian wildlife plummeted by half and the mass of people quadrupled—we became 10 times more abundant (by weight). Now, 8 billion of us dwell on this busy planet, and by 2050, the number is expected to rise close to 10 billion. We have arrived at a point at which we absolutely dwarf the wild world. Like the proverbial bull in a china shop, we can scarcely move without breaking something.

Human Impact on Earth’s Biodiversity

Unfortunately, we’re a fidgety species. More than three-quarters of the earth’s land surface (not including Antarctica) and almost 90 percent of oceans have been directly affected by what we’ve done so far. Between 1993 and 2009 alone, the total wilderness flattened to build new farms, towns, and mines around the world equaled an area larger than India. With the loss of these wild lands, we are also losing wildlife; many consider our changes to the global landscape—for agriculture and development—amount to the single greatest threat to life’s diversity in millions of years. But there are others.

Our surging population now means excessive hunting, fishing, and harvesting (that is, taking more wildlife than can replenish itself) threaten more than 70 percent of the species facing extinction around the world.

Climate change isn’t helping. A fifth of the world’s land surface is expected to see large-scale shifts in climate by the end of the 21st century, thanks to the greenhouse gas consequences of our fondness for oil. Plants and animals that can’t stand the heat will be forced to move or perish. Meanwhile, our penchant for polluting and spreading invasive species and diseases only seems to be gathering steam.

Biophilia and Pet Ownership

People, after all, will be people. And people—the growing billions of us—will keep pets.

There’s the rub. In his inimitably hopeful way, biologist Edward O. Wilson imagined a growing awareness of our innate biophilia would make our species—even in our clumsy, outsized dominance of the world—more caring about the nonhuman life around us. Our hardwired wonder for other beings was supposed to add delicacy to the way we manage our shared planet. Instead, our biophilia may have found another outlet: pets.

While one estimate suggests the total number of wild backboned creatures on earth has been cut by roughly 70 percent in the last 50 years, the population of pets (at least dogs and cats in the United States) has more than doubled during the same period.

There’s no sign the trend is slowing. Thirty million puppies and kittens are born in the United States each year—a ratio of seven pets born for every human birth. More pet birds, lizards, and other exotic beasts are bred or brought from the jungle. We may finally be acknowledging our genetic need for and attachment to animals—as Wilson wished—but not in the wild; we’ve brought them into our homes instead. Our soaring numbers of pets have become, as author and University of Bristol professor John Bradshaw suggests, our wildlife on demand.

As Urbanization Grows, Pets Replace the Role of Nature

Our relationship with the natural world, meanwhile, is growing more estranged. More than half of the world’s population already dwells in cities, and by 2050, more than two out of every three of us will be leading urban lives. The proportion of people who will ever set foot in the wilderness is growing smaller. Those who’ve met a moose on a trail or watched a heron over an evening marsh are becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of us. For the growing majority—among our swelling numbers in cities around the world—dogs, cats, and other pets are our chief experience and familiarity with animals.

It’s the pets we meet—and the pets we keep—that have our attention now. We’re drawn to them in the way we’ve always been drawn to other living creatures. And, as Wilson predicted, the urge remains seemingly ancient, deep-seated, and stirring. The only difference is that the animals we’re focused on aren’t wild; they live with us. Increasingly, we seem to prefer having animals in our lives to visiting them in theirs.

Pets’ Impact on Wildlife

That’s not all. Pets and the pet industry are not only replacing the role of nature in our human experience but they’re also devastating wildlife directly.

In myriad ways, pets pose a clear threat to the wonderful, wild splendor of the rest of life on earth: Cats and dogs stalk wildlife as human-subsidized killers; jungles are robbed of animals to satisfy the pet trade; diseases deadly to wild creatures are spread by globe-trotting pets; pets released in non-native habitats (such as pythons in the Everglades) eat every wild animal in sight or squeeze them out as indomitable competitors; and the pet food business, with its insatiable demand, drains our oceans of vital forage fish.

The impacts are considerable. Over the past five centuries, pets have been among the leading culprits in clobbering literally hundreds of species of threatened and extinct birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians around the globe.

Domestic cats alone have helped obliterate more than 60 species in that period—including the Stephens Island wren of New Zealand and the Hawaiian crow—creatures lost forever from the rich variety of our living planet. Dogs have been linked to the extinction of up to 11 species. Other pets, and the pet industry that supports them, have been linked to other dwindling wildlife populations around the world.

Irony: The Wild World Needs Pet People

Our biophilia has become fraught. Our love of pets is contributing to what is arguably the greatest environmental crisis faced by global ecosystems. The irony is that pet people are the same animal people the wild world needs to help get it back on its feet. Pet owners care more about animals; they’re more likely to watch birds or to become enthralled by nature documentaries. The only problem is our affection for the animals we hold close at home is obscuring our view of those out of reach in nature. We’re fond of our pets.

They’re part of our families. But the wild creatures of the world are vital, too. They’re the machinery of natural systems and hold the keys to our survival. They’re part of our evolutionary history and essential to how we think. They’re wild and, unlike pets, remain aloof from our pedestrian lives and human routine: Untamed, their mystery survives, complex, inscrutable, and tangled in nature’s vast, delicate web.

Unnatural Companions: Rethinking Our Love of Pets in an Age of Wildlife Extinction © 2020 by Peter Christie is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C. This excerpt was adapted and produced for the web by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Peter Christie is an award-winning science journalist, pet owner, and author who writes frequently about conservation. Christie is a Science in Society Journalism Award winner (Canada), a 2008 fellow with the U.S.-based Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, and a recipient of the 2015 Schad Foundation grant for conservation journalism. He is a contributor to the Observatory.

Domestication is the Greatest Threat to Wild Bison

If there are “excess” Yellowstone bison, at the very least they should be transferred to public lands, not privatized. 

BY GEORGE WUERTHNER   MARCH 6, 2024

Wild bison, Grand Teton National Park. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Recently news media announced the transfer of 141 of Yellowstone’s bison to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. Most of the media and many conservation groups hailed this as “restoring” bison to the plains. What is not said is that this transfer to the tribe, and all other previous transfers are destroying the wild bison genome.

The second issue is the failure of the federal government to protect it Public Trust obligations. Yellowstone’s bison belong (if one can suggest wildlife belongs to anyone) to the American people. Yet they are being privatized when given to tribal reservations.

Yellowstone’s bison are of international significance in part because they have been the least domesticated buffalo in the West. They are an evolutionary heritage that is priceless.

They have been subject to native predators, harsh winters, droughts, had natural selection in breeding and free to migrate—until they reach the border of the Park.

Domestication is the biggest threat to wild bison. And nearly all government and private policies are eroding the wild bison genome.

The bison transferred to Fort Peck Indian Reservation will be held in a 13,000 acre “ranch”. Since 2019, the Yellowstone Bison Conservation Transfer Program has transferred 414 bison to Fort Peck. A record 116 animals were transferred this February: 108 males, four females and four calves. The tribe offers canned bison hunts.

These animals are likely to be artificially fed; perhaps selectively bred and killed, disrupting natural population dynamics. Since they will be held in a small enclosure (13,000 acres is nothing to a bison) they may lose the tendency to migrate which is perhaps their greatest evolutionary adaptation to an unpredictable environment.

All these non-Yellowstone herds are too small to avoid inbreeding depression and random genetic losses.

In short, on-going bison transfers and slaughter of bison at the park border will continue the erosion of Yellowstone bison wildness and they will be domesticated.

Though proclaiming bison transfers are “saving” bison is like promoting fish hatcheries and asserting we are “saving” wild salmon. In fact, numerous studies have documented that hatchery production is contributing to the decline of wild fish.

However, when bison are transferred to Indian reservations or killed on the border of the park, this removes the buffalo biomass from the ecosystem. By reducing bison population within the park, it lessens competition for forage and allows the remaining bison to be less vulnerable to predators or dying from such influences as starvation.

This in turn harms the scavengers like magpie, ravens, eagles, wolves’ grizzly bears and coyotes.

Due to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, the Federal government is not obliged to adhere to the state’s prohibition against restoration of bison on public land in Montana. The federal government can legally promote migration of wild bison to the Custer Gallatin NR and other federal holdings around Yellowstone. Indeed its Public Trust obligation means it should override state objections.

If there are “excess” Yellowstone bison, at the very least they should be transferred to public lands, not privatized. Establishing several other “wild” herds will preclude the loss of this genome if there were a disease outbreak or some other factor contributed to the loss of Yellowstone’s bison herds.

The Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge, and adjacent BLM lands like the Missouri River Breaks NM offers a superb opportunity to establish another free-ranging bison herd. There are other lands in Wyoming and Idaho that are also suitable for bison recolonization like the Red Desert, Upper Green River, and Birch Creek/INL lands in Idaho.

Wild bison deserve a better future than being turned into domesticated livestock. We don’t have to accept the current policies. We can demand that Yellowstone bison be permitted to migrate beyond Yellowstone borders without being slaughtered, as well as establishing several other large conservation herds that are subject to evolutionary processes and avoid the continuing slide towards domesticated animals.

George Wuerthner has published 36 books including Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.