<+>=<+>KOLA Newslist<+>=<+>
 

[article provided by Pat Morris. Thanks!]

Leave defiant bull alone
BILLINGS GAZETTE EDITORIAL OPINION

http://www.billingsgazette.com/ - 2/22/00

Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land! - Sir Walter Scott

The poet's words have lived for 200 years. They ring still with truth. They
come to mind in reading an Associated Press story about a bull buffalo that
has taken up residence this winter in a thick stand of trees outside
Yellowstone Park.
The final three words "outside Yellowstone Park" are those that so inflame
Montana Department of Livestock officials.
Livestock officials are bent on keeping buffalo and the brucellosis they may
bear - a "gift" from imported cattle - inside Yellowstone Park. So this errant
buffalo is an irritation.
The bull offers virtually no threat of brucellosis - none. There have been no
documented cases of buffalo returning their disease in the wild to the
imported cattle from which it sprung.
Scientists do believe that cattle, eating the placenta of birthing bison cows,
could become infected. But buffalo don't birth calves in February; bulls
never. And cows don't come into heat when they're calving, so even the most
lovelorn bison seeking an interspecific interlude would find himself
unrequited.
This bull is grazing in a meadow. He plows through three feet of snow to get
at the grass, but the winter has been relatively gentle. The snow doesn't have
a hard crust, and buffalo are built for surviving Montana winters.
Still, the bull is, well, irritating. Montana policy allows no buffalo outside
the park, not even those that pose no danger to cattle herds. So officials
from the Department of Livestock have been attempting to haze the buffalo back
into the park. That's haze as in "to persecute or harass with meaningless,
difficult, or humiliating tasks," according to Microsoft's dictionary.
They have attempted to chase the buffalo on snowmobiles, with blank-loaded
shotguns. They came once on snowshoes, but ultimately decided that it is not
the height of reason to chase a buffalo through deep snow on snowshoes.
This buffalo isn't dumb. He runs into heavy timber to elude the hazers. When
they have gone, he comes out to eke a winter's sustenance on that meadow, to
drink from a winter stream.
It is difficult not to attribute human characteristics to the bull. We have
all felt crowded by this rule or that, felt the heavy hand of bureaucracy on
our heads. It is difficult not to think of the bull as standing up for his
principles: "This is my own, my native land."
It is difficult, too, to think of the hazers as serving a higher purpose.
Persecution, harassment and inflicting meaningless, difficult or humiliating
tasks is not the stuff of which heroes are made.
 

<+>=<+>
Information Pages: http://users.skynet.be/kola/index.htm
Online Petition: http://kola-hq.hypermart.net
Greeting Cards: http://users.skynet.be/kola/cards.htm
<+>=<+>
if you want to be removed from the KOLA
Email Newslist, just send us a message with
"unsub" in the subject or text body
<+>=<+>