WASHINGTON, DC– National conservation and animal-protection groups are urging a moratorium on killing the nation’s last free-ranging buffalo herd as the National Park Service this week sent nearly 200 Yellowstone National Park buffalo to the slaughterhouse when they were about to wander outside the park in search for food.

This week, National Park Service staff captured the buffalo near Yellowstone National Park’s northern entrance, less than 10 miles from Gardiner, Montana. According to eyewitnesses, many of the buffalo had not crossed the boundary of Yellowstone when park rangers herded them into a holding pen. This is the first time the park service has used the pen since the winter of 1996-1997, when it killed approximately 1,100 buffalo.

“This represents a radical departure from the Park Service’s mandate to protect park resources for future generations,” said Tony Jewett, a senior regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. “The service has switched from protecting these animals to an aggressive policy of sending them to slaughter. There is something terribly wrong at Yellowstone.”

In severe winter weather, Yellowstone buffalo wander near and beyond the park’s boundaries in search of food at lower elevations. Over the last few decades, Montana’s Department of Livestock has harassed and killed buffalo when they cross the unmarked park boundary into Montana. The extreme form of wildlife management is used allegedly to protect nearby cattle from brucellosis. However, this disease has never been transmitted from free-roaming bison to cattle, most of which are vaccinated. Further, park rangers did not test the buffalo it captured for the disease before herding the animals into trucks.

“It’s as if the Interior Department has made a calculated decision to draw a bulls-eye around Yellowstone and start firing,” said Caroline Kennedy, director of special projects for Defenders of Wildlife. “Secretary of Interior Gale Norton is cutting the heart out of our nation’s oldest national park and turning her back on decades of commitment to protect and resurrect one of America’s greatest living symbols and irreplaceable part of our nation’s heritage.”

At one time, buffalo were an integral part of the culture and history of the American West, and central to the lives and religion of Native American tribes. In the early 19th century, several million buffalo roamed the Great Plains, but by the mid-1890s, only a few dozen remained. The Yellowstone buffalo herd was the only free-roaming buffalo herd not exterminated by the late 1800s, and it remains the only free-range herd in the country. The buffalo’s recovery from near extinction is considered one of the greatest conservation success stories in American history.

The National Park Service slaughter of the Yellowstone buffalo has drawn the attention of Representative Nick Rahall (WV), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Resources. In a March 5 letter to Fran Maniella, director of the National Park Service, Rahall asked Maniella for justification for the recent killings, stating that “the slaughter of wildlife unique to a National Park is so antithetical to the NPS mission that detailed information regarding the justifications for this activity is needed.”

“These buffalo were rounded up and shipped to slaughter by the very agency that is mandated to protect them,” said Bette Stallman, wildlife scientist at the Humane Society of the United States. “The fact that they were not even tested for exposure to disease before being shipped from the park to slaughter indicates that this is more about politics than any legitimate disease risk.”

Charles Clusen, director of the Natural Resource Defense Council’s National Parks Program said the recent action was “unconscionable.” “The National Park Service killing bison is akin to a doctor killing his patients. Congress mandated the park service to be the steward, not the executioner, of our last free-roaming buffalo herd. It is unconscionable that the park service is stopping these buffalo from roaming onto lands near Yellowstone that the federal government purchased specifically for buffalo winter habitat.”

Conservation groups say there is a better way to manage the herd without resorting to killing buffalo. They recommend that state and federal authorities:

• Allow buffalo to roam freely on the easement lands recently purchased specifically for buffalo habitat.

• Allow buffalo to utilize unused cattle allotments west of Yellowstone Park.

• Phase out cattle grazing on public land north and west of Yellowstone, which would provide additional winter habitat for Yellowstone buffalo.