Yellowstone National Park’s bison population draws millions of visitors from around the world each year and represents one of this country’s greatest conservation success stories. Now, for the first time in nearly 25 years, the park has released a new bison management plan, marking a positive step forward in conserving and restoring America’s national mammal.

This new plan signals an improvement from the 2000 Interagency Bison Management Plan, with its outdated and politically driven population objective of 3,000 bison.

GYC has long advocated for managing bison as a valued wildlife species and moving away from the ship-to-slaughter model of population control. This plan strides toward that goal by keeping more bison alive and building upon the past 20 years of progress made in Yellowstone bison conservation. For example, the recently expanded Bison Conservation Transfer Program supports a growing effort to use Yellowstone bison to restore herds on Tribal lands across the country.

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition and other conservation groups also operate a successful coexistence program that works with landowners to fund conflict reduction projects in the Gardiner and Hebgen basins, completing more than 50 projects in recent years. Tribal Nations are now major players in buffalo restoration, as well as population management through treaty right hunts.

The new plan makes important adjustments to bison management, but it also has limitations, primarily that it only addresses animals within Yellowstone National Park. The park also faces strong opposition from the State of Montana, including a demand to cut the bison population nearly in half.

This despite nearly 75 percent of Montanans supporting bison conservation and restoration.

With the vast majority of Montanans and the American public squarely in support of this iconic animal, it is time for a new era in bison conservation that focuses on the ecological and cultural restoration of this uniquely American wildlife species.  

We want to extend our enormous gratitude to our advocates who took action during this process! Now, thanks to your voice, Yellowstone bison have a modern management plan to support their future in this ecosystem.

If you’d like to support GYC’s bison conservation work and more, please consider a gift that helps make our efforts possible.

—Emilie Ritter, Director of Communications and Marketing (Bozeman, Montana)