Greater Yellowstone Coalition supports updates to bison management at Yellowstone National Park

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) stands with nearly 75 percent of Montanans who want to see bison managed as wildlife and restored to appropriate Tribal and public lands.  

GYC, a conservation organization based in Bozeman, Montana, with offices in Idaho and Wyoming, recently submitted its comments to Yellowstone National Park as the Park Service drafts a new Bison Management Plan to update its 23-year-old Interagency Bison Management Plan.  

"It's clear the vast majority of Montanans and citizens of this country support a balanced, modern approach to conserving Yellowstone's iconic bison, and so do we,” GYC Executive Director Scott Christensen said. “Over the past nearly quarter century, there have been significant changes in the Gardiner and Hebgen basins that have opened more critical winter habitat for bison, new management tools developed like the Bison Conservation Transfer program, and major advances in science. We commend Yellowstone National Park for recognizing the need to update its approach to bison management in ways that reflect current conditions.”  

Recent, representative public opinion research by Breakthrough Campaigns found that 74 percent of Montanans believe bison should be managed as wildlife and restored to select public lands in the state. In the metro area closest to Yellowstone National Park, Bozeman, that number jumped to 82 percent.  

As Yellowstone National Park develops a contemporary plan to manage our national mammal, GYC and its 110,000 supporters, wants to see a plan that: 

• Manages bison like wildlife, not livestock.  

• Supports the ecological and cultural restoration of bison on the Greater Yellowstone landscape, and on Tribal and appropriate public lands across the country. 

• Ends ship-to-slaughter as a population management tool. 

• Expands and improves public and Tribal bison hunting.  

• Supports the natural migration of bison onto and throughout appropriate public lands within tolerance areas, where few cattle remain.  

• Upholds and adequately supports Tribal treaty rights. 

• Supports bison as an economic asset for local communities.  

“From just two-dozen Yellowstone bison at the turn of the 20th century to roughly 5,000 today, it’s time that bison are managed like all other wild species in our region,” Christensen said. “We urge Yellowstone National Park to put in place a balanced, forward-thinking strategy to manage bison for future generations.”   

GYC’s comments on Yellowstone National Park’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement for a new Yellowstone Bison Management Plan can be found here.  

GREATER YELLOWSTONE COALITION is a conservation organization that works with all people to protect the lands, waters, and wildlife of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, now and for future generations. GYC has a long history of reviewing mining projects to protect a vision of a healthy and intact Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, where critical lands, waters, and wildlife are adequately protected. Visit GYC online at greateryellowstone.org.