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Posted by Hoot (108.230.8.130) on 20:23:41 04/01/14
from Douglas Henderson
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The National Park Service experienced another setback last night in its negotiations revolving around the Gardiner High School funding dispute, when it was disclosed that a student football homecoming project central to the issue was ruined by apparent earthquake damaged to the roof of the old YP Company laundry building. Recent melting snows flooded a room where full-sized outlines of dozens of bison constructed and painted on plywood over the winter had been stored. The park service had been in urgent discussions to appropriate the plywood cut-outs in exchange for forgiving the Gardiner High School's many years of government funding overpayments.
The school's students were devastated by the loss, but this event now puts even greater pressure on Yellowstone National Park, in light of last week's disclosure that a clerical error had resulted in the park shipping too many bison to slaughter. Jobe Vakaunt, a Yellowstone naturalist close to the matter, has stated publicly that someone apparently transposed the figures representing the maximum number of bison the park should support with those to be managed during the winter migrations onto lands outside Yellowstone. When the error was noticed late in the winter, a hasty aerial surveillance flight determined there might only now be some 600 living bison in the park. "We need those cut-outs fast, as the interior roads are open now and people are going to notice, eventually", he said. "We need to find more plywood and hope the students can help us out."
Sally Salvo, a park ranger and gate attendant at Yellowstone's north entrance, says the public's park experience is at risk if the cut-outs aren't in place in time. "We started using a few bison cut-outs in the years following the Burn's National Park Public TV series, to see if they enhanced the wildlife immersion that visitors now expect from their cars, she said. "Generally, no one can tell they aren't real if they stay at least 25 yards away. It really works. Just like with live bison, tourists get ticketed if they get too close to the cut-outs." she added.
At a public meeting in Gardiner last night, numerous people comment on the bison management snafu. Phil Hoppeluss, a sometimes successful sheep rancher in Jardine, expressed frustration with the government for thinking it had any business controlling the sprawling national park for everybody else. "This just shows the government doesn't know what it's doing. They did this by mistake--it's hilarious. And they shut all us job creators out. He said he could do better running the park, declaring, "First the bison, then the wolves."
Jus Spalding, a local rancher in upper Paradise Valley, said the overkill came in the nick of time to save his herd from brucellosis exposure. "What does the government think it's doing letting all these diseased animals wander over our public lands? What are they good for? Yellowstone is a snowmobile heaven going to waste." he said in exasperation. "All the north loop road in the park is good for in the winter now is to clean the carbon from my Hemi."
When questioned by some environmentalists at the Gardiner meeting, Vakaunt revealed there had been some anecdotal communications of particularly good hunting along Yellowstone's northern boundary. He did state that currently all the park's bison were safely inside Yellowstone. Montana Fish and Game and the Department of Livestock representatives present refused to comment on the matter, though one official was heard to remark that they might only need a small helicopter budget this year.
Asked to speak on the native tribe's role in taking bison wandering from the park, a chief and senior council member of the northern tribes named Running Badger made the observation that the Great Spirit had been good to them this last winter. "I have never seen so many buffalo in front of my gun sight." He paused, as if to recall the recent hunt, then added, "Thinking back, the gullies did seem too small this year for all the gut piles."
Yellowstone's superintendent Dan Wenk, when contacted after an absence from his desk about the current remaining buffalo numbers said simply, "Wow." Due to personnel shortages, he had been operating a road grader clearing snow on the road between Swan Lake Flat and Madison Junction for the last few weeks. " I'm only just getting my hearing back", he said.
As for the likelihood of erecting enough full-sized bison cut-outs in the next month, Vakaunt told a reporter, "We'll do the best we can and what's best for the school. I'm still trying to discourage the local Gardiner Atlatl Club from using what has become for us a limited plywood supply. They want Mammoth cut-outs--and I have to keep the park's mission in mind. There haven't been any Mammoth sightings in Yellowstone for over a hundred years."
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