The Buffalo Slaughter Continues in Yellowstone

Montana Buffalo Advocates in Washington this Week

WASHINGTON (May 6, 2004) - Mike Mease, co-founder and field coordinator of the Buffalo Field Campaign and Su Gregerson, the group's program coordinator, are in Washington this week to participate in the National Week of Action for the Buffalo and promote the Yellowstone Buffalo Preservation Act (H.R. 3446). The Buffalo Field Campaign is a grassroots group working to protect the last wild free roaming buffalo for future generations. (For more information, click here.) The last wild buffalo live in the Yellowstone ecosystem in and around Yellowstone National Park and are being slaughtered and harrassed by federal and Montana state agencies. This year 278 buffalo were killed. All but 11 were rounded up inside Yellowstone National Park's boundaries. (For more information about the plight of the Yellowstone buffalo herd, click here.)

This Saturday buffalo advocates will hold a vigil in the Montana state capital, Helena, to honor the Yellowstone buffalo that have been killed this year. But the killing and harrassment are not over. Montana Department of Livestock agents, on horses, all-terrain vehicles and in helicopters, will run buffalo for five to seven miles, shooting blanks to scare them. And over the next month, female buffalo will be giving birth, and those calves are likely to be harrassed by agents. Last year this harrassment caused a stillbirth and the death of at least one other calf.

For more information or an interview, contact Su Gregerson or Mike Mease through Saturday at 202-905-6633. They can provide video footage as well as photos.