I just received the following email from the NRDC about senseless killing and hazing of wild buffalo. Take action now at this link: http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction/ and scroll towards the bottom.
Dear Jason,
I am sorry to report that government agencies continued their annual hazing and slaughter of Yellowstone National Park’s buffalo this spring.
Call on the Obama Administration to start defending Yellowstone's wild buffalo.
The Yellowstone herd is now down to only 3,000 animals -- the only continuously wild and free-roaming herd left in America. Each spring some of these buffalo leave snow-covered Yellowstone in search of food at lower elevations or to give birth.
This past April and May, they were met with cruel hazing operations aimed at stopping the buffalo from migrating to their spring feeding and birthing grounds.
Government agents used helicopters, ATVs and horses to force hundreds of buffalo back into Yellowstone. Videotape taken by the Buffalo Field Campaign documented the senseless hazing of a newborn buffalo calf with a broken leg. Buffalo were even hazed inside the Park!
Then, in June, four buffalo were killed. Three of them were sent to a slaughterhouse.
Enough is enough! Please send a message right away to President Obama's new Chief of the Forest Service -- one of the key agencies behind the hazing.
Tell him to start protecting Yellowstone's wild buffalo instead of allowing them to be hazed and killed on Forest Service lands.
And call on Chief Thomas Tidwell to designate suitable Forest Service land outside the Park as year-round buffalo habitat, where they can be safe from being hazed or killed.
The government claims that confining wild buffalo to the Park is necessary to stop the spread of brucellosis to domestic cattle in Montana. But there has never been a documented case of transmission of brucellosis from buffalo to cattle in the wild.
The government even hazed buffalo off their birthing grounds on the Horse Butte peninsula in Montana -- even though Horse Butte is cattle-free year round!
The time has come to end these inhumane policies that have produced years and years of needless suffering, slaughter and unnatural confinement of buffalo to Yellowstone.
Yellowstone's buffalo are an iconic symbol of wild America.
Tell the new Chief of the Forest Service to let the buffalo roam free outside Yellowstone once again!
Sincerely,
Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council
