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Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease that can infect people, causing undulant fever. Symptoms include intermittent fever, chills, night sweats, body and joint pain, poor appetite, and weakness. The general public would be at no risk of contracting the disease from bison. However, people responsible for carrying out proposed bison management actions such as capturing, vaccinating, gutting, loading for slaughter, and laboratory analysis, could be at moderate risk. Because step 3 of the modified preferred alternative calls for relatively little handling of bison exiting the park into established boundary areas, this alternative would pose fewer health risks to personnel involved with the capture, slaughter, testing, loading, or in-chute vaccination of bison than under alternative 1. Hunters could also be at some risk under alternatives that include hunting. Recipients of auctioned or donated meat could be at minor risk of exposure through the handling of potentially contaminated meat and the consumption of improperly prepared meat. Proper handling and cooking completely kills the bacteria.

Mitigating and preventive measures, such as proper equipment, ventilation, and information, would prevent impacts from being more than negligible to minor in all alternatives except during the parkwide capture and slaughter phases of alternatives 5 and 6, when the risk would be minor to moderate.