Coordination: Key to Restoring Bison,
Preserving Livestock Health
Bruce I. Knight, Under Secretary for
Marketing and Regulatory Programs
American Bison Society Conference
Rapid City, SD
November 18, 2008
(16 minutes)
Good evening, I’m delighted to be with you tonight. First, welcome to South Dakota. It’s always good to come home.
I know you’ve had a busy and productive conference over the past two days, so I’ll be brief tonight. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a long history of cooperation with the American Bison Society—dating back to Teddy Roosevelt’s work in co-founding the society in 1905. (As some of you know, Teddy Roosevelt is one of my favorite presidents, both because he was an early conservationist and one of the original straight-shooters.)
One hundred years ago, the Department was eager to assist in restoring the nearly extinct bison to the plains. And we still are today.
More recently, USDA encouraged the revival of ABS. We believe the society has a vital role to play as a respected organization committed to preserving bison in their natural environment and assuring the survival of other species that depend on the bison for their existence. These are common goals that we all share.
And I’m convinced we can achieve them. But only if we are able to better coordinate our strategies and employ our resources more effectively and cooperatively. We must recognize and affirm the value that each stakeholder brings to the table. Coordination is the key to success.
Tonight I want to speak briefly about USDA’s conservation efforts and then at greater length about the primary obstacle we see facing bison restoration and a plan we’re putting together to address this problem.
USDA Conservation Efforts
First, at USDA, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Forest Service both have programs that benefit bison. NRCS offers help to bison ranchers with conservation plans involving grazing systems, stocking rates, fencing, and water development. The agency also assists cattle ranchers in installing fencing for hay yards and cattle feed grounds to separate cattle and bison—an important conservation strategy.
More directly related to ecological restoration, NRCS is working with the InterTribal Bison Cooperative on an innovative effort to assist tribes in identifying and using best practices to maintain, restore, and enhance the grasslands where bison range. The cooperative currently involves 57 tribes in 18 states, and it is committed to restoring bison to Tribal lands.
Under the Interagency Bison Management Plan, the Forest Service helps provide habitat for bison, particularly in Gallatin National Forest in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Along with others, the agency is working on a final agreement that would eliminate cattle grazing on the Royal Teton Ranch, providing a safe corridor for bison to travel from Yellowstone Park to traditional grazing areas in Gallatin National Forest.
DOI Conservation Initiative
I also want to note that USDA is coordinating its bison conservation efforts with the new Department of Interior Bison Conservation Initiative that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced three weeks ago.
This initiative covers the 7,000 bison under DOI management as wildlife, and we’ll be part of Interior’s interagency working group to provide guidance for managing those herds. In fact, I expect the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to be heavily involved in the bison disease workshop that DOI’s initiative envisions for 2009.
USDA Coordination Efforts
Earlier I mentioned the Interagency Bison Management Plan. As many of you know, this is a cooperative, multi-agency effort to guide the management of bison and brucellosis in Yellowstone National Park and the state of Montana.
The goal of this plan is to:
- Maintain a wild, free-ranging bison population
- Reduce the risk of brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle, and
- Manage bison that leave Yellowstone National Park and enter the state of Montana.
USDA remains committed to these goals and to participating in this effort.
However, we believe we need to find more effective strategies to achieve these objectives—particularly reducing the risk of brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle. In fact, the primary obstacle I see to ecological bison restoration efforts nationwide is brucellosis in the herd in the Greater Yellowstone Area. I predict that, until the disease issue is fully addressed, greater restoration will be hindered.
Partnering with states and producers, we have worked very hard to eliminate brucellosis throughout the United States, and we are close to succeeding. Nevertheless, the disease persists in bison and elk in the Greater Yellowstone Area.
For far too long, farmers and ranchers in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have borne a substantially higher burden to protect their herds than other producers face in parts of the country where the risk of infection from wildlife is minimal. If we want to see more free-roaming bison, we need greater cooperation and financial commitment from other stakeholders in sharing the costs of managing wildlife herds to minimize exposure to livestock and eliminating brucellosis in free-ranging wildlife.
Earlier this year, every state in the union was classified as brucellosis-free. Unfortunately, that’s no longer true.
Montana had to be reclassified in September following the finding of brucellosis in two cattle herds within 24 months. We also found an infected herd in Wyoming earlier this summer, and that herd has just been depopulated.
We won’t complete testing of herds that interacted with the infected herd until the end of the month, but so far several thousand cows have tested negative. In addition, there was another herd about 25 miles away with one positive cow, but fortunately testing for other cattle has also proven negative.
Of course, all this testing is expensive—for producers and for states. The additional health and safety measures all producers in a higher brucellosis risk state must take are also costly.
In the past few years, brucellosis has been intermittently detected in domestic livestock in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming—the states surrounding Yellowstone where wild bison and elk populations are known reservoirs of infection.
We need a better plan—and we think we have one. It’s still taking shape, but we’re beginning to share the concept with stakeholders, and I want to review it with you and get your input.
National Brucellosis Elimination Zone Proposal
We call our approach the National Brucellosis Elimination Zone Proposal. It would adopt a new model to address brucellosis in the Greater Yellowstone Area.
We would redirect resources specifically to the GYA to protect cattle herds and coordinate with those in the wildlife community to implement strategies to eliminate brucellosis in elk and bison in Yellowstone and the surrounding area. To make this successful, partnering with wildlife agencies to treat the GYA as an entire ecosystem would be essential.
First, from an ecosystem approach, instead of considering each of the three states in the GYA as a separate entity, we would take a regionalization approach sanctioned by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). So APHIS would conduct a risk assessment and establish boundaries surrounding Yellowstone Park for a National Brucellosis Elimination Zone.
Producers within the boundaries of the zone would need to conduct the additional brucellosis testing and adopt designated management strategies to protect their cattle. Beyond the zone, the rest of the states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming could be classified as brucellosis-free.
Rather than having possibly three split states, we’d have one higher risk zone encompassing portions of three states—and producers outside that zone in those three states would face a lower risk and a correspondingly lower burden for protecting their livestock. We would concentrate financial and human resources on the eradication of brucellosis within that zone.
Over time, as conditions and risks change, the boundaries of the zone could be adjusted as needed. We’d also develop a standardized risk-based approach to livestock herd management within the National Brucellosis Elimination Zone.
Currently state management tools vary. We’d use a risk-scoring system to assess herd risk and to identify appropriate mitigation strategies.
Within the NBEZ, we’d increase brucellosis surveillance. We’d use electronic movement certificates and animal identification for animals leaving the NBEZ to ensure compliance with appropriate testing requirements. In addition, we might require vaccination for livestock within the zone and restrict movement of high-risk livestock only to slaughter.
Of course, to succeed, we’d need to have participation from all three impacted states—participation from both the agricultural and wildlife communities. And we’d have to develop the formal regulatory framework to officially put this approach into practice.
However, we can begin to move toward this approach right now on an informal basis. We can work with state departments of agriculture, natural resources, and wildlife to conduct the risk assessment needed to establish the NBEZ.
We can meet with stakeholders to discuss standardization of herd risk assessment tools, herd plans, surveillance techniques, and mitigation strategies. As we move forward with this concept, we welcome your input to make it more effective. Again, I want to emphasize that cooperative conservation is the key.
The National Brucellosis Elimination Zone represents only one side of the equation—the agricultural side. Critical to its success is the corresponding wildlife side—finding and implementing strategies to eliminate brucellosis in bison and elk in the Greater Yellowstone Area and preventing it everywhere else. APHIS is committed to partnering with the wildlife community to accomplish these objectives.
We will be releasing the strategy in the near future for public comment and debate. We welcome your suggestions on our strategy, and we would be delighted to assist you as you develop your own integrated approach.
Conclusion
In closing, what we’re really looking for is Teddy Roosevelt’s square deal—a deal that welcomes free-ranging bison and also protects the farmers and ranchers whose cattle graze nearby. Getting that deal requires cooperation and coordination among a wide range of interests.
To restore bison, we have to manage the herds to reduce disease and protect neighboring livestock. This will require the active involvement of all stakeholders—conservationists, wildlife experts, federal and state agencies, tribal authorities, and private landowners.
Again, I think our role model is Teddy Roosevelt. He was a man of action. As he said, “I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.”
We have made the commitment to work together in words. Now it is time for our actions to match those words.
Let’s do it.