Wild bison in Yellowstone's National Park that do not have cattle disease might be utilized to create other groups of the animal in other parts of the United States Northwest region according to a study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Reuters reported Saturday.
"The study is a valuable contribution to advancing bison conservation," David Hallac, chief of science and research at the Yellowstone Center for Resources," told Reuters.
The findings raise hopes of park managers, Native American tribes and wildlife advocates that efforts to restore bison populations derived from the nation's last pure-bred band of wild bison will face less resistance from the cattle industry.
"The key conclusion is that it's feasible for us to take bison from Yellowstone and make them eligible to be used for restoration," Keith Aune, a co-author of the study. "They are a very important source of genes that harken back to the ancient DNA of North American bison," Aune told Reuters.
Park managers, Native American tribes, and activists for wildlife are now optimisic the droves numbers will increase the amount of bison in the region, however herders are reportedly not convinced the bison should go outside of the park Reuters reported.
"We look at them as our relatives," Robert Magnan, incharge of the fish and wildlife department for the Sioux and Assiniboine tribes in the Northeast region of Montana told Reuters. "They took care of us for hundreds of thousands of years. Now the shoe's on the other foot. It's time we stand up and help them," Magnan told Reuters.
Magnan saw sixty buffalo come back to land in the Fork Peck Indian Reservation in 2012.
"There are still qualms in the livestock industry," Jay Bodner, natural resource director at the Montana Stockgrowers Association told Reuters. "Certainly, there are management concerns. How many bison on the landscape are enough? How do you contain animals that can walk right through most fences?" Bodner told Reuters.
