|
"Yellowstone Held Hostage by Million
Dollar Cheeseburgers"
Originally Published by
Yellowstone Net in 2001
by Bruce Gourley
No, this shocking headline is
not from the front page of a supermarket tabloid or a sequel to the
cult movie The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. It is not a
marketing gimmick by some fast food restaurant, nor is it the plot
line of an upcoming X-Files episode. And neither is it the
punchline of a new comedy routine by Jay Leno nor a scare tactic by
Disney to try and reroute vacationers to the Mouse Kingdom.
In fact, this rather
ludicrous statement is not fiction at all. It is a true story which
is taking place right now. And not only that, it is old news: this
bizarre hostage situation has been going on for years.
Following are the basic facts
and figures of this strangest of true stories.
Yellowstone National Park is
the world's oldest and best-known national park. Yellowstone is
renowned for its wildlife and geysers. The two symbols of
Yellowstone National Park, known the world over, are Old Faithful
Geyser and the Bison (sometimes called Buffalo). Bison, which once
numbered 60 million in North America, were hunted to the very brink of
extinction in the late 1800s. Yellowstone became a place of refuge
for the remaining few. The bison slowly made a comeback from the edge
of extinction, and today the world's largest free-ranging herd (some
3000) resides in Yellowstone.
In the mid-1800s, there were
no domestic cattle in the American West. Today, domestic cattle in
America number in the tens of millions and supply our insatiable
appetite for the billions of hamburgers we Americans eat monthly (if
not weekly). In the American West, where many of these cattle are
raised, ranchers lease public lands (that is, land owned by the
American people, otherwise known as you and me) on which to graze
their cattle, paying the government pennies per head.
There are 2000
head of privately-owned cattle grazing on public land in Montana
adjacent to Yellowstone National Park. The owners of these cattle pay
the government a whopping $13,000 each year
(about $6 per head)
in grazing fees.
Government agencies decided
some years ago that Yellowstone's bison are a threat to the 2000 head
of cattle which graze on public lands adjacent to Yellowstone National
Park. The bison were labeled a threat because some carry the disease
"brucellosis," a disease that can cause domestic cattle to abort their
fetuses. Oddly enough, however, there is not one shred of evidence --
despite extensive research continuing to this very day -- that wild
bison can transmit the disease to domestic cattle.
The simple solution to this
"problem" would have been to declare the public lands adjacent to
Yellowstone National Park off-limits to cattle grazing. However, the
government, in its infinite wisdom, decided the 2000 head of cattle,
grazing for virtually free on land owned by you and me, were more
important than Yellowstone National Park, and indeed needed to be
protected from Yellowstone's bison. Of course, the government did not
bother to ask you and me, the owners of the land, what our preferences
would be for our land.
Having decreed that the 2000
head of cattle are more important than Yellowstone National Park,
government agencies set out to put our money where their mouth is. In
recent years, the government has spent millions of dollars of your
money and mine in protecting the 2000 head of cattle from the
subversive Yellowstone bison. Much of that money has been used to
kill well over 1000 of Yellowstone's bison in recent years. And just
last month, government agencies announced that they will be spending
$50,000,000 of your money and mine over the next
fifteen years to harass and kill those subversive Yellowstone bison.
In contrast, Yellowstone
National Park's entire budget for all of last year was
$24,508,000, far less than was needed to protect
Yellowstone's bison and tens of thousands of other large mammals
(including the endangered grizzly bear and wolf; not to mention small
animals, fish, vegetation, geology, etc.), maintain hundreds of miles
of roads and trails and hundreds of facilities, and salary enough
rangers to oversee for the 2.2 million acres which is Yellowstone.
Only in America does the
government spend $50,000,000 of your money and mine
to ensure that a few thousand cheeseburgers (enough, perhaps, to
supply all the McDonalds restaurants in the Atlanta, Georgia metro
area for about fifteen seconds) are given higher priority than
Yellowstone National Park, the world's first and foremost national
park.
Yes, Virginia, the truth is
stranger than fiction, and insanity is in abundant supply. |
