Bison Range 'Friends' gather to promote Tribal management

By Karen Peterson

Leader Staff

MOIESE — The Friends of the Bison Range held their first meeting at the National Bison Range Saturday, and although much controversy surrounds staffing cuts and herd management issues, event organizers say their goal is to help the range move in a positive direction that includes Tribal management of some services.

Paul Bishop, Friends coordinator, is an advocate of Tribal management on parts of the range, and he started the group to focus public opinion on many of the issues U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials are working on.

“We are here to put a voice to public opinion,” Bishop said. “The critical issues at hand here haven’t been handled that well.”

The organization has a few goals for their proposed action plan.

“We stand for two very clear tenets. We want the range to stay intact and keep things as they are and we want the Salish and Kootenai Tribes to be involved with the range,” he said. “We think that we can play along with the Fish, Wildlife and Parks from a position of strength. And we want one person [in our organization] for every one bison on the range and right now there are 350 bison.”

Tribal resource managers were frustrated earlier this year when Dept. of Interior officials nixed a preliminary Annual Funding Agreement that had been approved in late December, which would have given the Tribes some control over management of certain range functions. Adding to the situation, FWS announced last month that it planned to reduce staffing at the range, and transfer some of the genetically-pure bison to other ranges to boost herd levels and genes there. The bison are a tremendous cultural and historical symbol to the Tribes, and news that FWS plans to reduce staffing levels and the herd has increased frustration felt by many Tribal members.

On Saturday, Bison Range manager and FWS employee Steve Kallin urged folks to try to get past some of the heated discussions that have taken place, and said FWS is amenable to working with “friends” groups.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service has a long history of working with ‘friends’ groups. There are 250 friends groups in the National Refuge system,” he said. “And even if this organization is not interested in working with the staff, I encourage you to talk to the staff because misinformation serves no one. Even if we disagree on issues, we can disagree on issues that are factual.”

Kallin explained that he has been disheartened by amount of misinformation that people have been given about the range and he hoped that by speaking to Friends of the Bison Range members, overall communication can improve.

One of the issues he delved into was the idea that the bison herd was going to be drastically reduced. He also said he wanted to correct what he felt was misinformation, referring to recent news reports that FWS plans to reduce the herd to less than 100 bison. He said that’s not true.

“This spring we are starting with 300 and transferring 80, similar to numbers in the past,” he said. “But that was not what was reported in the media,” he said, referring to a Missoulian article that quoted Tribal officials as saying they’d been told by FWS officials that the herd would be reduced to 100 or less bison.

“That number has been misconstrued or distorted to make is seem like we are burning the village. The Fish and Wildlife Service is not damaging the bison in any way. Where did that number [100] come from? It came from a meeting at the Bison Range to establish or maintain proposed display numbers that need to be at a minimum of 100. That is not to say that we are getting rid of all but 100,” Kallin said.

The Bison Range is a part of the 545 national refuges around the country and six of those refuges are home to bison. To ensure that genetics are preserved the local bison are transferred between those herds to boost their health and population.

“To have a population of 2,000 so the genetics are preserved we are taking a meta-population approach with other refuges,” he said. “The needs in this population requires 80 bison to be transferred out this fall.”

Kallin went on to address the staffing cuts at the range, an issue that the Friends of the Bison Range are concerned about. Kallin said budget cuts have forced the move, but that Bison Range staff want to do their best to ensure quality of service there.

“There are plans to reduce the staff. In my 20 years of working with the Fish and Wildlife service, I’ve never seen the budget as tight as it is now. The staff will be the size of what we had in 1990,” he said

Bison Range supervisor Dean Rundle also explained the reduction in staff by saying that the range is working like a family on a fixed income. He said the range is doing the most with the least amount of money, and he hopes that the Friends of the Bison Range and the FWS will create a partnership.

“I think we have much in common. I think the best thing for the range is a partnership between the range and CSKT. We are certainly interested in building a partnership,” he said.

In an interview last month, a top FWS official who oversees staffing and related issues at the range said FWS would like to give some responsibility to the Tribe, starting with fire suppression work. However, no formal agreement has been signed between the two sides.

“I hope that we can craft an agreement [with FWS] that is truly a partnership and not a one-sided deal. Partnership is a great word but lets see some action,” Bishop said.