The Science of Bison: improving genetic tracking on National Bison Range

By DAVID REESE

Lake County Leader

Jeff King might just have the best office in the Mission Valley.

Outside his office in Moiese, bison graze on the green hillsides, while elk walk by casually. Songbirds add the background music.

From this vantage point King, director of the National Bison Range, is able to keep a close watch on what’s going on outside on the landscape of the range.

The range was created in 1908 but has undergone dramatic change in the last 107 years.

The National Bison Range was originally tasked with preserving America’s bison, but now that there are more bison on the landscape across America, the range focuses on preserving genetic purity, biologist Amy Lisk said.

“Now that we have numbers on the ground, do we have diversity?” Lisk said. 

Biologists now focus on the overall ecology of the Bison Range. That means critical analysis of soils, grasses and biology on the 19,000-acre landscape.

“There’s a lot more scientific angles placed into the process,” Lisk said.

The focus, though, remains on preserving the genetic purity of the bison. “We provide habitat for other species, but never at the sacrifice of the bison herd,” King said.

In 2007 the National Bison Range adopted a meta-population model that is able to track the genetics of bison across all of the U.S. Department of the Interior bison ranges in America. Every October the Bison Range in Moiese has a roundup where the animals are tested and inoculated. Bison are fitted with microchips in their left ears, and from a laboratory in Bozeman, scientists are able to track the genetics of each individual bison. When the animal comes through the squeeze chute at the bison range it passes through a scanner, and that animal appears on a computer screen.

In the old way of doing things, the bison were culled at the gate. They were visually inspected and the poorer-quality animals culled from the herd. Now, with genetic testing and tracking, Bison Range managers can be much more precise. “We cull the herd based on redundancy,” Lisk said. “When we see things that are different, we’ll keep them.”

Lisk said biologists may not know how the differences manifest into healthier individual bison, but a more genetically diverse herd is a better herd, she said. 

King is a cowboy at heart and he’s familiar with the old way of managing the bison herd. The scientific, electronic way of managing the herd is more effective, he said. “It brings more science into the decision making,” he said. “Instead of one person making a decision of whether that animal stays or goes, it makes the management more impartial.”

Conservation genetics is a relatively new field, Lisk said, and it might be centuries from now that its success will be determined. 

The Department of the Interior now manages all of its bison herds as one herd, whether it’s in Oklahoma, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado or Iowa. By being able to track each individual bison’s genetics, when a herd somewhere else in the country needs a bison of specific genetic quality, Lee Jones, who runs genetics lab in Bozeman, is able to send an animal that fits the bill.

Other species on the National Bison Range don’t receive this level of scientific tracking, but they are still important to overall mission of the range.

The range has one of the largest biological databases in the country of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

Earlier this spring nine bighorn sheep got out of the range. Six were killed by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes because of the danger of them commingling with domestic sheep herds. It’s rare that animals escape from the range, but King said, “sheep are very acrobatic and there are going to be escapes.”

The range is not a biological island. Other animals are able to come and go through the range, such as coyotes, grizzly bears, black bears and wolves. Mountain lions pass through, and they tend to stay, King said, because of the food base available on the range. About 135 elk inhabit the bison range.

Invasive weeds are one of the concerns of the bison range. If a landowner next to the range doesn’t control its weeds, that affects the range, King said. Weeds are an ongoing issue. “It can get frustrating,” King said. “It’s a problem that you have to throw a lot of money at.”

Lisk works with neighboring landowners to help reduce the risk of noxious weeds on the bison range.

Lisk coordinates weed-management with tribal, state and county organizations.

 “I think it’s the most critical pressure on all native landscapes,” she said. “We can’t eradicate them, but we can manage them.”

Managing the National Bison Range takes financial resources, and those resources are dwindling.

“We’re definitely in a downswing,” King said. The year 2010 was one of the highest levels of the range’s funding, and since then it has been dropping. “We’re not at the funding level we’ve been at in the past,” he said.

Budget cuts affect workforce planning, operations and management, according to King, a former biologist who has been at the range since 2008. He said he’s tried to not cut too deeply in any one area.

“Everyone has had to scale back,” he said. “I’ve tried to make everyone feel the pain. Some people have had to work harder, and our priorities have had to change.”

In times of budget cuts, it’s important, Lisk said, to form partnerships with other local organizations. Organizations like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Pheasants Forever are some of the partners the range has worked with. “We’ve done more with in kind help in the last 10 years,” Lisk said.

THOSE BUDGET concerns may soon be someone else’s worry.

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are in the process of negotiating an annual funding agreement with Department of the Interior to assume management of the National Bison Range in Moiese, as well as Ninepipe Wildlife Refuge and other waterfowl production areas on the Flathead Indian Reservation.

The tribes have had two other management contracts. One was in 2006 and one was in 2008. The first contract was not renewed; a federal court judge nullified the second one because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not comply with National Environmental Policy Act regulations in its contract with the tribes.

Lisk was there through the last annual funding agreement with the tribes, and she doesn’t know if she’ll have a job if the next management contract is approved. “I try not to get involved in the politics,” she said. “I’m dedicated to the natural resources. I’m like a burr on the side of a bison. It doesn’t matter who I’m working for, as long as I’m doing the job I love.”