"One of the most vexing tribal issues awaiting Rep. Deb Haaland if she is confirmed as Interior secretary is currently migrating out of Yellowstone National Park.

On the northern edge of the park, bison — America's national mammal — are funneled off parkland and into Beattie Gulch in Montana, a geographic bottleneck between the Yellowstone River and Gallatin Range of the Rocky Mountains.

There, they'll meet a firing line of tribal and local hunters.

The resulting carnage and bison management have become one of Interior's most intractable headaches. To tribes, it is one of the only places where they can exercise their treaty-mandated hunting rights. To Montana's politically powerful ranching industry, it is a necessary way to control Yellowstone's booming bison population, which they claim, with little evidence, will infect their cattle with a deadly disease."

Jeremy P. Jacobs reports for E&E News February 23, 2021. [2]