October 12, 2009
by Tina Armour | Staff Writer
Goodshield Aguilar (left), Tony Longhair (middle) and Joe Perez relax after Aguilar’s performance in the Buffalo Campaign. Kristen Stauss
City College students gathered in front of the Student Center Oct. 8 to support the Buffalo Field Campaign.
“This is to bring focus and attention to buffalo that once roamed the free land,” says Tony Longhair, student activist. “We can’t afford to kill buffalo.”
According to the Buffalo Campaign Web site, “Volunteers from around the world defend buffalo on their traditional winter habitat and advocate for their protection.” The site states that daily patrols stand ground with the buffalo, and document every move made against them.
The group has been holding demonstrations at City College for the past five years.
“The purpose behind the cause needs to keep being reiterated,” says City College President of Indigenous Peoples Club Joseph Perez. “The problem isn’t real for people. Ask half the people here and they won’t know anything about the buffalo.”
Longhair says the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks have been systematically exterminating the last pure breed buffalo in Yellowstone National Park. Park services blame the buffalo for the spread of brucellosis, a highly contagious disease that is spread through cross breeding with cattle. A cow and a buffalo create a new breed called a beefalo.
Activist Goodshield Aguilar points out that elk are the only species that can spread brucellosis because buffalo are not affected by the disease.
The National Wildlife Federation states on its Web site: “There has never been a documented case of brucellosis transmission between free-ranging buffalo and range cattle.”
Aguilar blames the authority of the parks, which claim they have the power to manage the population, for what Aguilar calls “the senseless and uneducated killing of the buffalo.”
This year, park authorities have shot five buffalo and last year an estimated 1,616 were killed, according to the Buffalo Field Campaign Web site.
The new breed of beefalo is also a problem because, according to Aguilar, it creates an inferior species with flat hooves that compress the land. Breeding for beefalo can also cause first calves to be stillborn, Aguilar said.
Aguilar blames the authority of the parks for the killing of the buffalo, pointing out that elk is the only species that can spread brucellosis because buffalo are not affected by the disease.
“Power is the tree giving oxygen or this bug flying around me but authority is brutality, that’s what’s happening to the buffalo,” said Aguilar.
According to Montana U.S. Senator Jon Tester’s spokesperson and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer they are in support of their state’s “buffalo population management effort.”
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