Activists in West Yellowstone, Mont., say the tally of Yellowstone bison killed this winter has passed 1,000.

Members of Buffalo Field Campaign listed the winter’s toll Thursday at 1,104 animals. That includes the number of bison killed in Montana’s winter hunt, plus the animals rounded up in Yellowstone National Park and shipped to slaughter and those herded into corrals west of the world’s first national park. Those are also bound for slaughter.

“There is no doubt that this year will constitute the biggest wild buffalo slaughter since the 19th century,” a member of the group said in a posting on the Buffalo Field Campaign Web site.

The group protests the slaughter and killing of the free-roaming herd. Bison are killed under an agreement among state and federal land, wildlife and stock managers because some carry the disease brucellosis.

The infection can cause cattle to abort and is the source of rare undulant fever in humans. Buffalo Field Campaign insists there is no case of a bison transmitting brucellosis to cattle in the field.

The activists also say bison are being captured in areas where there are no cattle. Some bison are rounded up inside Yellowstone as they amble toward the northern border.

Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash recently reiterated that one goal of the multi-agency agreement is to protect the integrity of the Yellowstone herd. With an estimated 4,700 bison in Yellowstone last summer, the herd is in no jeopardy, he said.

Some Yellowstone bison calves tested and found to be free of brucellosis are being held in a quarantine facility just north of the park.

Meantime, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced earlier this year that brucellosis was largely eliminated, for the first time, from livestock in all 50 states. The agency said it would now concentrate on eliminating brucellosis from Yellowstone elk and bison, which acquired the disease originally from domestic cattle.

Undulant fever is difficult to cure. There are approximately 120 cases a year in the U.S. and the bacteria also is found in wild swine in the southeast.
an outbreak in Sicily infected approximately 20 people.

What authority the Department of Agriculture has over wildlife remains uncertain. Buffalo Field Campaign says the disease is hyped.

“The cattle industry and government spin the theoretical threat of disease transmission from wild bison to cattle as a way to control the grass and who gets to eat it,” the group says on its Web site. “Brucellosis is not the dreaded disease that they’d lead you to believe it is.”