Jack Danylchuk
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 22/05) - Tails swishing and heavy heads hanging low, 130 bison graze in fenced fields near Fort Resolution while federal wildlife officials debate their fate.

These are the transplanted animals of the Hook Lake bison recovery project and very soon they will either be taking a trip to a slaughterhouse or will become part of yet another effort to create a disease-free herd in the North.

At the same time, rough and ready Northern real estate developer Mike Mrdjenovich wonders what he's going to do with the 2,000 bison he has on a ranch west of Edmonton.

Mrdjenovich is open to any idea for the animals, some of them descendants of the Hanging Ice Ranch herd, the territorial government's first venture into bison ranching.

Hanging Ice Ranch and the Hook Lake project have together cost taxpayers almost $6 million and the last bill has yet to be paid.

"They're not worth anything - a couple hundred dollars an animal now," Mrdjenovich said in a recent interview.

"I just don't know what to do; I can't feed them forever. Nobody wants them. I've been shooting every year two or three hundred - any animals that don't look good - and burying them."

Mrdjenovich had a herd of 800 bison in May 1995, when Don Balsillie, then chief of Deninu Ku'e First Nation, and Danny Beaulieu, the vice-chief, approached him with a plan to take the Hanging Ice Ranch off the territorial government's books.

Financed 70-30 by the federal and territorial governments, Hanging Ice opened in 1989 with two objectives: test the viability of a commercial herd in the North and replace diseased bison in Wood Buffalo National Park with healthy animals. Stocked with 55 bison brought from Elk Island National Park, it was run by the Metis Hunters and Trappers in Fort Smith. Ottawa dropped out in 1992.

The territorial government took up the slack, but in May 1995 it announced that it was getting out. To that point, the ranch had cost taxpayers $1.6 million and was consuming $250,000 year in feed and maintenance.

Urged on by wildlife biologists, the territorial government decided to spend its money on a new venture, a partnership with Deninu Ku'e in the Hook Lake bison recovery project.

The Deninu Ku'e and Mrdjenovich agreed to a 60-40 partnership. Mrdjenovich invested $285,000 in fencing, equipment and transporting the bison from Fort Smith to a compound at the edge of the highway, 20 km from Fort Resolution.

Valued at less than $200,000 as slaughter animals, and potentially worth as much as $900,000 at auction for breeding stock, the 120 cows and 70 bulls came free, but with conditions.

The government wanted 90 per cent of the breeding stock to remain in the territories for a minimum of five years, but after negotiations, reduced the terms to 60 per cent.

Mrdjenovich would get the "overflow" from the breeding program, and immediately moved 60 animals south to his own ranch. Two years later he bought the rest of the herd.

Signed just before the 1995 territorial election that placed Tu Nede MLA Don Morin in the premier's chair, the deal was examined closely at the conflict of interest inquiry that ended his political career.

Beaulieu, now a resources officer in Yellowknife, told the inquiry that he discussed the deal with Morin, a friend of Mrdjenovich. But the terms were settled by the government negotiating team, led by Joe Handley, then deputy minister for economic development. Balsillie summed up the venture: "We didn't come out smelling like a rose, but at least we didn't get crapped on. We broke even."

When the Deninu Ku'e sold the bison to Mrdjenovich, "I knew the market was getting down," Balsillie recalled, with a chuckle.

"If you're into the commercialization of animals, you sell them. He wanted them, he got them.

"I had dinner at his ranch after I was no longer chief, and he told me: you're eating the buffalo you sold me, you bastard. That was kind of funny."

Balsillie knows the taste of bison well. He hunted them often and continued to take animals from Hook Lake after the Deninu Ku'e developed a co-management plan for the herd with government biologists.

Afflicted with tuberculosis and brucellosis, decimated by anthrax outbreaks and preyed on by wolves, the Hook Lake herd was in decline, down from 1,700 animals in 1971 to 200 in 1991.

The management plan set out to rebuild the herd through salvaging and breeding healthy animals; it would preserve "genetic integrity," and "explore and recognize potential commercial opportunities."

"The plan will seek to totally eradicate tuberculosis and brucellosis. After 10 years, the disease-free animals can be released to the wild."

Bison management records suggested all objectives were within reach: a base herd of six bulls and 12 cows transplanted to the Mackenzie Bison Sanctuary in 1963 grew to 1,718 disease-free animals in 1987.

Two dozen animals transferred from Wood Buffalo Park to Elk Island Park in 1965 struggled through outbreaks of tuberculosis and brucellosis, and by 1990 had produced 500 healthy bison.

Between 1996 and 1998, biologists and Deninu Ku'e established a founder herd with 58 healthy calves taken from Hook Lake.

Within 10 years, it was expected to grow to 300 animals, and 30 would be released into the wild.

In June, when tuberculosis turned up in one animal and put the future of the herd in jeopardy, the project had just 130 animals.

Cormack Gates, an environmental scientist who designed the Hook Lake project, couldn't explain the gap between expectation and results.

Gates hasn't been involved with the Hook Lake herd since 1998, but said "there has been culling of animals for population management and there are space limitations" in the pen at Fort Resolution.

There were some cheers in Fort Resolution when Environment minister Michael Miltenberger said the territorial government has no more money for the project.

Balsillie acknowledged that "a few individuals have been vocal from day one; they believed it was inappropriate to cage animals from the wild," but he defends the project for what it taught youth in Fort Resolution.

Deadly numbers

"The Hook Lake project created about a job and a half; except at roundup and capture when there was lots to do," he said, and "we distributed meat from the recovery project throughout the community.

"Students bottle-fed the calves; they learned from biologists and professional people how to take care of animals. Some have completed courses and are working in these positions."

But the math is fatal.

The cost of feed and transportation add up to more than $900 a year to keep one captive bison alive in Fort Resolution, more than twice the cost of raising the same animal, on the northernmost bison ranch in Alberta.

Unless the federal government takes over funding the project, Miltenberger said it will end this fall. Environment minister Stephane Dion promised a decision by September. Without federal cash, the bison will be slaughtered for meat, or released into the wild.