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Dave Sulivan
Northern News Services
A 115-page bison movement report says park bison roam much further than believed, to well south of Manning in Alberta. The Mackenzie highway town is a four-hour drive from the 60th parallel.
The $60,000 study, commissioned by public and private agencies, says disease-free wild herds are at more risk than ever. It predicts disaster if one of the most successful of those herds on Alberta's Hay-Zama wetland gets infected, and warns that may have already happened.
"If the herd is infected the risk to other adjacent susceptible populations would increase significantly ... we expect the current support of the livestock industry for bison conservation in Northern Canada would be severely tested by such an event, as would the already tenuous support of some government agencies," says the report.
There has been no cull except by hunting since the so-called Armageddon solution -- slaughtering thousands of bison -- was abandoned in the early 1990s after a backlash against the $20-million idea. At the time, pro-slaughter Agriculture Canada squared off against Parks Canada's wardens, conservationists around the world, scientists and aboriginal groups.
Delaying action threatens 6,000 wild bison outside its boundaries, says Peace Country Bison Association president Robert Boos. He estimates 600 of the animals carry disease.
Fort Smith biologist Jack Van Camp describes the complex history of trying to preserve the park's wood bison as "the most blatant example of wildlife management failure in North American history."
The Mackenzie Sanctuary herd near Fort Providence is thought to remain disease-free, along with other herds west of Mackenzie Highway near Nahanni Butte and Fort Liard.
"We're just dragging it out, studying it to death. We're going to lose our clean, free-ranging herd," says Boos, who runs a bison farm near Manning.
The latest study's lead author, University of Calgary environmental scientist Cormack Gates, is more optimistic.
"There was a time I saw a great deal of urgency to make a snap decision to get something done. But what's really required is a quality decision that's going to last," he says. His 18-month study recommends community-based solutions to the crisis.
The previous approach was widely condemned for not consulting people, especially in aboriginal communities.
Options studied
Attempts to reach a consensus are underway. A committee was formed to recommend the fate of the park's 2,300 bison, 70 per cent of them diseased males, according to the study. Panelists represent farmers, aboriginal groups and government agencies, including the GNWT.
The Canadian Bison Association agreed during a meeting in January to "establish a scientifically sound method of deciding what the decision has to be," according to association president Mel Matthews.
Others agree diseased bison have to be killed, but add community- based approaches should help avoid a repeat scenario of helicopter gunships mowing down the Wood Buffalo herd.
"There is no simple answer to this," Gates says. "We need very creative solutions that take into consideration the full range of environmental, economic and social values of people living in the North."
He points to successful community experiments such as one in Fort Resolution that resulted in a clean breeding herd of 107 bison.
In the wake of the ongoing mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, cattle crisis in Britain, bison and cattle ranchers in Alberta fear more than ever that their livelihoods will be jeopardized.
"Canada is supposed to be TB- and brucellosis-free, but in Wood Buffalo we are harboring the biggest disease reserve there is," says Boos,.
Half of Canada's 2,000 bison farmers are in Alberta. Gates' report says 17 Peace Country farms are within 170 kilometers of infected bison populations.
Many of Alberta's commercial bison are breeding stock.
"If some were shipped to the U.S. and they happened to carry TB, as soon as that happens all meat produced in Canada comes into question," says Gates. "It doesn't matter at that point if it's cattle or bison. There's a great deal of concern what would happen to markets for meat in general. Consider what happened with foot-in-mouth."
Alberta Agriculture policy spokesperson Dale Armstrong says that, because bison and cattle "don't intermingle readily, the risk to cattle is not very high, but there is a real risk and threat there."
Alberta Cattle Commission manager Gary Sargent is critical of more studies that would delay action.
"If that herd were in any one else's jurisdiction other than Parks Canada, it would be destroyed," he says.
Commercial plans
Raising the stakes in the emotionally charged disease debate is media tycoon Ted Turner, owner of about 10 per cent of the world's commercial bison. The bison industry has high hopes for his plan to create mass appeal by serving bison burgers in his restaurant chain, Ted's Montana Grill. They hope Turner's plans could signal a turn for the better in the fledgling industry. Consumers are ready, say bison farmers, because of negative cattle industry publicity and wariness of beef antibiotic injections.
Wood Buffalo Park Superintendent Josie Wenninger says no deadline has been set for the stakeholder panel to recommend decisions.
