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Working to protect habitat and conserve wildlife.The
Taylor Fork |
| Objectives | |
The
Issue: Is The Greater Yellowstone: a cow pasture or wild buffalo range? The Taylor Fork is a breath-taking landscape with unparalleled hunting, fishing and recreational opportunity. We have or will spend about $15 million dollars to block up the public ownership of the Taylor Fork watershed. Although this grazing proposal is said to contain only 9,200 acres, this decision by the Hebgen Ranger District of the Gallatin National Forest will affect native fish and wildlife use over a vast and wild landscape (about 100,000 acres). The USFS Cache/Eldridge Allotment, will privatize the profits, actual subsidize the profits, while socializing the costs over a vast public landscape. The Taylor Fork watershed is over 60,000 acres in size, and this
is just a small part of the habitat that will be unavailable to wild
bison and bighorn sheep. The Taylor Fork itself is We have spent over $20,000 in an attempt to mechanically reclaim 1,200 feet (less than a 1/4 mile) of Cache Creek with bulldozers and back hoes (that's equivalent to $88,000/mile of stream) and now the USFS proposes to expand the cattle grazing in the area to "spread out" the impacts. More fences, more stock tanks, more cows; less water in the streams and less fish and wildlife. The bigger issue here is wild bison management. The Taylor Fork feeds
into the Bison will migrate here, they try almost every year. We have seen them over the years and it is a legacy at our fingertips. If we are to be hunting wild bison next fall, what better place? Shall we re-visit the days of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and others filming hunters shooting bison at the Park boundary, portraying us as bloody villains of mass destruction, mere pawns of the Department of Livestock? I don't think so. The Taylor Fork is an established if not sacred hunting ground. If
wild bison hunting can be Support the Voluntary Grazing Permit Buyout Act of 2003 which should be introduced into Congress this Fall 2003 and would authorize $175/AUM to buyout such allotments. These 875 AUMs would cost us only $150,125. The elk and bison of the Greater Yellowstone Area could use your support. Please consider joining the Gallatin Wildlife Association or making a contribution by sending a check to: Gallatin Wildlife Association If you have any questions about this or other
issues the Gallatin Wildlife Association is involved in, you can contact
our president by email at glhockett@mcn.net
or by phone at (406)-586-1729. We appreciate your interest in the
protection of fish and wildlife habitat in Montana. The Gallatin Wildlife
Association will continue to protect habitat so hunting and fishing
opportunities can be restored and conserved.
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Copyright © 2002 Gallatin Wildlife Association
All Rights Reserved
native
cutthroat trout and grayling habitat as well. Grayling are already
extinct and you can see the backs of the remaining cutthroat in the
de-watered headwaters portions of the watershed as they struggle to
find cover under a history of trampled stream banks. It makes no sense
to truck in domestic cattle from over 150 miles away.
done
in Montana, this is the place. Unfortunately, we have the hunting
cart ahead of the habitat horse. We aren't re-writing any laws here.
We are asking the USFS to enforce the laws that guide them to provide
habitat for native species to ensure viable populations of fish and
wildlife can be enjoyed by everyone, now and forever.