I live in Montana, and I am getting fed up with people talking this buffalo issue to death .  All you hear is the two sides' retoric.  the facts are:

There are WAY too many animals in Yellowstone Park.  too many everything.  It is not a sustainable healthy eco system.  It's a drive thru zoo and it gets more visitors if the animals are more visable.  The park feeds thousand of animals every winter, so they won't winter kill.  (which is what would happen to an overcrowded area in a good ecosystem. )  A rancher would be sued by the government or PETA if he ran the number of animals per acre that the park does.  If you want to make the park bigger ,fine, you pony up the money to buy the ground , expand the road system, and expand the employee base to work it.  Eviro- fanatics keep shouting about the natural life.  Natural life is animals starve. Natural selection says that the old and young die more.  Nature lets preditors eat the photogenic.  Real nature is not cute and fuzzy.  Real nature is harsh and cruel.  Wake up!  The feed available on a piece of ground the size of the park should support thousands, not tens of thousands, of animals.  The elk, deer, and buffalo populations should all be decreased alot!   The best way to do that is with rifles.  It's  quick,efficeint and needs to be done for the well being of the park.  If we had a deep snow ( which can happen in Montana)  the trucks couldn't get feed to the herds and the potetial is there for thousands of animals to starve to death.  That is far uglier than a bullet.  I don't think they should allow hunting in the park.  I do think that game wardens should be allowed to cull the herds, of all kinds, to manageable levels.  Montana and Wyoming have some of the lowest income levels and highest energy needs through the winter.  We also have a majority of households that have seasonal income, construction and farming.  People rely on game meat, in the freezer, to feed their kids through the winter.  The animals that are culled could be given to the people who purchased tags and didn't get an animal, during hunting season.  It could be donated to the food banks.  It would not be wasted!  But this solution, won't get anyone's cause on the front page.  Noone will be quoted on TV.  We would have a healthier animal population,  a healthier park, and less hungry people in the winter but if we fixed the problem, what would people have to protest?!      

Report faults Yellowstone bison cull - Environment - MSNBC.com