It's often very difficult to figure out what advantages come from electing Democrats. Consider Montana's destruction of 1,700 bison this winter:
Officials with the Buffalo Field Campaign call this winter’s management actions the worst slaughter of bison since the 1800’s.
Montana is the wintering ground of choice for bison seeking refuge from the deep snows of the Yellowstone highlands in neighboring Wyoming.
But according to the Jackson Hole News, thanks to the slaughter and weather-related deaths:
Yellowstone officials say more than half of the park’s 4,700 bison have died this winter.
Yellowstone bison really ought to be safe in Montana, which has Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer overseeing the state's wildlife management and its agriculture department.
Nasty winter weather killed about 700 of them.
The winter-kill estimate is in addition to roughly 1,700 animals killed by humans this winter, most of which wildlife managers captured and sent to slaughter for attempting to leave the park near the North and West entrances.
Both the north and west entrances are in Montana. Because of Montana's slaughter, Yellowstone's bison population has fallen 1,000 animals short of the park's desired level. And a vicious winter storm is raging in Yellowstone tonight.
The justification for this slaughter? A political lie. Cattlemen desire to keep bison off of Montana's public lands because bison eat grass and because they don't want to see public lands managed as wildlife refuges.
But cattlemen don't want to debate whether bison should be allowed to thrive on public lands. They'd lose that debate. So they claim that bison COULD make their cattle sick with a disease that, according to available evidence, has never passed from bison to cattle.
Yellowstone is too harsh in the winter for buffalo, which evolved on the Great Plains, not in the Rocky Mountains. Montana, Idaho and Wyoming all need to stop catering to ranchers and start providing winter refuge for the Yellowstone herd.
Because winter isn't over yet.
The 2,300 Yellowstone bison that remain still have to contend with several weeks of snowy conditions in most areas of the park, in addition to grizzly bears and wolves, which often prey on bison in the early spring because their weakened condition leaves them more vulnerable to attack.