InterTribal Buffalo Council
Outside of Yellowstone National Park, Native American tribes with treaty rights, including the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana and several other Northern Plains tribes, are allowed to hunt the animals as they leave the park, one way of managing the park’s bison population. Until recently, all the remaining bison were sent to slaughter. But Native American tribes and the Intertribal Buffalo Council (a federally chartered organization that represents tribal nations that want to restore bison to their reservations) are trying to change that. Instead of excess bison being sent to slaughter, they would like to see those animals restored to Native American reservations that want to start their own herds and supplement existing herds. A facility built by the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes on the Fort Peck Reservation specifically for quarantining Yellowstone bison has been attempting to do just that. With the Fort Peck program, Yellowstone bison are trucked from the holding facility outside the park directly to the Fort Peck Reservation, where they are quarantined until they go through rigorous testing for brucellosis (which can take up to two years).[1]</Blcokquote>
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