Discussion: Yellowstone Bison Calf Euthanized After Tourists Take It Away From Its Herd

WTF is wrong with people? I know that’s a rhetorical question, but…

we see this a lot up in Estes Park & Rocky Mountain National Park- idiots posing for selfies near or holding their babies up near adult elk, who WILL CHARGE YOU and try to hurt you.

and these particular idiot tourists, well, hopefully they realize a calf was killed directly due to their stupidity and it bothers them forever.

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People are the worst.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. People suck.

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It was actually Obama’s fault.

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I read one article that said the calf may have actually had something wrong with it and that’s why the mother and other bison had kind of left it on it’s own in the first place and didn’t bother these people when they came near it. If it had been health the mother probably would have protected it.

So yes they were dumb to mess with it, mainly risking their own injury, but it’s death at a young age may have been pretty much inevitable.

“rules require visitors to stay at least 25 yards from all wildlife and 100 yards from bears and wolves”

Imagine that…rules! And I say that as a person who questions the rules ALL the damn time.

I did not hear about that, thanks for posting. It is good to have all the info! I tend to get all knee-jerky about animals…

Human infestation of the planet is its doom…

It’s really too bad there are no zoos in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, etc. Hopefully, at least, some orphans will eat tonight.

The National Park Service actually slaughters large numbers of bison every year to keep them away from cattle ranches surrounding Yellowstone NP. The people that put the baby bison in the car are idiots, but if you’re upset about it getting euthanized I suggest learning about the regular slaughter going on to appease cattle ranchers.

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F*****n’ humans.

Do you have a link to that article?

I feel like this is a really misleading article (or at least headline).

They obviously should have called the DNR (or whatever it’s called there) and had them try to take care of it from the start, but it seems like they were trying to do the right thing.

Seems like the calf would have likely died on its own away from its herd anyway. So it’s not necessarily the fault of the tourists that it died. Sucks that there wasn’t an animal sanctuary that could have taken it in.

Regardless if the tourists were trying to do the right thing, they still had their head up their ass. They should have left it alone, period.
I am wondering if this summer will be even worse for incidents than last summer. This was a news blurb from last July.

‘Yellowstone National Park officials are warning tourists to keep their distance after a bison flipped a woman into the air as she posed for a selfie with the massive beast. In separate incidents earlier this year, bison gored a 68-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl and tossed an off-trail teenager and an Australian tourist into the air.’

This is an immigrant problem. This would not have happened before 1500.

If we cry with outrage for the killing of a sole bison calf, what should our response be to the knowledge that as many as 60 MILLION American bison were slaughtered for hides, meat and sport during the 19th century?
It’s a drop of slaughter in an ocean of extermination.
http://yoism.reality-movement.org/images/BisonSkullPile1870s.JPG

It actually talks about it in this article.

Rangers took the animal back to where it was picked up, but they could not get it back with the herd after several tries. “The bison calf was later euthanized because it was abandoned and causing a dangerous situation by continually approaching people and cars along the roadway,” the park said in a statement.

There is no matter too small to escape Republican attention, so long as it involves elimination functions, or genitalia.

I spend about one month a year–winter and summer–in Yellowstone.
I’m pretty familiar with the ecosystem.

First, this is a tragic ending to what, initially, looked like a funny story:
“Stupid foreigners can’t realize that bison are built to withstand Yellowstone winters.”
But then it got sad, fast, when we later realized that the calf would be put down.

But there are some mitigating factors here:
First, you would normally never be able to grab a bison calf without it’s 1,500 pound mother
fiercely charging you, horns first. The 2,000 pound males would likely help. This does make me
suspect that this calf was likely already in trouble, if far enough away from the herd for dopes to grab it.

Second, as stupid as they were, the idiots that did this really WERE trying to do the right
thing. Yellowstone is no zoo, and they obviously made a crazy, uninformed choice,
but it isn’t like they were trying to do something for their own gain.

Lastly, Yellowstone followers are well aware that merely 50 days ago, between 500 & 600
bison were rounded up and killed as part of a complicated management program


(generally hugely oversimplified and misunderstood on social media)…after initial plans to “cull” 900 or more.
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/bisonmgntfaq.htm

In simpler words: Yellowstone simply has far more bison than they can afford to have right now.
They are a magnificent and (too) successful animal.
Now, I realize that that’s not much comfort when we’ve actually seen the particular face of this adorable
little calf (all the little “orange dog” calves are adorable, awkward, lovable little goofs)…but the truth is
that this sad chapter will result in our Park Service probably needing to put one less bison down in
March/April of 2017.

(for the record, I’m grudgingly convinced that the cull is probably somewhat necessary, as long as bison populations are as high as they are these days, but not up for arguing about that, on TPM, at this time)

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