A record cull of Yellowstone bison intensifies debate into how to best manage them

On Point | Podcast

WBUR

Talk Show, Daily News, News, Npr, On Point, Daily

4.2 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This year more than a third of Yellowstone’s bison have been removed from the herd – most of them shot – after they wandered out of the national park in search of food. That’s intensified the debate into how to best manage the iconic animal. Rick Wallen joins Meghna Chakrabarti.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The OnPoint podcast is supported by Prompt.
0:03.3	Stressed about college applications, make your application impossible to ignore with one-on-one
0:08.9	college essay coaching.
0:10.5	98% of students who use Prompt to get into one of their top choice colleges go to mypromppt.com
0:16.9	and learn how to stand out and get in.
0:20.5	Funding for this podcast comes from MathWorks, creators of MATLAB and Simulink Software,
0:26.0	accelerating the pace of engineering and science, learn more at MathWorks.com.
0:32.2	This is OnPoint.
0:36.6	I'm Megna Chakrabardi.
0:38.8	The American Bison is a symbol of a country that was, in the past, open and free.
0:45.8	Thirty to sixty million bison may have roamed North America before the mid-1800s.
0:53.2	Then came the rapid westward expansion of American settlers.
0:57.4	That brought commercial hunting and mass slaughter of the animals.
1:01.3	More painfully, the United States Army sought to starve native tribes into submission.
1:07.8	The lives of Native Americans were intimately intertwined with the bison.
1:12.2	The Army sought to exterminate the bison from the Great Plains.
1:16.5	In 1867, one Army colonel is said to have ordered his troops, quote,
1:21.2	kill every buffalo you can.
1:23.9	Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.
1:27.6	So by the late 1800s, those sixty million bison had been reduced to just a couple hundred
1:35.0	animals.
1:36.0	But since then, restoration efforts and the creation of the National Park Service have
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WBUR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WBUR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.