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On May 9th, The Ecology Center, Inc., Buffalo Field Campaign and Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers filed an Application for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) in US District Court in Helena, MT. The Order to suspend illegal bison hazing activities by the Montana Department of Livestock (DoL) would be pursuant to violations of the Endangered Species Act.

If granted, this order will restrain the DoL, the US Forest Service and the National Park Service from disrupting threatened bald eagles and their nests in a habitat Closure Zone on the Horse Butte peninsula, west of Yellowstone National Park. Horse Butte is prime calving habitat for the Yellowstone buffalo, as the peninsula has south facing slopes that green up early in the spring. It provides excellent eagle nesting sites and access to perches and feeding areas.

The groups asked the court to suspend the Special Use Permit (SUP) that the DoL was granted by the Forest Service via the Horse Butte Environmental Assessment to initiate a "cooling off" period. This would prevent any further DoL actions that will harm nesting bald eagles on Horse Butte, and give the buffalo a chance to migrate naturally back into Yellowstone.

The Horse Butte bald eagle nests are occupied by bald eagles that are displaying incubating behavior. Any disruption that flushes the eagles from their nest could lead to brooding failure or abandonment of the nests. On April 20th, Buffalo Field Campaign volunteers documented the DoL and Park Service violating eagle closures and today filed video footage and affidavits to support the TRO. On April 28, 1998 Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers documented another DoL violation of the Horse Butte bald eagle closure. In that incident a Montana DoL helicopter twice violated the closure to haze bison.

Dan Brister, Buffalo Field Campaign, said "Shortly after noon on April 20th, DoL agents flew a helicopter over the eagle Closure on Horse Butte within a quarter mile of the Horse Butte bald eagle nest. Two bald eagles flushed from their nest circled above as DoL agents and Park Rangers on ATVs and horses hazed between 55 and 60 bison, including pregnant cows and yearlings. The SUP states specifically that 'helicopters are NOT allowed in the Horse Butte area.'"

The citizen's groups also talked with the Hebgen Lake District Ranger about jointly "shepherding" the bison back into Yellowstone by May 30 if bison are still outside the Park. This is the last day of an arbitrary 30 day spatial/temporal separation with cattle imposed by the US Department of Agriculture. This shepherding effort could be done completely without helicopters and motorized vehicles.

The Forest Service has three cattle grazing allotments on Horse Butte--the purported reason for the DoL's efforts to haze buffalo. The allotments brought in $750.60 to the US Treasury in 1997. Last winter, the DoL alone spent $225,854 in this contested area, amounting to a cost of at least $1,536 to "protect" each of the cow-calf pairs that lease federal lands for the summer on the Butte.

"The DoL is the bully on the block, pushing the Forest Service and the Park Service up against the wall with its unreasonable demands to haze in areas critical to the threatened eagle. They'll try to blame us next if they try to resort to lethal bison control, but someone has to stand up for the rights of wildlife in the area. They're just trying to maintain their authority and expend as much of their budget as possible so that next year they won't be at a disadvantage. If they kill any bison this season, the blame will lay squarely on their shoulders and their zero-tolerance policy," said Jim Coefield, Ecosystem Defense Specialist at the Ecology Center. "Buffalo are wildlife, not cattle and should be treated as a heritage for future generations,"

Ultimately, the groups would like to see grazing allotments adjacent to Yellowstone National Park devoted to wildlife habitat. Over 40,000 petitioners recently requested this from the Forest Service, Secretary of the Interior Babbitt and President Clinton. Montana needs to accept that wild bison, not dead bison carcasses on cattle grazing allotments, are preferred on the Montana landscape.