Hi
Yesterday I saw on tv a nature document film that showed up to a half of bison and elk population in national parks are dying of starvation during every winters. Isn't that more human to let hunters kill them instead of letting them dying a painful death and starved animals in bad shape can catch easily epidemical diseases and damage the entier wild popuation.please give your opinion.
Danny

Danny Pay,

Starvation and winter kill is the natural order of things for elk and bison. There is nothing unusual or dangerous about it. I know of no years when half the entire population of elk or bison died from winterkill in a particular park. Could you be more specific?

Conducting herd control hunts in our national parks, even with the best intentions, would create an uncontrollable uproar. Humane or not humane, most of the animal rights folks would prefer the animals starve than to let a hunter shoot one.

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Warren Jensen

Warren@lostriverballistic.com
lostriverballistic.com

Hi Warren
I am not really sure if it was yellowstone ,but there was plenty of hot water springs there. I catch the film in the middle and not heard the name of park. I know that Spanish pyrenee ibex died out not from the hunter's bullets ,but from an epidemical disease due to the warden's neglect of keeping the right number of animals in reservations.
best regards
danny

The deer in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have occasionally gotten a little too thick in certain areas and have had die-offs. The powers that be took no steps to lower the population on this native species. Park policy evidently does not allow lethal control measures to be used on any native species. They do or did allow the use of insecticides to control nonnative insect pests and at one time had park rangers roaming the backwoods with firearms trying to eliminate the wild boars that had been introduced some years before. The regulations may be different for different parks, but I would not hold my breath waiting for them to permit hunting in Yellowstone.

Hi Snapp
It seems that Pig issue is a big issue over there. Here in Sweden inplanting of wild animals are forbidden by law and there are only few boars living in the wood,which if not natives may be has been probably introduced many centuries ago, but it happens that som domestic hogs scaping from farms causing troubles. i wish a good bacon hunt to the park rangers.Sometime laws are needed to protect animals.
Danny

Na, remember, millions and millions of bison used to roam parts of our country free, like the native americans that hunted them. White man came in, gave the natives smallpox and shot them, and slaughtered all but under 1000 bison. We're lucky to have the ones we do today. As in a "free" country, it's always "good" to kill and contain what was trully free in order for the rest to feel "free." Our country has a lot of shamefull history that should be taught, but isn't. The gov't allowed the slaughter of bison so that the native americans wouldn't have food and shelter and would move onto reservations.

Hi Matt 77
I am not in favor of slaughter of any kind ,but what i worry about is a dense population of bison concentrated in a limited area may cause over population ,which can results to epidimical diseases fatal for the all of wild population. what i saw in the film was that the park couldn't provid enough food for bison and elks and they died from starvation.concerning what happened to the native americans i am really sorry,but there are shameful event in the history of almost every nations in the world.
there are times when humans acting worst than the pigs and the trajedy is continuing to our days.please don't forget ,Balkan, irak, chechnia ,East timor,Rwanda.and more and more. I am glad that americans have recognised the mistakes that has been done at their past ,because there are nations which never recognise their misbehavior.
GOD BLESS AMERICA
Danny