On Holy Cows

It has been necessary for our society to create holy cows. When an animal becomes critically endangered, we usually need to transform the way that we think about that animal in order to muster enough support to save it.

Grey wolves, American alligators and bison are all animals that were once either despised or taken for granted. They were all brought back from immediate danger of extinction in part because of citizen action and people's changing attitudes toward them. People need to think of an animal as being special or iconic or lovable in order to rally behind the idea of saving the species.

I support the creation of holy cows insofar as it is necessary to save something from extinction. My own rock-bottom ecological value, which forms the basis for all of my judgments about land management and conservation policy, is the prevention of extinctions. If we need to crank out some plush toys to get boaters to stop slicing up manatees, then so be it.

However, our love of holy cows must eventually become the victim of our own successes. When alligators bounced back enough to become nearly as ubiquitous as squirrels, they needed to be kept in check to prevent quite so many people and dogs from being eaten. The magnificent giant Canada goose, once thought extinct, is now being culled by the hundreds of thousands at the request of the same federal government that formerly protected it.

None of these holy cows are really, in their own nature, what we pretend that they are. Grey wolves are not gentle souls that always cooperate and feed only on field mice (Farley Mowatt lied). It is doubtful that alligators have any personal sense of their prehistoric charm and dinosaur-like appearance. And the only sense in which bison are iconic images of a tough, wild America full of history and adventure is in our minds.

There is a proposal being considered by the management of Yellowstone National Park to start hunting bison from the park. A lot of people are really upset about this and understandably so. They've been taught for a long time that bison are holy cows and its not easy to switch gears. Yet this will almost always be the result of success at restoring a population. We have as many bison as can possibly survive in Yellowstone without seasonal starvation. Unless more habitat is secured for them, bison need to be removed. Hunting them for meat is the most effective means of doing this.

Bison are special animals in many ways. But all animals are. A rat or a pig wants to live just as much as a bison does. Every mammal probably experiences pain, joy and wonder in a similar way. We don't think of the Norwegian rat as special because we take it for granted and because it is a pest that can be a problem even in urban or suburban habitats. To the lovers of holy cows, bison are distant emblems of abstract ideas and their love of the animals probably has very little to do with the animal's real nature.

I spent much of the last two weeks on a bison ranch in the hill country of Texas. The animals were pretty much wild. They get fed a little snack now and then in order to maintain the ability to lure them back onto the ranch when they wander off, but for the most part the bison are completely independent and unmanageable. As the herd's numbers have gradually increased on this ranch they require more food. They have started to break out into two separate groups under the charge of two different bulls much of the time. If they keep reproducing then they will have to move farther and farther for food and pretty soon the amount of habitat that they require will be beyond what is available.

Nothing out there is regularly eating the bison except for humans. Remember that North America lost most of its megafauna and large predators around 11,000 years ago. Smilodon, the short-faced bear, the American cheetah, and the dire wolf are all gone. This situation we had a few hundred years ago of herds of bison numbering in the millions was probably not part of a very good or sustainable ecology. Grey wolves will hunt bison, but in order to specialize in hunting bison the wolves need the bison numbers to hit a critical population level of around 10,000 bison in the area. Otherwise there aren't enough young, old, sick and weak animals regularly available to justify the very dangerous task of even learning how to hunt such big and dangerous prey.

So long as those wild places like Yellowstone (or Ted Turner's ranch) are as limited as they are, we're going to have to hunt animals like bison when our efforts to restore them are successful.

Holy cows must eventually become victims of their own success. Perhaps some of the Yellowstone bison can be moved to Native American reservations that want them, but this doesn't dodge the issue of needing to hunt them. It only delays it.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers.]