A Day in the Life at the Buffalo Field Campaign in Yellowstone

Day in the life at the Buffalo Field Campaign

Hello! My name is Johanna Duncan. I am a rising senior at Whitman majoring in environmental studies and politics. I am working as a summer outreach intern at the Buffalo Field Campaign in West Yellowstone, Montana. I have spent my summer learning about the decline of wild bison populations in North America due to mass hunting incentivized by US federal policy and the rise of the cattle industry. I have also learned about the historic and ongoing cultural connection between bison and the Native American tribes of the Great Plains and how the decline of bison has disenfranchised their communities. I have had the amazing opportunity to go on daily patrols to observe the bison and collect data on their population numbers as they reside in their spring calving grounds outside of the Yellowstone National Park boundary. As the bison migrate back into the park in early June, the campaign shifts their focus away from daily patrols to summer outreach. 

Here is a day in my life as I go work at the campaign’s summer outreach table in Yellowstone National Park:

I start my day at 7 a.m. at the Buffalo Field Campaign’s lodge where I live with the rest of the volunteers and interns. We make breakfast, pack lunch and get ready to drive 2 hours into the park to our tabling location at the Tower Falls Visitor Center. The scenery is beautiful as we drive through the Madison River Valley and past a number of geothermal features! Today on our drive, we saw a black bear in the lodgepole pine forest off the side of the road and a lone bison bull. 

When we arrive at the visitor center, we haul our materials from the parking lot and set up for the day. At the table we sell merchandise such as bison plushies, stickers, totebags, and calendars to help raise money for the campaign. We also provide educational materials such as maps with data points of the location of wild bison herds that we collected on our daily patrols. When park visitors come up to the table, we greet them, answer any questions, and continue to tell them about the current state of wild bison in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I usually begin this conversation by telling them about the Interagency Bison Management Plan. This plan includes a number of agencies including the National Park Service, Forest Service, and Nez Perce Tribe, but is largely enforced by the Montana Department of Livestock. The Montana Department of Livestock puts a cap on the wild bison population in the greater Yellowstone area at 3500-4000, significantly less than the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. When the bison migrate outside of the park during the winter to reach lower elevations to continue grazing, hundreds get slaughtered every year by the DOL to maintain this population cap. The Department of Livestock argues that this management strategy is employed to prevent the transmission of a bacterial infection called brucellosis between bison and cattle. However, no case of transmission of the disease from bison to cattle has ever been recorded. The Buffalo Field Campaign advocates for a revision to the Bison Management Plan that allows a greater population of wild bison and protections for them as they migrate outside of the park boundary. 

After several hours of talking to park visitors, we pack up and head back to West Yellowstone. On our way back, we stopped to look at the Grand Prismatic hotspring! When we arrive at the BFC lodge, we eat dinner with the rest of the volunteers and staff. We discussed how tabling went for the day, what chores needed to get done around the cabin, and made plans for who will go out tabling the next day.