(2009-11-25) Catalina Bison Birth Control

Catalina Island (California) has too many Bison. They're giving them Birth Control medication. This is the last season the females will become pregnant en masse," said Ann M. Muscat, president and chief executive of the conservancy. Contraception, she said, "is the next evolution of management strategy." That kind of talk worries Darrell Geist, habitat coordinator for the Buffalo Field Campaign, a nonprofit group dedicated to protecting the last wild bison herd in the United States at Yellowstone National Park. "When you intervene with natural selection," he said, "you are unraveling a very complex relationship among herd animals, particularly among matriarchal females and bulls who compete for those females."

The health of the bison has significantly improved, conservancy officials said, since the herd numbers were reduced to less than 200 beginning in 2005. They achieved that by sending the bison out for slaughter or to breeding programs elsewhere. Most recently, however, the animals have been transported, at a cost of $1,000 per animal, to Native American reservation lands in South Dakota to live out their lives.

This new approach is considered more humane.

But I'm just hungry for a Bison Burger.