This morning I woke up in a schoolbus. There was a wood-burning stove inside and softly falling snow outside. Yellowstone National Park is just down the road.

I’m here visiting Good Shield Aguilar and the Buffalo Field Campaign.

This is the 15th year that the BFC has been fighting to protect the country’s last free-roaming buffalo herd from slaughter and harassment when they cross out of the national park.

Unlike the majority of buffalo in the United States, the Yellowstone bison have never mated with cattle and are genetically unique. They also do their own thing most of the time. Until they roam outside the border of the park that is. Then they are killed or harassed as potential disease-vectors for Montana’s cattle herds. The science and rhetoric of contagion that informs this policy of violence is flawed on every level. It’s also paid for by our tax dollars.

Photo credits from top: Helicopter hazing of buffalo, 2009/2010. Buffalo Field Campaign; Yellowstone buffalo outside the park on Highway 287, 2008. Darrell Geist, Buffalo Field Campaign.