The Yellowstone Insider has a good update on the bison situation in and out of Yellowstone National Park. Basically, not much has changed. Ranchers still want bison who wander out of the park shot because of fears of brucellosis, bison lovers keep pointing out that cattle don’t get brucellosis from bison.

Bison who wander outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park could not be killed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service if a lawsuit filed by nine environmental groups and American Indian organizations succeeds.

The lawsuit, filed today in U.S. District Court, argues that the Park Service and Forest Service is negligent in protecting Yellowstone bison and overstates the danger to local livestock posed by brucellosis carried by bison and elk in the region.

But science doesn’t quite jibe with the cattleman’s view of the world: research indicates it’s very, very unlikely bison can transit brucellosis to cattle. The more likely suspect: elk. But it’s harder to slaughter elk: there’s so danged many of them in the region (some 10,000), and they’re less manageable than bison.

They left out that many ranchers like to hunt elk, too. But the basic point remains. Bison are a convenient scapegoat for ranchers, slaughtering them has little or nothing to do with the facts.