140 Bison Moved to New Home

Nearly 140 bison originally from Yellowstone National Park that were quarantined on a ranch owned by media mogul Ted Turner to create a herd free of a cattle disease will be transported late on Wednesday to an Indian reservation in Montana.

The relocation of the bison temporarily confined at Turner’s Montana ranch were part of a successful government experiment that isolated the animals to produce a band free of brucellosis, a bacterial disease that can cause cows to miscarry and affects about half of Yellowstone’s more than 4,000 buffalo.

   The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission last month unanimously approved giving the brucellosis-free bison to the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana.

  The commission chose the tribes over a proposal that would have seen animals from the country’s last wild herd of purebred buffalo sent to such facilities as New York’s Bronx and Queens zoos.

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