SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - Wildlife advocates are to protest a Government plan to kill an undetermined number of the Yellowstone National Park Bison after scientists conduct to experiment with a birth control animal with a pesticide registered by the EPA.
Officials say the seven year study by a branch of the Ministry of Agriculture of the United States seeks to reduce the prevalence of brucellosis, a disease that can cause domestic cows to abandon in the last wild herd of the nation of pure race buffalo, or bison.
Brucellosis can be transmitted by bison female in the calving season when infectious bacteria fall with birth fluids.
Yellowstone last month granted the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) permits for pen 49 bison women young and four bulls for breeding in a centre for research outside the Park. Animals must be stock for an experiment involving over 100 bison in the herd at the head of 3 700.
Buffalo defenders say that it is appalling that government scientists will lead the potentially harmful experiments on the iconic animals that attract millions of visitors to Yellowstone each year.
They object to the concept of sterilization chemically a wild herd animals targeted by farmers introduced to North America centuries by European livestock illness. The bison of Yellowstone are allowed to breed freely.
"The buffalo removed to experience will never return to Yellowstone, and their treatment - being written and reared as cattle - is highly inappropriate, said Dan Brister, head of the Buffalo field campaign."
Spokesman USDA that Lyndsay Cole, said that the project aims to curb the spread of brucellosis in Yellowstone bison using a contraceptive, the Government has developed to control the reproduction of the white-tailed deer.
"This product presented signs to be an effective tool to prevent disease and it is a study that could have a positive impact on that for brucellosis and bison", she said.
The contraceptive, GonaCon, is registered as a pesticide by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Cole said bison positive contact with brucellosis test would be killed at the end of the research project, even though she said she could not yet provide a number. The plan should be open to comments from the public in the fall.
News of the research project was Yellowstone released the last of nearly 700 buffalo captured this winter to migrate out of the Park looking for food in nearby Montana. 53 Bison delivered for experimentation fired in this group.
The livestock industry of billions of dollars of Montana bristles to the roaming bison because of concerns about brucellosis.
(Editing by Steve Gorman and Peter Bohan)
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