Alberta to kill hundreds of bison over disease, road safety concerns

The idea is to stop the healthy animals in the Hay-Zama area of northwestern Alberta from expanding into the range of a diseased herd in Wood Buffalo National Park.

About one-third of the animals there are infected with brucellosis and tuberculosis and the federal government hasn't decided how to deal with them.

The province plans to issue 300 hunting licences for the previously protected Hay-Zama bison.

"If these diseases get established in (the Hay-Zama herd), then there's every likelihood that whole recovery herd will have to be eliminated," George Hamilton of the province's Sustainable Resources Department said Wednesday.

The herd is also creating a road hazard, with several collisions already reported, he said. A full-grown bull can weigh up to a tonne.

"It's only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured and killed."

Government officials say the Hay-Zama herd is a victim of its own success.

Numbering barely more than 300 animals in 2004, the herd was 700 strong in March and will likely grow further during this spring's calving. That growth is forcing the herd to expand from its original range - an expansion made easier by the proliferation of energy industry roads in north-central Alberta.

The community of Assumption reported last fall that two buffalo bulls were fighting in the schoolyard. And bulls from the Hay-Zama herd have already been spotted along Highway 35 - about halfway to Wood Buffalo.

Bison in the national park have been diseased for decades, a legacy of poor wildlife management practices in the 1920s. Wildlife experts recommended in 1990 that the entire infected herd be removed, with older animals killed off after they calved. But widespread public opposition scuttled that plan and the diseases remain.

The park is close enough to all other wood bison herds to threaten them with infection, the main reason that wood bison remain on the threatened species list, said Hamilton.

"We don't believe we'll ever get these (animals) off the endangered list until the disease is eradicated."

The Canadian Wildlife Service has been working on a management plan for the Wood Buffalo herd for the last 18 months. But with five provincial and territorial governments as well as several federal agencies involved, progress is slow, Hamilton said.

An official with the wildlife service acknowledged the plan was due a year ago. He said the earliest it could be ready would be late this year.

Meanwhile, the province hopes that issuing 200 licences to aboriginal hunters and another 100 to non-aboriginals will bring the herd down to about 400 and ease expansion pressures.

The aboriginal hunt is to begin this fall; the rest of the licences become valid next January.

Hunters will be asked to submit samples of their kill to provincial labs for testing to ensure that the Hay-Zama herd is free of infection.

The infected animals are safe to eat as long as it is prepared properly.