Many Yellowstone bison killed each year as part of controversial program

Since January, over 700 bison from Yellowstone National Park have been killed. The majority were gathered and taken to slaughterhouses, while others were hunted outside the park grounds as part of a controversial bison-culling initiative.The current agreement signed by the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior and the Governor of Montana in 2000 is supposed to limit the number of bison in Yellowstone to around 3,000 but the herd presently stands at close to 5,000. So, every year, multiple bison are rounded up and killed.

The area farmers don't want the bison on their grazing lands and claim they could spread the dreaded cattle disease brucellosis to their livestock.

Conservation groups and the park's bison team dispute this as research suggests brucellosis is caused by local elk populations and point out there's never been a confirmed case of bison spreading the disease to cattle.

The bison management plan has resulted in over 3,000 bison deaths in the past decade.