'The Killing Fields': Bison come to roam. Then they die

摘要

GARDINER, Mont. - In the summertime, Sue Oliver can peer out her dining room window to see the majesty of snow-covered Electric Peak just across the bumpy gravel road in front of her retirement home along the Yellowstone River.rnIn the winter, when the hunters come, she'd just as soon close the curtains to avoid a different scene: the routine slaughtering of hundreds of bison. It happens each year at Beattie Gulch, a narrow strip of unoccupied federal land next to the park's northern border, just a stone's throw from Oliver's house.rn"It's one of those things you can't believe until you actually see it," said Oliver, 63, a former English teacher from Colorado who's now the music director at her church. "Beattie Gulch is called 'The Killing Fields' because they shoot all the bison here. It's bison genocide."rnLast season alone, at least 250 bison were shot as they sauntered into Beattie Gulch, a natural bottleneck between the river and the Gallatin Range of the Rocky Mountains. Animals congregate here as they leave the park in search of new grazing land.