Bison are a rare sight for visitors and a handful of hunters just north of Grand Canyon National Park, but a growing blight for park managers.
Even as their numbers swell, the bison are increasingly out of rifle range and on the hit list of biologists and archaeologists, who propose to force at least some of them to mosey along.
The grazers seem to know they're safe inside the park, where hunting is prohibited, so their numbers have grown from 100 in the 1990s to 350 or more today. The herd is chewing grasses to the nubs, hurting upland lakes and trampling ancient American Indian dwellings, park Superintendent Dave Uberuaga said.
"Just a bump can knock over a (dwelling) wall really easily," he said. "They're all really fragile."
So, on Wednesday, the National Park Service announced that it will cooperate with the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Arizona Game and Fish Department on a plan to manage bison — ideally pushing many of them out of the park and into the Kaibab National Forest.
The plan will require an environmental study, and, starting Friday, the agencies will spend two months gathering ideas from the public.
Nothing specific is proposed, but ideas include occasionally hazing animals out of the park or fencing some boundary zones. Hunting is not allowed in the park, and is not under consideration.
But outside the park, where the state and U.S. Forest Service have co-operated on a hunt for years, the goal is to maintain that opportunity. Arizona charges residents $1,095 for a lottery-drawn bison tag, and 20 hunters bought them for this year's spring hunt.
The state and Forest Service had agreed to try to keep the herd at no more than 90 adults, said Carl Lutch, wildlife program manager for Arizona Game and Fish. But that's not possible through hunting alone now that the bison have migrated into the park.
Bison can sometimes be seen approaching the park entrance, Uberuaga said.
They're generally not a safety hazard. Unlike in Yellowstone National Park, where bison sit still for crowds and may lull tourists into approaching dangerously near, Grand Canyon's bison are aloof and skittish.
"They're very much afraid of people because the herd is hunted," Uberuaga said. "They'll get up and run into the woods."
Park managers have studied Yellowstone, where rangers sometimes ride helicopters or horses to push bison from where they're not wanted — in that case, from private land outside the park.
The Grand Canyon herd was introduced to the area by a rancher in the early 20th century and still carries some of the cattle genes from an early interbreeding effort.
The state took over management in 1950. Biologists say the animals' genes are about 90 percent bison, and that they show no outward signs of being descended from cattle.
Uberuaga said he envisions "an agreement, to the extent possible, to move them off park lands to forest lands, where they would be huntable wildlife."
Tom Martin of Flagstaff has stuck up for the bison's right to graze on the North Rim, and he was pleased to hear Wednesday that the plan won't call for eliminating the herd. Like many large grazing species now extinct, the bison roamed northern Arizona for thousands of years, he said.
"The Arizona Strip is one of the few places where they could (still) roam for miles unimpeded, which is what they need," said Martin, co-director of River Runners for Wilderness.
He acknowledged that bison numbers could grow uncontrollably inside park boundaries if left unmanaged.
"The bison are going to need our help to manage their numbers." But, he said, "They belong there because ecologically they belong."
Open-house meetings on bison Kanab, Utah: 6-8 p.m. April 28. Kanab Middle School, 690 S. Cowboy Way. Flagstaff: 6-8 p.m. April 29. High Country Conference Center, 201 W. Butler Ave. Phoenix: 6-8 p.m. April 30. Arizona Game and Fish Department, Activities Center, 4044 W. Black Canyon Blvd.
Open-house meetings on bison
Kanab, Utah: 6-8 p.m. April 28. Kanab Middle School, 690 S. Cowboy Way.
Flagstaff: 6-8 p.m. April 29. High Country Conference Center, 201 W. Butler Ave.
Phoenix: 6-8 p.m. April 30. Arizona Game and Fish Department, Activities Center, 4044 W. Black Canyon Blvd.