24 Jul Yellowstone National Park has been known for many political controversies

Yellowstone National Park has been known for many political controversies, but the most sustained controversy is the killing of Yellowstone bison by the Montana Department of Livestock. Bison are important and special to Yellowstone and are represented as a key element in the history of the American environmental movement (Clemons and McBeth, 2021). This controversy is indirectly related to brucellosis, which is the bacterial disease that infects some bison and could possibly be transmitted to cattle. This is affecting the management of the park as well as the bison numbers.

Establish criteria to evaluate alternatives

           Creating a criteria and alternatives is important within business avenues as it will make it flow well and everything will come together. Within this case study, criteria must be reviewed, effective, politically acceptable, ethical, and cost reasonable to flow properly.  To keep brucellosis down and keep the bison safe, they should be monitored and kept in a safe and secure location away from all other animals. There should not be multiple bison together as this is a dangerous disease that could come from anywhere and be transmitted quickly. There should be park rangers monitoring bison and checking their health hourly to make sure nothing changed within their health involving brucellosis.

Generate policy alternatives

           The original placed policy was the “zero-tolerance” policy which resulted in all bison getting tested and those who tested positive for brucellosis would be sent to slaughterhouses. This is part of the reason why bison are becoming endangered and extinct; this would not be a great idea if bison are a key element to the Yellowstone National Park. Instead of killing those who are sick, there should be policy alternatives such as getting enough supply and monetary supplies to get them better and healthier. There should also be figuring out ways to get rid of this disease and how to stop the spreading of it. Enforcing policies to nurture and bring them back in great health would be a win-win situation as it makes them healthier and saves their wildlife.

Evaluate and Select Policy

           Getting rid of the “zero-tolerance” policy and adapting a new one would help bison health wise and population wise. Due to Yellowstone being a large park and not having a lot of workers and park rangers, this should be the main concern. They should be making sure they have rangers who can take care of the bison and look over them hours out of the day. Not only this, but also coming up with a cure and vaccination for all bison and all the wildlife in the park to not be affected by brucellosis.

Evaluate Adopted Policy

           Evaluating the adopted policy can be hard when there is no policy set in stone yet. The National Park and rangers did everything they could and possibly think about to stop the killing of the bison. Different regional and national conservation groups outline a management plan that would include putting pressure on the NPS to protect wildlife, eliminating snow trailing, allowing bison to use national forest lands, and vaccinating cattle against brucellosis (Clemons and McBeth, 2021). No policy is formulated yet, but if they keep at it soon bison will be able to wander outside the park as well as have precautions and vaccinations for brucellosis.

8. I do believe the five-step model helped me understand and organize the issues in this case study. It made it flow more readable and not so much information that was not needed, but instead got straight to the point. However, I did kind of feel like I was repeating the same things and referring to steps before that answered the same exact questions. All in all, it did make the task more manageable by having the model to flow by.