The Province of Alberta will not protect any bison outside of the parks, and that is our problem. The bison has been declared threatened in Alberta. It is not only threatened by the hunter but also by development. Their habitat is being destroyed.
The bison herd I am talking about has been there for as long as I can remember. My grandmother talked about that herd, so we're going back, even in my time, at least 200 years that these bison have been used by my people.
If you start destroying something that is threatened, the only bison you will have left in Alberta will be the ones inside national parks, and in the biggest one there, Wood Buffalo National Park, they are diseased. You can test 50 buffaloes. They will all test positive, every one. But when you do the operation and stuff, not one of those animals is really diseased with. It is the simple contact with one another that spreads it so that the reading will always be positive. If the herd is that sick, you know...it's increased now to 5,000. And it's increasing every year.
Something has to be done at least to get Alberta to understand that the bison that's in the wild in Alberta is a threatened species. Something must be done to protect it.