Environment Archives - Page 62 of 106

Native Americans vow a last stand to block Keystone XL pipeline

By Rob Hotakainen

McClatchy Washington Bureau February 17, 2014

Faith Spotted Eagle sits in her home in Lake Andes, South Dakota on Monday, Feb. 10, 2014. Spotted Eagle is fighting against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. TRAVIS HEYING — MCT

WASHINGTON — Faith Spotted Eagle figures that building a crude oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast would bring little to Indian Country besides more crime and dirty water, but she doubts that Native Americans will ever get the U.S. government to block the $7 billion project.

“There is no way for Native people to say no – there never has been,” said Spotted Eagle, 65, a Yankton Sioux tribal elder from Lake Andes, S.D. “Our history has caused us not to be optimistic. . . . When you have capitalism, you have to have an underclass – and we’re the underclass.”

Opponents may be down after a State Department study found that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would not contribute to global warming. But they haven’t abandoned their goal of killing what some call “the black snake.”

In South Dakota, home to some of the nation’s poorest American Indians, tribes are busy preparing for nonviolent battle with “resistance training” aimed at TransCanada, the company that wants to develop the 1,700-mile pipeline.

While organizers said they want to keep their strategy a secret, they’re considering everything from vigils to civil disobedience to blockades to thwart the moving of construction equipment and the delivery of materials.

“We’re going to do everything we possibly can,” said Greg Grey Cloud of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who attended a two-day conference and training session in Rapid City last week sponsored by the Oglala Sioux Tribe called “Help Save Mother Earth from the Keystone Pipeline.” He said tribes are considering setting up encampments to follow the construction, but he stressed that any actions would be peaceful. “We’re not going to damage anything or riot or anything like that,” he said.

Like much of the country, however, tribal members are divided over the pipeline. In South Dakota, the battle pits those who fear irreversible effects on the environment and public safety against those who trumpet the economic payoff and a chance to cash in on a kind of big development project that rarely comes along.

In Winner, S.D., where the population numbers fewer than 3,000, Mayor Jess Keesis is eager to welcome construction workers from a 600-member “man camp” that would open just 10 miles from town if President Barack Obama approves the pipeline.

“Out here on the prairie, you know, we’re a tough people,” said Keesis, who’s also a member of the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation in Kansas. “We deal with drought and eight-foot blizzards and all kinds of stuff all the time, so anytime we can get something like this to give us a shot, it’s a good thing.”

Opponents say the risks are too great.

Two weeks ago, an alliance of Native American groups approved a statement saying emphatically that no pipeline would be allowed in South Dakota and that tribes stand ready to protect their “sacred water” and other natural resources.

That includes Native women, who opponents of the pipeline say would become easy prey for thousands of temporary construction workers housed in work camps. According to the federal government, one of every three Indian women are either raped or sexually assaulted during their lifetimes, with the majority of attacks done by non-Native men.

“If you like to drink water, if you like your children not being harmed, if you don’t want your women being harmed, then say no to the pipeline,” Grey Cloud said. “Because once it comes, it’s going to destruct everything.”

Opponents said they don’t want to have to follow through on their plans. They hope that they have the ultimate trump card with a president who just happens to be an adopted Indian. That would be Barack Black Eagle, who was formally adopted by Hartford and Mary Black Eagle of Montana’s Crow Indian Tribe in 2008, when he visited the tribal reservation during his first presidential run.

“They didn’t do that by accident – they saw something in him, and I hope he recognizes that within himself,” Spotted Eagle said.

Grey Cloud said Obama would be “going against his word” if he approves the pipeline: “His main promise was to not allow pollution in our area.”

Keesis said the project carries risks but ultimately would be a winner for the region. He said the city of Winner and surrounding Tripp County would get a windfall of roughly $900,000 a year from construction workers patronizing the town’s restaurants, bars and its recently upgraded digital theater. Even the city would make money, hauling liquid waste from the nearby construction camp to its municipal facilities.

After spending 20 years working in oilfields and boomtowns, he’s convinced that much has changed, with construction workers “under the gun to behave.”

“I’ve been in boomtowns all my life: Wyoming, Texas, California, Colorado, Alaska, everywhere,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be near as bad as what people have in their minds. The oilfield, as with any other occupation like this, has really mellowed over the last 20 years. It’s not the Wild West like it used to be. . . . But you’ve got to take a little bad with the good.”

Obama, who has not said when he’ll make a final decision, is under heavy pressure to approve the project. Just last week, all 45 Republican senators sent a letter to the president, saying thousands of jobs are at stake and reminding him that he had promised them to make a decision by the end of 2013.

Nationally, project backers appear to be riding the momentum, armed with a State Department report on Jan. 31 that minimized the climate change impact of building the pipeline. Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said the report shows Americans that there is “no reason, scientific or otherwise, to block this project any longer.”

While Obama has kept mum, his administration has been offering hope to tribal officials.

“If we’re developing an area that runs through Indian Country, it’s very important that we reach an agreement that makes sense to tribes,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told tribal officials during a visit to Oklahoma in November, according to a story published in the Native American Times. “If not, that might mean the pipeline or transmission line goes somewhere else.”

In South Dakota, the proposed line would not go through any of the state’s nine reservations, but opponents say its close proximity would still pose a hazard.

TransCanada officials say they’ve worked closely with the tribes, even halting work in northeast Texas last year as a team of archaeological contractors dug for Indian artifacts at a sacred site.

With the southern section of the pipeline already open, company spokesman Terry Cunha said TransCanada is now working with 17 tribes in South Dakota, Montana and Nebraska, where the company needs Obama’s approval to build. He said the company hopes to begin work in those states in 2015.

Cunha said the company expects the pipeline to have a “limited impact” on the environment and that its work camps will be provided with around-the-clock security.

“We see it as a positive benefit,” he said.

Besides the short-term construction work, Keesis said his city would gain another 30 to 40 permanent residents who would work on pipeline-related jobs. He said Winner needs a lift, noting that since the city shut down its strip clubs a few years back, fewer pheasant hunters are visiting, opting to stay in big hunting lodges nearby.

“When I moved here, during the first three weeks of pheasant season, you couldn’t find a parking space,” he said. “Now you can park anywhere.”

But the economic argument is a hard sell for many tribal members in South Dakota, where history is still raw. It’s the scene of the some of the bloodiest battles between Indians and the federal government, including the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee Creek by the U.S. 7th Cavalry that killed nearly 300 Sioux.

Spotted Eagle said she feels obligated to try to stop the pipeline, both to provide toxic-free land and water for her grandchildren and to protect women from attacks.

“This is a form of militarism, bringing in these man camps,” said Spotted Eagle. “For those of us who have the history, it smacks of repetitive economics, when they put us in forts and they wanted our land. . . . All we’re willing to do here is sell our soul, just for the economy. That’s the dark side.”

Email: rhotakainen@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @HotakainenRob

Wind Project on Tribal Land Dies Quietly

campo-wind-turbines-2-24-14-thumb-600x480-69313 — Wind turbines near Campo | Photo: Joel Price/Flickr/Creative Commons License

by Chris Clarke

on February 24, 2014 kcet.org

It’s official: a wind power project that would have generated up to 250 megawatts of power with as many as 85 turbines in the San Diego County backcountry is off the table.

The Shu’luuk Wind Project, proposed by the firm Invenergy for up to 4,000 acres of the Campo Indian Reservation, suffered a mortal blow last June when the tribe’s General Council voted 44-34 to oppose the project. Opposition stemmed from concerns over quality of life, the risk of fire, and perceived health impacts of the project.

Though the project’s proponents had suggested last June that they might seek another vote on the project, the tribe subsequently canceled its lease with the project’s proponent Invenergy. On Thursday, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced that it was cancelling the project’s final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), thus sticking the proverbial fork in Shu’luuk Wind.

Shu’luuk Wind’s Draft EIS, released in January 2013, was widely criticized for containing insufficient detail about the project’s design, including the type and output of the turbines to be built. Nonetheless, tribe members and other locals expressed strong concerns over fire danger from the project in the traditionally highly flammable San Diego backcountry, as well as increased dust problems from more than 25 miles of new dirt roads, along with concerns over noise and visual disturbance.

The cancellation of the final EIS doesn’t mean there won’t be turbines on the Campo reservation: the tribe already hosts an existing wind installation, the Kumeyaay Wind Farm, with 25 large turbines. An explosion and fire in one of that project’s turbines December 16 didn’t exactly alleviate locals’ concerns about fire danger from local wind development. That facility was offline for nearly a month after the mishap.

Also in December, the BIA approved a deal by which the nearby Ewiiaapaayp Band of Kumeyaay
Indians would lease reservation lands for a westward expansion of the large Tule Wind project, which would be mainly sited on BLM lands to the east of that band’s Cuyapaipe Reservation, and just north of the Campo Reservation.

Opinion on the Shu’luuk project was mixed within the Campo Reservation’s residents as well, so the cancellation of that project doesn’t necessarily mean the end of new wind projects on Native lands in the backcountry. But as more turbines appear in the area, opposition could intensify.

Wind turbines near Campo | Photo: Joel Price/Flickr/Creative Commons License

‘Snapshots in time’: Yurok Tribe receives grant for sea level rise research

Will Houston/The Times-Standard

Feb 22, 2014

To aid in the Yurok Tribe’s climate change research on Klamath River wetlands, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded the tribe part of a $1.5 million grant this week.

Environmental protection specialist Suzanne Marr — who previously ran the agency’s wetlands program — said the Yurok Tribe’s application came complete with successful research.

”It’s a very competitive program, and not easy to get funded,” Marr said. “The Yurok Tribe has a strong program, and has competed very well over the years.”

Wetlands specialist Bill Patterson of the tribe’s environmental program said the $135,000 award is the fourth two-year grant the tribe has received from the EPA program. Each grant, Patterson said, has funded a variety of wetlands research projects spanning nearly eight years and different regions of the Klamath River.

”What we’re trying to do is expand on the previous data that we’ve had that includes an inventory baseline of wetlands species and water quality parameters,” Patterson said. “This cycle we’re looking at specific species that may be threatened in the face of climate change impacts, in particular sea level rise.”

The research project will collect baseline data on the wildlife and conditions of coastal estuaries near the lower Klamath River, which Patterson said can be useful for future research.

”The inventories are very useful in that they’re snapshots in time,” Patterson said. “For something like sea level rise, if the estuary is going to be 6 feet underwater in 25 years, you can look back at how it was impacting them in 2014.”

Patterson said that while past research with the tribe’s fisheries program and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services has focused on mapping, water quality and restoration efforts in both upper and lower regions of the Klamath, efforts to analyze sea level rise are critical due to its substantial effects on coastal estuaries.

”If you want to talk about the future of climate change, what you’re potentially going to see with sea level rise is increased salinity,” Patterson said. “The saltwater levels rise, and that can significantly change the plant community and the species that rely on that community.”

With wetlands disappearing at an alarming rate, Patterson emphasized the importance of assessing the local wildlife that rely heavily upon the fragile ecosystem.

”It’s a really rare habitat, because it’s in a coastal climate, and is significant to a lot of species,” Patterson said. “People often overlook these areas.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s current wetlands program coordinator Leana Rosetti said it is important to help tribes and local governments protect and improve their wetland programs. The application period for next year’s grants are still open, she said.

”We encourage folks to develop plans to compete for grants to fund their own wetlands program,” Rosetti said. “The more applicants, the better.”

On the Web: For information on the EPA grant, visit water.epa.gov/grants_funding/wetlands/grantguidelines/index.cfm

Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504 or whouston@times-standard.com. Follow him on Twitter.com/Will_S_Houston.

Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe brings in more efficient incubator system

Feb 21, 2014 NWIFC.com

With the influx of chum salmon last fall, the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe was able to take twice as many eggs as usual, up to 1.2 million.

In anticipation of the large run, natural resources director Paul McCollum brought in an idea from his time in fisheries in Alaska – a NOPAD incubator, a tower of six 4′ x 4′ x 15” aluminum trays that can accommodate up to 1.5 million eggs.

Little Boston Hatchery technician Jeff Fulton works with a tray of eggs in the new NOPAD incubator system. More photos can be found by clicking on this photo.

“The small tray incubation system, or Heath tray system, we have been using for decades can only hold up to 600,000 eggs in total,” McCollum said. “The NOPAD has only been around since the 1970s and is commonly used in Alaska. One of the NOPAD trays can hold 45 small Heath trays worth of eggs.”

The tribe is maxed out with the old system, McCollum said, so the NOPAD trays will help increase its chum production while using minimal additional water or floor space.

“Most of our chum will go into our raceways, as we’ve always done, but now we’ll have more to put in the net pens, which, in the end, will result in bigger fish at release.

“The survival rate is a little more beneficial with the NOPAD,” he added. “But our main focus is on increasing production for better returns.”

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For more information, contact Paul McCollum, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe natural resources director, at (360) 297-6237 or paulm@pgst.nsn.us; or Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission public information officer, at (360) 297-6546 or troyal@nwifc.org.

Washington State Senators Propose Tax On Oil Train Shipments

Taylor Winkel, Northwest News Network

Powerful members of the Washington state Senate are on board with a plan to tax crude oil shipped into the state by rail.

The money raised would pay for oil spill response and clean up.

The proposed legislation would expand an existing barrel tax paid only by seaborne oil tankers.

Republican Sen. Doug Ericksen says extending the tax is fair.

“Every tanker coming into our refinery today pays a 5-cents-per-barrel tax that goes into oil spill prevention and response,” Ericksen says. “We believe we should apply that to rail cars coming in and we have a bi partisan bill that would apply the barrel tax to the rail cars also.”

Oil train traffic across the Northwest has rapidly increased since 2012. Trains are carrying crude oil from wells on the northern plains to refineries in Northwest Washington and a marine terminal in Clatskanie, Ore.

At least half a dozen more crude oil receiving terminals are on the drawing boards in Western Oregon and Washington.

Puyallup Tribe tracking sea star wasting in South Sound

George Stearns, shellfish biologist for the Puyallup Tribe, inspects a sick sea star caught in the tribe’s crab monitoring study.

Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

As part of their regular monitoring of crab populations the Puyallup Tribe of Indians is tracking the impact of a mysterious ailment that is decimating sea stars.

An outbreak of sea star wasting syndrome was first noticed early last fall in British Columbia. The syndrome starts as small lesions and eventually the infected sea stars disintegrate. Since the syndrome was first noticed, it quickly spread throughout the Salish Sea and along the Pacific coast.

While there have been documented outbreaks before of the syndrome, nothing on this scale has ever been recorded. There is no known cause.

The tribe started regular crab surveys in April 2013. “Since then, we started seeing a lot of sea star by-catch,” said George Stearns, shellfish biologist for the tribe. “One pot near the north point of Vashon Island was literally full of sea stars.”

The tribe regularly monitors eight stations between the north end of Vashon Island and the Tacoma Narrows. Each station includes nine crab pots.

George Stearns (right) and David Winfrey, shellfish biologists for the Puyallup Tribe, count and measure crab caught in a monitoring study in southern Puget Sound.

During the tribe’s early surveys, the sea star population seemed healthy. But, Puyallup tribal scientists recorded a sharp die-off in October. “We saw one monitoring site go from four sea stars per pot in April to 12 in September to zero all together in October,” Stearns said. “We went from catching over 100 sea stars to none within a month at that site.”

“Across the entire area we’re monitoring, we’re seeing a massive decrease in sea star bycatch,” Stearns said. “Some of the sea stars we are finding are literally melting in front of us.”

When a diseased sea star does catch a ride on a tribal crab pot, it deflates quickly. Within a few minutes, a normally rigid sea star will be hanging on the pot like a wet rag.

The main focus of the crab monitoring work by the tribe is to pinpoint exactly when the crab in the tribe’s harvest area molt, or shed their shells.

“Crabbing during the middle of molting, which makes them soft and vulnerable, can increase the handling mortality,” Stearns said. “Its a common practice to shut down harvest during the molt. But, we’ve only had a general idea of when that occurs down here.”

The data collected will also help the fisheries managers put together a more complete picture of crab populations in the South Sound. “We GPS the locations so we’re at the same spots and put the pots in for the same length of time,” Stearns said. “So, we know we’re comparing apples to apples each month.”

Sea star immediately after being caught. Photo by George Stearns.

Sea star five minutes after being caught. Photo by George Stearns.

Navy Looks To Renew Permits For Bombing And Sonar Exercises In The Northwest

The U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis transits the Pacific Ocean alongside the oiler USNS Yukon. | credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/Specialist 3rd Class Kenneth Abbate — The U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis transits the Pacific Ocean alongside the oiler USNS Yukon. | credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/Specialist 3rd Class Kenneth Abbate

By Ashley Ahearn, KUOW

SEATTLE — The Navy is pursuing permits to continue conducting sonar and explosives exercises in a large area of the Pacific Ocean — and that’s putting marine mammal advocates on high alert.

Public hearings kick off next week as the Navy gathers public comments on its draft environmental impact statement for the Northwest training and testing range. The range stretches from northern California to the Canadian border.

Marine mammals, like porpoises, gray and fin whales and endangered orcas, travel through the Navy’s training range. That’s why marine mammal advocates are voicing concerns about the Navy’s activities.

In the draft EIS the Navy outlined plans to conduct up to 100 mid-range active sonar tests each year. That type of sonar has been shown to affect marine mammal behavior.

The Navy also wants to conduct up to 30 bombing exercises per year in the range.

The Northwest training and testing range. Credit: Navy

John Mosher, Northwest Environmental program manager for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, says the training range is critical to naval preparedness.

“At some point realistic training, whether it’s with explosives or sonar, has to take place and they truly are skills that are perishable, things that have to be routinely conducted to be able to do them in case the real need occurs,” Mosher said.

The Navy gathered more than 300 public comments during an earlier scoping phase of its environmental review. Most of those comments centered around impacts on marine mammals.

The Navy has plans in place to look and listen for marine mammals before and during testing exercises. But environmentalists say the mitigation measures are inadequate.

“They’re dropping bombs and you can’t see orcas from the air,” said Howard Garrett of Orca Network. “There’s every real danger that orcas are going to stray into a live bombing range and we don’t want to see that.”

Brad Hanson

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been studying the endangered orca population of Puget Sound by tagging orcas and using underwater acoustic monitoring devices to better understand how the whales move through the region. The population of Southern Resident Orcas is hovering around 80 individuals, and has been decreasing in recent years.

Brad Hanson, an expert on orcas with NOAA, says the area within the naval training and testing range is an important forage area for the whales.

“We want to figure out if there are particular areas that the whales are using so the Navy could avoid using those areas for training exercises that might cause any type of harassment of the animals,” he said.

Hanson’s tagging research has shown orcas moving from Washington to northern California within the span of a week.

The body of 3-year-old female Orca L112.
Credit: Cascadia Research

Last year a 3-year-old female orca washed up dead near the mouth of the Columbia River. Her body showed signs of trauma that could have been the result of an explosion but it had been drifting on the Columbia River’s eddies for days, making the results of the necropsy report inconclusive. The official findings were to be released by NOAA Fisheries on Monday.

“It’s probably the most comprehensive necropsy report I’ve ever seen done on a killer whale,” Hanson said.

The Navy also recently announced plans to build a new $15 million dollar facility near Port Angeles, Wash. on the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

What’s Next

Public meetings will be held from 5-8 p.m. for the following dates and locations:

Feb. 26, 5-8 pm: Oak Harbor High School, Oak Harbor, Wash.
Feb. 27, Cascade High School, Everett, Wash.
Feb. 28, North Kitsap High School, Poulsbo, Wash.
March 3, Astoria High School, Astoria, Ore.
March 4, Isaac Newton Magnet School, Newport, Ore.

The deadline for written comments on the Northwest Training and Testing range EIS is March 25.

Tribes partner to survey forestlands with LIDAR

An aerial photo (above) is compared with the LIDAR model.

Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

The Stillaguamish and Tulalip tribes have partnered with the state Department of Natural Resources and three private timber companies to map forestlands in the Stillaguamish and Skykomish basins.

LIDAR, which stands for Light Distance and Ranging, uses an airborne laser to survey topography.

“The laser pulses from the plane are reflected back to record billions of points of light that measure elevation,” said Derek Marks, Timber/Fish/Wildlife biologist for Tulalip.

Elevation data was collected on working forestlands and a large area of Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The result is a high-resolution model that enables natural resources managers to identify resources and potential risks, such as landslides.

“We can save many hours with high-resolution models,” Marks said. “We don’t have to walk the hillside; a forester would have to traverse the area to know where the streams are.”

The new LIDAR surveys covered an area that previously had not been mapped, where the forest canopy covers streams. The models will guide environmental permit reviews for logging and road proposals.

“We’re also reflying the entire North Fork Stillaguamish corridor to compare the data with LIDAR from 2003, to see what’s changed in a 10-year period,” said Scott Rockwell, Timber/Fish/Wildlife biologist for Stillaguamish. Those surveys will cover tribal restoration projects on the North Fork.

“It streamlines management and risk assessment for private industry and state lands,” Rockwell said. “It allows tribes to prioritize and scope restoration projects where we can see obvious habitat potential.”

The surveys were coordinated by the Puget Sound LIDAR Consortium, an informal group of federal and local agencies that acts as a clearinghouse for the high-resolution topographic models, making the data available to the public.

17 more bison shipped to slaughter

Billings Gazette Feb 19, 2014 • By Brett French

BRETT FRENCH/Gazette Staff Bison wander back toward Yellowstone National Park from outside the park’s northern border in the Gardiner Basin recently. The park continues to ship bison to slaughter to reduce the number of animals in the park. — BRETT FRENCH/Gazette Staff
Bison wander back toward Yellowstone National Park from outside the park’s northern border in the Gardiner Basin recently. The park continues to ship bison to slaughter to reduce the number of animals in the park.

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes trucked 17 more Yellowstone National Park bison from the park’s Stephens Creek bison capture facility to a slaughter facility in Ronan on Wednesday.

The tribes pay a game warden to ride along with the shipment of animals to shoot them if there is an accident and the bison escape from the trailer, a requirement of the Montana Department of Livestock.

That requirement was unknown to the Inter Tribal Buffalo Council, which had agreed to take any bison not wanted by Yellowstone treaty tribes. Initially, the DOL offered to provide one of its employees to ride along at a cost of $350 a trip. When the council balked at the cost, Yellowstone on Wednesday agreed to pay, said Christian Mackay, executive officer for the DOL.

“It’s not an insurmountable problem by any means,” Mackay said. “We have some loads scheduled this week to go out.”

Jim Stone, executive director of the buffalo council, said such “annoying” issues are roadblocks to fulfilling agreements under the Interagency Bison Management Plan and he called into question the DOL’s role in the process.

To date, tribal and state hunters have killed 162 bison, said Tom McDonald of the confederated tribes’ natural resources office. The Nez Perce, Shoshone-Bannock and Umatilla tribes are still conducting hunts. Montana-licensed hunters took 29 bison this season.

Last week, the confederated tribes transported another 20 bison from Yellowstone to slaughter and five were transferred to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for research. According to a Park Service spokesman, about 70 to 75 bison are now in the Stephens Creek corral. The bison were not hazed into the facility. Another 50 to 70 bison have moved past the park’s northern boundary in the Gardiner Basin while about 400 have gathered in the park roughly between the towns of Gardiner and Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo.

Yellowstone officials want to remove 300 to 600 bison in consecutive years to reduce the size of the park’s herds to meet the terms of an agreement with the state of Montana. Bison advocacy groups have decried the move, saying a target population of 3,000 to 3,500 bison in the park is not based on the carrying capacity of the range. This summer the park’s bison herd was estimated at 4,600 animals.

Bison advocates would like to see the animals given more room to roam outside Yellowstone and a quarantine process enacted to transfer live animals to existing tribal bison herds. Those efforts have been fought by the livestock industry since many of the bison carry brucellosis, which can cause pregnant cattle to abort.

Defenders of Wildlife said 56,000 people had emailed Gov. Steve Bullock asking him to intervene and halt the slaughter.

McDonald said confederated tribes are taking bison to slaughter for hunters who were unsuccessful in filling their bison hunting tags. The hunters pay for the cost of shipping, slaughtering and butchering of the bison.

“When it’s all said and done, people love bison meat and are willing to pay a premium,” McDonald said. “Ninety-seven percent of the people who return to eating bison find it exceptional.”

He added that the hunts have been “self-esteem builders” for the parties of hunters that travel to Yellowstone’s borders.

“It’s almost a healing kind of thing,” McDonald said.

Amid Toxic Waste, a Navajo Village Could Lose Its Land

A contaminated pile near the community of Red Water Pond Road holds a million cubic yards of waste from the Old Northeast Church Rock Mine. Mark Holm for The New York Times

By DAN FROSCH FEB. 19, 2014 The NYTimes

CHURCH ROCK, N.M. — In this dusty corner of the Navajo reservation, where seven generations of families have been raised among the arroyos and mesas, Bertha Nez is facing the prospect of having to leave her land forever.

The uranium pollution is so bad that it is unsafe for people to live here long term, environmental officials say. Although the uranium mines that once pocked the hillsides were shut down decades ago, mounds of toxic waste are still piled atop the dirt, raising concerns about radioactive dust and runoff.

And as cleanup efforts continue, Ms. Nez and dozens of other residents of the Red Water Pond Road community, who have already had to leave their homes at least twice since 2007 because of the contamination, are now facing a more permanent relocation. Although their village represents only a small sliver of the larger Navajo nation, home to nearly 300,000 people, they are bearing the brunt of the environmental problems.

“It feels like we are being pushed around,” said Ms. Nez, 67, a retired health care worker, who recalled the weeks and months spent in motel rooms in nearby Gallup as crews hauled away radioactive soil from the community’s backyards and roadsides.

“This is where we’re used to being, traditionally, culturally” she said. “Nobody told us it was unsafe. Nobody warned us we would be living all this time with this risk.”

These days, this sprawling reservation, about the size of West Virginia, is considered one of the largest uranium-contaminated areas in United States history, according to officials at the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency has been in the throes of an expansive effort to remove waste from around this tiny and remote Navajo village, and clean up more than 500 abandoned mine areas that dot the reservation.

Federal officials say they have been amazed at the extent of the uranium contamination on the reservation, a vestige of a burst of mining activity here during the Cold War. In every pocket of Navajo country, tribal members have reported finding mines that the agency did not know existed. In some cases, the mines were discovered only after people fell down old shafts.

“It is shocking — it’s all over the reservation,” said Jared Blumenfeld, the E.P.A.’s regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest. “I think everyone, even the Navajos themselves, have been shocked about the number of mines that were both active and abandoned.”

Between 2008 and 2012, federal agencies spent $100 million on the cleanup, according to the E.P.A.; an additional $17 million has been spent by energy companies determined to be responsible for some of the waste.

But the scope of the problem is worse than anyone had thought. The E.P.A. has said that it could take at least eight years to dispose of a huge pile of uranium mine waste that has sat near Red Water Pond Road since the 1980s — waste that must be removed before the area can finally be free of contamination.

“The community is frustrated, I know I’m frustrated — we’d like it to go quickly,” Mr. Blumenfeld said.

But before the latest round of cleanup can begin, an application to remove the waste pile must be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will then conduct environmental and safety reviews. That process will probably take two years, and there is the possibility that public hearings on the plan could extend the process several more years, said Drew Persinko, a deputy director for the commission.

That time frame seems unreasonably long for tribal members, who said that spending so long living away from the reservation has been difficult. So far, the E.P.A. has spent $1 million on temporary housing for residents of Red Water Pond Road; much of that cost will be reimbursed by General Electric, which acquired the old Northeast Church Rock Mine site in 1997, and also its subsidiary company, United Nuclear Corporation, which operated the mine.

As in the past, the relocations will be voluntary. Some residents wondered — as they have for years now — if the land will ever really be clean.

“Our umbilical cords are buried here, our children’s umbilical cords are buried here. It’s like a homing device,” said Tony Hood, 64, who once worked in the mines and is now a Navajo interpreter for the Indian Medical Center in Gallup. “This is our connection to Mother Earth. We were born here. We will come back here eventually.”

Residents still remember seeing livestock drinking from mine runoff, men using mine materials to build their homes and Navajo children playing in contaminated water that ran through the arroyo. Today, the site near Red Water Pond Road holds one million cubic yards of waste from the Northeast Church Rock Mine, making it the largest and most daunting area of contamination on the reservation.

The waste does not pose any immediate health risk, Mr. Blumenfeld said, but there are concerns about radioactive dust being carried by the wind, runoff from rain, and the area’s accessibility to children, who can slip in easily through a fence.

Under a plan being developed by General Electric and the E.P.A., the waste would be transported to a former uranium mill just off the reservation — already considered a Superfund site — and stored in a fortified repository. The estimated cost is nearly $45 million.

“General Electric and United Nuclear Corporation are committed to continue to work cooperatively with the U.S. government, Navajo Nation, state of New Mexico and local residents to carry out interim cleanups and reach agreement on the remedy for the mine,” said Megan Parker, a spokeswoman for General Electric.

The Navajo E.P.A., which is an arm of the tribe’s own government, for years has been calling for a widespread cleanup of abandoned mines. Stephen Etsitty, the executive director of the agency, said he was hopeful that progress was finally being made, but acknowledged that the scope and technical complexity of the operation at Red Water Pond Road was unprecedented.

“We’re pushing and doing as much as we can to keep the process going as fast as we can,” Mr. Etsitty said. “It’s just taken so long to get there.”

On a recent day, Ms. Nez and several other residents stood on a bluff near a cluster of small homes and traditional Navajo hogan dwellings as the wind whipped across a valley that once bustled with mining activity.

The group talked of their grandparents — medicine men who were alive when the mines first opened — and wondered what they would think about Red Water Pond Road today.

“They would say ‘How did this happen? They ruined our land,’ ” Ms. Nez said. “ ‘How come you haven’t prayed to have this all fixed up?’ ”

A version of this article appears in print on February 20, 2014, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Nestled Amid Toxic Waste, a Navajo Village Faces Losing Its Land Forever. Order Reprints|Today’s Paper|Subscribe