Some of Yellowstone's bison are now in private hands

BOZEMAN, Mont. — When dozens of wild American bison wandered out of Yellowstone National Park in search of greener grass and wound up sheltered on a giant ranch owned by Ted Turner, media mogul and bison meat kingpin, the species reached what many believe could be a turning point.

Turner, under an unusual custodial contract with the state of Montana, offered to shepherd the animals for the next five years as part of an experimental program. It will grant him a sizable portion of their offspring in exchange, much to the chagrin of environmentalists who sued the state, saying the bison belong to the public. Turner is not restrained from using the bison for commercial breeding or sale.

The "Yellowstone 87" are a kind of Noah's ark of their kind. Genetically, these bison still carry the shaggy swagger of their Ice Age forebears that lived alongside saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths. Montana wildlife managers hope they will be the fount for establishing new free-roaming populations elsewhere in the state or around the West — if the animals prove, through the five years of testing, to be free of diseases that can infect cattle, especially brucellosis.

At the heart of the controversy is the human intervention that has shaped the animal's history, from the brink of extinction around 1900 to their strange modern status. They are now raised for meat by the hundreds of thousands on private ranches, or left to free roam almost nowhere but Yellowstone.

On Friday, with the snow-capped Big Belt Mountains in the distance, the animals on Turner's ranch looked straight out of Frederic Remington — calves frolicked and cows dozed while a giant bull stood his ground, staring down a group of would-be intruders on his realm.

A lawsuit by a coalition of environmentalists argues that the state, by facilitating the bison's passage from wild to owned — and by the biggest purveyor of bison meat in the nation, no less, through Turner's vast ranches and restaurant chain, Ted's Montana Grill — violates its duty to manage wildlife, like water or air, for the good of all.

In court papers filed earlier this month, state officials said that they were working for the benefit of the species, and that the plight of individual animals — by their calculation, about 188 bison will be born over the next five years and remain in Turner's possession — did not cancel out the higher goal.

They also say that Turner filled an urgent need: The 87 animals spent more than four years in quarantine for a round of disease testing and needed a bigger home on the range, and Turner's ranch and expertise were unmatched.