Two foreign tourists loaded a lone bison calf in their car, fearing it may die if left alone, and drove it to rangers in Yellowstone National Park last month. The rangers tried unsuccessfully to reintroduce the calf to a herd, but in the end euthanized it.
The incident unleashed a whirlwind of media reports and public discussions. After the park administration thoroughly explained why putting the animal down was the only thing they could do, one cloud of bitterness remained—the blame on the tourists who put the calf in their SUV.
Now, a local wildlife photographer has stepped forward, saying it wasn’t the tourists’ fault either.
Deby Dixon, a professional photographer, has spent the past one and a half years documenting Yellowstone wildlife.
She was aware of the bison calf even before the tourists picked it up.
“There is no way that the tourists were responsible for the calf being abandoned as it had already been alone for 3 days,” she told Epoch Times over email.
The park administration noted that bison may abandon their young if humans interfere with it. But it also stated one in four calves in the park gets abandoned by its mother even without any human interference.
This case was most likely the latter scenario, according to Dixon.
