Montana wildlife officials have decided against shipping 145 bison captured from Yellowstone National Park to the Cherokee Naton and other locations across the nation.
Instead, the Fish and Wildlife Commission voted Thursday to keep the animals in the state by relocating them to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana.
State officials had recommended splitting the animals between the Fort Peck tribes, a New York-based wildlife consortium, Oklahoma's Cherokee Nation and the state of Utah.
Yellowstone bison are considered extremely valuable because they are one of the few wild herds left that have no cattle genes.
These 145 bison were captured over the past decade under an experimental quarantine program to ensure they were disease-free. They have spent the past five years on a ranch owned by media mogul Ted Turner.
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