Federal judge orders review of Yellowstone bison study

A federal judge has ordered the US Fish and Wildlife Service to revisit part of its decision not to protect Yellowstone National Park’s bison as an endangered species.

The Buffalo Field Campaign and Western Watersheds Project groups argued that two separate groups of bison in the park are genetically distinct, while the Fish and Wildlife Service cites a different study and says the herds are not genetically distinct.

The Billings Gazette reported this weekend that a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the federal agency failed to articulate why it chose one study over the other.