The article refers to the animal’s having an owner. They were livestock not wild bison.
Sorry, you’re confounding “owned” with “livestock.” Bad assumption.
Colorado Revised Statutes, Title 35, defines what “livestock” are. Bison aren’t included in the definition.
The issue isn’t whether or not they were owned. The issue comes in when you try to collect damages from someone’s animals estray onto your property through a legal fence. The statutes in most western states say that you may collect damages from owners of estray livestock on your land, that you may impound estray livestock on your land until such time as you receive payment for the damages, etc.
Well, that provision in the law gives you no relief if the animals estray on your land are not defined as “livestock.” They can come off someone else’s land onto your land and if they’re not part of the definition of “livestock,” the law is silent on what you can do to collect for damages.
I’ve been around this post in Nevada, with a cow county DA no less. In Nevada, sheep that don’t enter your land from a grazing allotment aren’t considered ‘estray livestock’ and there’s nothing you can do about sheep that come off your neighbor’s deeded land onto yours, because the definition of ‘estray’ for sheep defines them as only estray when they come off a grazing allotment.
But if they died as a result of bloat in my alfalfa fields, then I was responsible for them, because the NRS for animals that die on your field didn’t include a qualification of how they got there, ie, whether they were from an allotment or deeded ground. If someone else’s animals died on your property, you were responsible for the loss.
My solution was to push them out of my gates into the street. The law was silent on whether I could impound them, and the law said I couldn’t shoot them, so I wasn’t going to be liable for them. As soon as they became a hazard to traffic, then the sheriff could do something about them.
The livestock laws in the west are clearly only completely thought through for cattle and horses. Sheep were thrown in with a grudging admission that some people ran sheep.
When most of these laws were written, the cattlemen thought the bison was gone and done forever and they’d never have to worry about them. Hence the silence in the law.
Goats, which are becoming increasingly popular, are also not livestock. And goats will jump just about any “legal fence” anywhere in the west.