From the Senator's web site:

Friday, February 6, 2009

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) --- U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate reports of animal neglect and abuse at a ranch in North Dakota that is owned by a millionaire real estate developer from Florida.

Dorgan sent a letter today to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asking for an investigation of the incident. Press reports have indicated that hundreds of bison - many of them bearing evidence of starvation and illness - escaped from a sprawling ranch in south-central North Dakota and north-central South Dakota. The ranch is owned by Maurice Wilder, a resident of Clearwater, Fla., who owns hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land and has collected more than $3 million in farm subsidies.

Dorgan has also asked USDA to have its Animal Plant Health Inspection Service Animal Care division look into the matter.

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New developments in the ongoing saga over top federal farm subsidy recipient Maurice Wilder and the six thousand head bison herd he owns. The Associated Press reports this morning that the Sheriff of Sioux County will sign a complaint that Wilder's herd has been neglected. Reports in recent days have surrounding landowners complaining that starved bison are breaking from their corrals in search of food.

The public response from the Wilder corporation:

Bonnie Kemerling, whose husband, Jack, is the local manager, said a South Dakota veterinary inspector looked at ranch bison this week. "He thought the herd was OK as far as he could see. Some are skinny, but they're old, and there are a few dead ones," Kemerling said.

People don't realize that bison are tall and skinny, not round and fat like cattle, she said. "People don't understand bison," she said.

I'm pretty sure folks from North and South Dakota "understand" bison. That's like saying New Yorkers don't "understand" bagels.

For weeks, Waliser and other Selfridge area landowners have been seeing renegade, possibly starving bison, crashing fences and running loose into their yards, hay yards and pastures.

At least 500 bison have moved north out of an 18-mile stretch of pasture that runs along Highway 6 between McLaughlin, S.D., and Selfridge.

The animals are part of a 6,000-head herd belonging to the vast Wilder Ranch that straddles the North Dakota and South Dakota state line, part of a corporation owned by Maurice Wilder of Clearwater, Fla.

According to the Environmental Working Group, Wilder was the country's largest individual recipient of farm subsidies, receiving $3.2 million from 2003 to 2005, as owner of 200,000 agricultural acres. He also owns 10 office buildings in Tampa, Fla., 4,500 mobile home lots and 12,500 recreational vehicle lots.

Read it all here in the Bismarck Tribune.