MATTHEW BROWN

Associated Press

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- American Indian tribes on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation are petitioning the state of Montana to give them a group of bison captured from Yellowstone National Park.

Leaders of the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes said in a resolution signed this week that bison are an important icon for their people that the tribe can help preserve.

Approximately 168 bison are being held on a private ranch owned by media mogul and philanthropist Ted Turner.

They were spared potential slaughter when they migrated from the park several years ago. That came under a program to repopulate public and tribal lands with a species that once numbered in the tens of millions in the western U.S.

Ranchers and other opponents of relocating the animals worry they will spread disease.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.