On the open plains of eastern Montana, wildlife advocates want to restore free-ranging bison. Livestock producers strongly oppose the idea. What’s a ranch-owning hunter to do? By Andrew McKeAn BUTTING HEADS OVER 34 NOVEMBER –DECEMBER 2013 FWP.MT.GOV/MTOUTDOORS divides me, equal parts conservation- The badlands and minded hunter and taxpaying rancher. sagebrush prairies The issue isn’t an abstraction. There is a pressing need to find a permanent south of my house, home for hundreds of wild bison that have overpopulated the fragile moun - where I hunt mule tainous habitat of Yellowstone National Park, 300 miles to the southwest. deer and graze cow- Wildlife agencies and private conserva - tion groups suggest that these surplus calf pairs with my animals—some of the last genetically pure bison remaining on the planet— neighbors, don’t look should be returned to the Great Plains, where tens of millions of their ancestors like a battleground. lived until a century ago. Returning bison But this folded sea of gumbo knobs, as apex herbivores, they say, will promote prickly pears, and dust devils is the set - grassland health and biodiversity. ting for a gathering conflict that pits Ranchers and others who depend on wildlife advocates against ranchers. the cattle economy say the appropriate Though both sides have been clashing fate of these wild bison—“wooly tanks,” over various issues for a long time, some call them, for their habit of what’s different about the bison discord running through fences—is a slaughter - is how it stitches together three very house, not relocation. They worry that different eras: the old West of cowboys the Yellowstone animals could spread and Indians, the current West of gradu - brucellosis, a disease endemic to the ate-degree ranchers and pedigreed cat - park’s bison that can cause beef cattle tle, and the new West of ecologists who to abort their calves. Fundamentally, see in this wide, empty land a perfect they say, there is no longer room in the place to restore the keystone native West for wild buffalo. Barbed wire and species of the plains. homesteads have replaced itinerant At the heart of the battle are bison, Indian tribes and frontier hide hunters. and the question of whether or how to And free-ranging bison. return free-ranging bison to public But there’s a larger threat. Ranchers grasslands in eastern Montana. This worry that wild bison could displace conflict divides my little town of cattle from the range and upend the frag - Glasgow. It pits hunters, who would like ile cow-country economy that relies on the chance to pursue buffalo in the same R E T BISON N E subsidized livestock grazing on public K N O S places they now hunt antelope, against land. They recall the last time bison were L E N Y B ranchers, who view the wild bovines as in the headlines. It was the 1980s, when F L A C competition for grass and a threat to the the idea of the “Buffalo Commons” N O S I B fences that hold their cattle. And it was circulating. That was a proposal to MONTANA OUTDOORS 35 “rewild” the plains, replacing humans with bison and prairie dogs to restore ecological balance and create a potentially appealing tourist destination. It’s important to keep that context in mind anytime bison are mentioned here. To tradi - tional ranchers, a bison isn’t just a wild cow. It’s code for the systematic dismantling of the ranching culture. But bison are equally emblematic to wildlife advocates, who view the ani - mals as the single species capa - ble of restoring wildness to one of the largest ecosystems on the continent, the short-grass prairie that stretches from cen - tral Canada south to Oklahoma. Of course, these Great Plains have been irreversibly altered in the two centuries since Lewis and Clark My backyard WHICH GRAZER GETS THE GRASS? paddled through here and marveled over A few sizeable sections of the plains are rel - If bison end up on Bureau of Land endless herds of buffalo. Many grasslands atively unchanged since the mastodons, and Management property, conservation - ists might urge the agency to amend have been converted to grain fields, and beef bison later occupied this landscape. That its grazing permits to include the wild cattle have replaced bison as the bovines area happens to be my backyard, an empire bovines. ranchers understandably that define the region. of sagebrush that sprawls from the Missouri worry that if that happened, in dry “We don’t talk about bringing back the River north to the Canadian border in east - years there wouldn’t be enough dinosaurs, but that’s exactly what big herds ern Montana. It is predominantly public forage to go around and their cattle would lose out. of free-roaming buffalo are,” John Brenden, land, managed by the Bureau of Land a Montana state senator and a leading bison Management (BLM). opponent, told the Associated Press. “Their There are reminders here of the historic generations of hip-scratching bison. And time has passed.” presence of bison, if you know where to look. below some of the steepest scarps you can You can find bison skulls in the eroded banks sometimes find drifts of bison bones and Andrew McKean of Glasgow is the editor of prairie streams. The edges of car-sized stone spear points, relics of prehistoric of Outdoor Life , in which this article granite boulders, left on the open prairie by buffalo jumps and butchering parties. originally appeared. retreating glaciers, are polished smooth by There’s a certain wildness to this country s American hunters are proud of saying that we brought back the e i nation’s wildlife species from the brink of extinction. Most of the ani - c e mals we love to hunt—whitetails, wild turkeys, elk—recovered because p hunting licenses funded professional management and we agreed to S restrain ourselves through bag limits and season structures. ” d But one species—America’s bison—took a different path to recov - n i ery, and the current struggle over where to continue that restoration h e goes back to decisions made at the dawn of the nation’s wildlife con - B Y servation movement. - T E I t C f O ﬔe bison was the species that jump-started that movement. Back S N e O I T in the 1880s, just two decades aer visitors to the West described A L V R E “ S limitless herds of the animals, it appeared that buffalo would be N O C e E F I exterminated from the planet. Hide hunters slaughtered them, L h D L Shipping bison to a zoo in the early 1900s to help save the species. I T W railroads and homesteads fragmented their range, and soldiers killed 36 NOVEMBER –DECEMBER 2013 FWP.MT.GOV/MTOUTDOORS revolved around the hides and horns and meat of buffalo. “Bison are a connection to our ancestors,” says Mark Azure, director of fish and wildlife on the Fort Belknap Indian Reser - vation west of Glasgow. Conservationists are mostly on the Indians’ side, and they think they have found the right moment and place to begin the restoration. They want to translocate a herd of Yellowstone National Park bison to the 1.1 million-acre Charles M. Russell (CMR) National Wildlife Refuge in the Missouri River Breaks. This first step is actually pretty sensible—wildlife refuges are mandated with managing native wildlife, and nothing could be more native (or in need that attracted me and keeps me here in the been lobbying to receive many of Yellow - of management) in eastern Montana than heart of a hunter’s domain. But nearby stone National Park’s surplus bison. Tribal wild bison. The CMR is already known for its there’s a satisfying sense of order, too, leaders find themselves in a new range war world-class elk, mule deer, and bighorns, imposed by ruler-straight section-line fences, with ranchers as they try, through the courts and it’s not a reach to imagine that a hunt - miles-long strips of durum wheat, and close- and the Montana Legislature, to enable the able herd of wild bison could live here, too. knit communities that promote inclusion and restoration of wild bison to reservations as But what excites conservationists, and a sense—expressed as a sort of pioneer well as nontribal public lands. troubles ranchers, is that the CMR repre - pride—that the rest of the world has forgotten For Indians, bison are as essential now as sents a foothold on the plains that could R E T T E us out here on this last American frontier. they were 130 years ago, when the animals’ enable bison to be returned to a wider land - T S A L G removal hastened the end of free-ranging scape, one occupied mainly by cattle. Much C K ; K N Still essential to tribes tribes and spawned the modern reservation of the prairie north of the CMR all the way A L B L L Another culture that shares these plains culture. Tribes want to restore bison herds to to the Canadian border—an area nearly the E N N I L with ranchers is on the opposite side of the feed and employ tribal members and give size of Indiana—is managed by the BLM, E E D : T bison issue. them a sense of historical completion, their whose principal function is to award permits H G I R O They’re American Indian tribes—Sioux, gift to a species that for centuries gave prairie allowing ranchers to graze cattle on public T T F E L Assiniboine, and Gros Ventre—that have tribes food, shelter, and a world view that lands.