NGO's Plan to Rewild the Northern Great Plains

The United States cattle industry has been trying to provide a hungry population with protein while fighting off attacks from all sides. Unfortunately, we are losing: cattle numbers and the number of ranches keep declining. The complaints ranged from overgrazing to negatively impacting biodiversity (most ranches are vastly more biodiverse than any city or suburb) and the current ridiculous claim that cows burping is changing the worldwide climate (don’t other ungulates, including bison, also burp?). Now ranchers in the ecoregion called the Northern Great Plains (NGP) (extending from the southern Canadian Prairie Provinces through eastern Montana and Wyoming and western North and South Dakotas to Nebraska) are facing a new challenge.

The federal government manages much of the grazing lands in the western U.S. By the 1930’s these lands were severely damaged by continuous grazing with uncontrolled numbers so Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act (1934) to try to alleviate the problem. This Act formed one of the most successful public/private enterprises in U.S. history and did not cost the taxpayers anything. You would think the Dept. of Interior would be bragging about how this cooperative relationship resulted in vast improvements of the impoverished grazing lands, instead of coming up with ridiculous plans intended to end cattle grazing on the federally managed rangeland. We are not alone. Several United Nations agencies, committees, etc. have determined the worldwide grazing lands need to be saved.

Two of the largest international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), have focused on the NGP. The two organizations have been planning and scheming since Parks Canada established the Grassland National Park along the Saskatchewan / Montana border and TNC purchased the Matador ranch in southern Phillips County, Montana. The TNC and the WWF were having Transboundary meetings in the early 2000’s when the WWF formed the Northern Plains Conservation Network (NPCN). In 2004, the NPCN published, “Ocean of Grass: A Conservation Assessment for the Northern Great Plains” which identified 10 terrestrial landscapes “where opportunities exist to restore large-scale ecological processes”. They concluded the Montana Glaciated Plains (the area between the Missouri and Milk Rivers), Bitter Creek/Grasslands National Park (on either side of the Sask. / Mt. border) and Little Missouri Grasslands (in North Dakota) emerged as the most important large conservation areas. How large? They suggested areas as large as 3.2 million acres are necessary to sustain 30,000 bison on an ecologically meaningful scale (or 20,000 bison and 10,000 elk). The NGOs decided to use the iconic bison as the flagship for rewilding the NGP. First, they recognized that these grasslands need to be periodically grazed to remain healthy and secondly, they knew most urbanites would support their efforts.

About this time, these big NGOs got serious and formed another NGO, the American Prairie Foundation (APF), which started to buy land in Phillips County that lies in the middle of the ‘Montana Glaciated Plains Conservation Area’ identified by both the TNC and the WWF. The APF’s name was eventually changed to the American Prairie Reserve (APR), and its stated aim was to assemble a land base of 3.5 million acres between the Missouri and Milk Rivers that would support 10,000 bison. They have since extended their tentacles to include all seven counties surrounding Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR). Several of the counties have passed ordinances aimed at restricting the APR’s wild, free-ranging bison. In addition, lawsuits have slowed them down, but they are still buying property.

It was probably by design that the NGOs never contacted the people living and working in their proposed ‘Conservation Area’ to let them know what was being planned. I read both the “Ocean of Grass” and “The Bison Management Plan” (“Plan”) by APR (probably published in 2017) to see if they addressed how they were going to accommodate the residents. Neither mentioned that issue. Instead, they have been discretely buying up land and forging ahead without any dialog with the resident population. The “Plan” closely follows the proposals and reasoning of the “Ocean of Grass” and both stress their main mission is to recover bison and black-tailed prairie dogs. The “Plan” mainly deals with justifying two changes. The first attempts to show why bison are a better animal to roam the NGP than cattle and the second tries to document why continuous grazing is more natural and better for the wildlife than rotational grazing used by livestock operators. Apparently, they eventually want to rewild the entire NGP. They plan to start with 1 to 3 million acre ‘cores’ and try to connect them. They will replace all livestock (cattle, sheep, etc.) with free-ranging bison, replant all farmland to grass and forbs and remove all human constructed improvements (i.e. corrals, houses, fences and most water reservoirs and pits).

Their ultimate goal is to remove the commercially productive agricultural based environment and replace it with a commercially unproductive tourist generated economy. They claim the tourist money will more than make up for the lost agricultural revenue the area now produces. Apparently, they do not believe their own propaganda or they would have been having local meetings and bragging about how their plans were going to benefit everybody.

Unfortunately, we have no control over our neighbors who are willing sellers or over the APR, which has used devious tactics to acquire property. The impacted rural people are greatly outnumbered by the rich urbanites that support and agree with the instigators of this nefarious scheme. Apparently, they consider the rural resident populations to be collateral damage. If you think there is no way this outrageous project is going to succeed, read the “Plan” which details the progress they have already made towards their goals. The fact the people living in the proposed ‘Conservation Areas’ are not having meetings to discuss the pros and cons of their future further illuminates the fact they are unaware of the major changes these NGOs are imposing on their livelihoods and lifestyles.

In conclusion, what we should be doing is not destroying this productive area by futilely trying to go back in time, but we should be looking at what we have and trying to make the best use of the resource to help feed a vibrant, successful, human population. Apparently, these NGO’s ultimate goal is to replace agriculture in the NGP, which is a major producer of food for a hungry world, with a tourist oriented Park. One has to wonder if their real goal is to reduce the worldwide population through starvation!

Ron Stoneberg

Box 37, Hinsdale, MT 50241

(406) 367-9314