Beef or bison?
The prairies of Montana are at another crossroads. By Bill Vaughn

[read from the beginning] bison, and a sanctuary for prairie dogs, plovers, ferrets, elk, bighorn sheep, swift foxes, and the scores of other birds and animals still flourishing in numbers that make this one of the most biologically diverse steppes left in the developed world. The APF’s vision, called the American Prairie Reserve, imagines a world-class tourist destination as compelling as Yellowstone or Africa’s Serengeti.

Ranchers, meanwhile, are concerned that the Prairie Reserve will morph into Jurassic Park. After all, unlike cattle, bison run faster than most horses, can jump six feet straight up, are fiercely protective of one another, and notoriously go anywhere they want. While ranchers fret about disease and dangerous, marauding animals, their fundamental objection to the APF’s vision is something more profound—will their whole way of life disappear as cattle are replaced by bison?

What makes this ambitious project different than most other conservation efforts is the strategy. Instead of trying to move land use away from cattle and towards bison by influencing public policy, since 2004 the APF has been buying ranches outright and with them leases on enormous swaths of Federal real estate. AS an example of the model, last fall it closed on its eleventh ranch, an 8,300-acre operation in south Phillips. This base property also includes 26,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management grazing permits, and 18,000 acres of permits inside the Charles Russell National Wildlife Refuge, a million-acre wilderness straddling the Missouri the APF sees as the core territory of its growing preserve. The 121,000 acres the APF now controls, most unconnected parcels spread across 70 miles of prairie, cost it $8 million, 90 percent of which was donated by individuals, most notably Wall Street and Silicon Valley players, and 10 percent by conservation groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Montana-based Cinnabar Foundation.

At emotional public meetings ranchers and local politicians have attacked the APF as an invading force and the BLM as a collaborator because of its decision to transfer grazing permits on Federal land from cattle to bison. “I am not in favor of environmental groups coming in and telling us what we need to be doing,” one woman said. Another claimed that “They want to put a fence around Montana and make it a national monument . . .  If we don’t stop it we’re going to be in big trouble.” If Phillips becomes a big park, wondered another, “Where are we going to raise our kids?”  A 78-year-old rancher said that he pays $6,000 a year in property taxes to the county, payments that will cease if his livelihood is threatened by bison, to which his response is “Well, I say not ‘no,’ but ‘hell no!’” Another claimed that there is a movement “to remove all cattle grazing on public land.” He demanded that grazing permits issued to the APF be given to neighboring cattle ranches and pleaded with the Federal government “to stand with us.” And there was a belief voiced that the APF is in direct violation of the Taylor Grazing Act,” a 1934 law enacted to bolster the western livestock industry."

However, despite the acrimony, the dialogue between the two sides has remained civil.

IN 2005 THE APF RELEASED sixteen wild bison onto its property, the first to graze Phillips County in 120 years. Transported from Wind River State Park in Wyoming, these animals are pure stock bearing no genes from the cattle that have been bred with bison since Colonial times. And they’re certified free of brucellosis, a bacterial disease that produces no symptoms in bison but when transmitted to cattle causes infected heifers to abort. The herd has thrived and numbers 200 animals so far. Preserve managers are removing old cross-fencing so the beasts can wander, but agreed to conditions on BLM land by topping the area’s prevalent four-strand fences with hot wire electrified by solar panels.

Rancher Dale Veseth and his wife, Janet, however don’t buy the APF’s sales pitch. The couple runs some 600 pairs on 28,000 acres his family homesteaded in 1886 and has joined the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, an organization of thirty families who have no intention of selling their operations to the APF. , Veseth said that the reason the Foundation values these prairies is because they’ve been nurtured by the people who have a vested interest in keeping them healthy—the ranchers. He cites a successful campaign to keep out noxious, invasive weeds, and relentless efforts to move cattle to protect riparian areas, prevent soil erosion, and safeguard ground cover for nesting birds. “The local communities must be embraced not replaced,” he argues.

Sean Gerrity, the president of the American Prairie Foundation, agrees. “One of the reasons we’re working in this area is because the land has been taken care of, and so far made up of largely intact native prairie. We have the local ranching community to thank for being such great stewards. However, because native prairie continues to be plowed we believe that this critical habitat, recognized worldwide as a jewel, needs to be protected.”

Veseth said that the APF’s bison will not produce any significant economic benefit. “There’s no plan for harvest of any kind, either through sale or hunting. Ranches produce food and fiber for urban populations. Every rancher and farmer produces enough food to feed 144 people annually. Cash receipts for livestock and small grains for Phillips County are around 50 million dollars a year. Each dollar produced by agriculture is turned over in the regional and national economy five to seven times; this multiplier effect is one of the highest for any sector of our economy. Phillips accounts for about $250 million to our national economy.”
Gerrity, who grew up in the windy Montana prairie town of Great Falls and worked as a business consultant in Silicon Valley, said the APF makes a sustainable income from bison.

“The more bison we have, the more annual revenue we attract from conservation enthusiasts. While we’re not yet selling bison, we anticipate that we will do so, most likely to other start-up reserves seeking quality genetics.” He said the APF’s income stays in the local economy and has the same positive financial impact as other livestock operations. The APF pays property taxes just like any other landowner, he points out, and the Foundation awards local contracts for fencing, building repairs and remodeling. “We bank locally and purchase tractors, trucks, four wheelers and other equipment from local suppliers.”

He said because the APF’s land use model is more labor intensive than other livestock operations it requires more employees, whom it pays good wages. “We’re making a clear positive impact on the economy, even before any tourism affect is factored in.” Speaking of tourism, Gerrity cited a 2006 study showing that 230,000 visitors to the Russell Wildlife Refuge spent $14.2 million locally and that non-residents made 91 percent of these expenditures. “Studies of wildlife reserves in Africa,” he said, “have shown increases in the region’s total number of people employed, average salaries and total wages paid as result of their presence. We believe the American Prairie Reserve will eventually provide a greater share of that kind of spending, with similar multiplier effects on the regional economy.”

Linda Poole, a wildlife biologist who has worked for the Nature Conservancy, and is also a member of the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, lives on a half-section place in north Phillips. She said there’s no need to displace ranching to conserve prairie plants and wildlife. “At a small fraction of the cost of environmental groups buying and then operating land for conservation values,” she said, “these groups could incentivize existing ranches to achieve all their conservation goals, including restoring a large herd of genetically pure bison. If favorable social and economic agreements were in place, some local ranchers would be likely to run bison rather than cattle. In this way, both the people and the place would thrive, rather than sacrificing one to the other.”

Gerrity denies that the APF is trying to drive away ranchers. “Every seller with whom the American Prairie Foundation has done business is still ranching. No displacement of ranching has occurred. Like any neighborhood, land ownership is constantly shifting here. Many of the properties we’ve purchased have been bought and sold three or four times in the past two decades. As is true wherever real-estate transactions occur, every seller here has a new plan they want to fund. Some want to buy new grazing pastures nearer to the town where they live. Some are seeking to consolidate their herds in one area verses running them on numerous separate pastures, which are often 50 or more miles apart. And some are moving out of state like the recent family we worked with. They were excited to move their cattle operation south to Nebraska in anticipation of deeper grass, less severe winters, far fewer acres needed per animal unit and closer proximity to public schools for their two young children.”

He said the APF is open to working with its neighbors to promote the goals of the American Prairie Reserve. “All across southern Africa there are fine examples of brilliant wildlife conservation co-existing side by side with a rich and vital ranching culture. We can do it in this country as well.”

Poole said the American Prairie Reserve would make an interesting park, for people who could afford to visit such an isolated place, but it won’t be the lynchpin in conservation success for the prairies. With the exception of bison, she argues, the Reserve is not going to add any species not already here or apt to filter in as wolf recovery goes forward in Montana. “The reserve would be one, big pearl of the prairie ecosystem,” she said “but only a long string of pearls will conserve prairie species through time. Can we afford to have so much money conserve relatively few acres in one place at the expense of widespread, sustainable conservation across huge swaths of the Great Plains?”

Gerrity said the APF is committed to making the Reserve affordable for everyone, and will open. its first public campground in 2010 with user fees comparable to any state-funded pubic campground. He reminded critics that the APF doesn’t rely on taxes, unlike the support provided for some ranchers, who get government-provided disaster insurance, millions of dollars in annual Conservation Reserve Fund payments, which are provided to leave crop land idle, and taxpayer-subsidized grazing. “Public land grazing goes for $1.40 an Animal Unit Month,” he said, “undercutting by eighty percent the rates charged by local private land owners who are trying to make a living selling grass. If all operators in this region were to be lined up side by side to determine the true amount of government input each requires to operate profitably, APF would likely come out looking favorably self-supporting.”

Poole said she’s concerned that the more ranches that are taken out of cattle production the less goods and services will be available for the remaining stockmen because of the shrinking demand. From feed stores, seed suppliers, implement sales and repair, and veterinarians, to simply “rounding up a bunch of neighbor kids to help with branding.”
Gerrity points to census records showing that the population of Phillips has been declining by ten percent per decade for the past 90 years. In fact, it reached an all-time low in 2008 of less than 4000, and the average age is significantly older than that of the general American demographic. He said that in the six years of the APF’s operations it’s brought in new residents. And visitors to the Reserve have translated into hundreds of room nights at area hotels, meals purchased in local cafes, outfitters contracted to lead river trips, bird walks and horseback rides, and increased attendance at attractions such as the Dinosaur Station and the Phillips County Museum in Malta, the county seat and largest town. He maintains that even if the APF were to assemble the largest bison herd in the region—a record now held by the herd of 4000 on one of Ted Turner’s ranches, in southwestern Montana— it still wouldn’t compare to the number of cattle in the area. “In the six-county area in which we are working there are recorded 441,000 head of cattle. In just Phillips County alone, where APF has most of its land holdings, cattle numbers have increased from 80,000 to 88,000 head in the six years since APF has been around. This data refutes the notion that APF is displacing cattle ranching as a business. When complete, the American Prairie Reserve will likely be a relatively small island in a vast sea of agriculture in northeastern Montana.”

Because the APF has so much money, Poole said, it can buy any ranch whose owner is willing to sell. The result will be an inevitable inflation in the price of land, further forcing ranchers out of the market, especially young ranchers.

Gerrity said the price of land has been increasing at 3 to 6 percent per year on average for the past 40 years, and there has been no spike in prices since APF’S arrival. “All of APF’s purchases have been very close to or right at appraised values,” he said, “which were determined by independent appraisers who specialize in eastern Montana land. Local sellers and their realtors will tell you that ranching neighbors rarely show any interest in new properties at today’s appraised values. Many livestock operators contend that long ago, well before APF arrived on the scene, land became too costly on a price-per-acre basis to make a reasonable profit using their particular cow/calf or yearling business models.”
Poole said she’s afraid that what that the American Prairie Foundation is taking, along with its acquisition of land are traditions, values, histories. “The APF wants to replace ranch culture with Cappuccino culture. Our ranches are our lives. And we’re here as much for our neighbors as we are for ourselves.”