Interior Secretary Zinke must intercede in the bison restoration issue

The Bureau of Land Management just completed a series of public scoping meetings on the American Prairie Reserve’s request to convert 17 federal grazing leases from cattle to bison.

The take-away from these meetings is that BLM is trying to balance the concerns of ranchers with the steps APR needs to advance their bison reserve agenda. Because the conversion of grazing leases from cattle to bison assures APR’s bison restoration goals, landowners firmly believe the real issue BLM should be examining is the big elephant in the room — the establishment of a 3.5 million acre wildlife reserve in Montana.

So far, BLM has been disinclined to consider the big elephant.

An inquiry with Montana’s State BLM director concerning APR’s bison planning netted the following response: “… Our relationship with APR is no different than with any other permit holder. We neither support nor disapprove of APR’s widely advertised goal of creating a 3.5 million acre wildlife reserve in Northeastern Montana.”

BLM’s stated indifference to a tax exempt, nonprofit organization’s plan for millions of acres of federal land needs a relook. No other domestic bison operator in the west grazes bison on federal land with the stated intent of creating a multimillion acre bison reserve. Unless Department of Interior intercedes and does a serious reality check in this matter, landowners anticipate that BLM will continue to approve grazing leases for APR with perhaps some ancillary restrictions on season of use, pasture rotations and fence construction. Ancillary DOI’s bison restoration planning for the west has been characterized by top down planning with virtually no input from those impacted by that planning — something Secretary Zinke promised to reverse during his tenure.

There are two documents developed by DOI that direct bison restoration for the west: DOI Bison Conservation Initiative (2008) and DOI Bison Report (2014). These are the playbooks that govern the various bison initiatives in process and they should be included in DOI’s review of federal directives to be scrapped.

The time is ripe for Secretary Zinke to intercede in this entire matter and suspend further action on APR’s grazing requests until a department review of the big picture is made. The review should start by listening to the voices of impacted landowners and conclude with a pragmatic decision on the direction to be taken for bison restoration in Montana and the west.

Absent an immediate intervention by Secretary Zinke to suspend the decision on APR’s grazing request and a comprehensive examination made of the real issues at hand, an American Serengeti in the middle of cattle country is in our future.

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Ron Poertner

Missouri River Stewards

Winifred