Bureau of Land Management Says Bison Are Not Livestock, Obstructing Plans for a Huge Private Prairie Reserve

The American Prairie nonprofit seeks to create a 5,000-square-mile prairie reserve in Montana where buffalo may roam and antelope play.

An ambitious and privately funded project to create a 5,000-square-mile prairie reserve where buffalo may roam and antelope play in eastern Montana is being stymied by an obtuse new ruling by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The goal of the American Prairie nonprofit is to re-create a prairie ecosystem one-and-a-half times the size of Yellowstone National Park that can eventually support a free-ranging herd of 5,000 bison. Such a reserve would also greatly benefit other prairie species, including elk, pronghorn antelope, sage grouse, prairie dogs, and perhaps one day, predators like mountain lions and bears.

Reason reported on this remarkable private conservation project 10 years ago.

American Prairie uses a variety of techniques to assemble the land needed to create an ecologically self-sustaining reserve. For example, the nonprofit forms voluntary partnerships with local ranchers, making direct payments to them as an incentive to adopt wildlife-friendly management practices on their private lands. In addition, the group also connects the landscape by purchasing private land.

Like much of the western United States, the federal government owns huge swathes of land in Montana with the BLM owning and managing over 8 million acres in the state. The BLM leases out a lot of the range to private operators such as cattle ranchers. In fact, Montana has the most BLM grazing permits of any state. The BLM authorizes 1.1 million animal unit months (AUM) of grazing across the land it manages in Montana and the Dakotas. Those AUMs would support about 90,000 cows and their calves for a year.

American Prairie

Often, private ranches have preferences to lease adjacent BLM lands to graze their livestock. American Prairie assumes those BLM lease allotment preferences from the ranches it purchases. Since 2004, American Prairie has assembled its current habitat base by combining the purchase of 167,070 acres with 436,587 acres of leased public lands for a total of 603,657 acres.

Since bison, like cows, are ruminants, it shouldn't matter whether one or the other species is grazing on the landscape. In fact, this was the conclusion that the BLM reached back in 2022 when it approved American Prairie's proposal to "manage their base properties and associated grazing allotments to allow for a change in class of livestock from cattle to domestic indigenous livestock (bison)." The 2022 BLM decision also noted that "no scientifically and/or resource management-based reason was identified for why bison should not be permitted to graze BLM land as long as the owner of the animals qualifies as an applicant under the requirements of the grazing regulations."

The BLM's decision to treat grazing bison like grazing cows has, however, been opposed by the Montana Stockgrowers Association, with the organization arguing that bison are not livestock under the relevant federal regulations. This view has long been supported by Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and Attorney General Austin Knudsen, both Republicans.

The new Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum ordered in December 2025 that the BLM  reconsider its 2022 decision that bison may graze on BLM allotments. The new BLM decision issued last week now finds that bison are not cows, sheep, horses, burros, or goats and therefore are not domestic livestock according to federal regulations. In its new decision, the BLM may only "issue permits where the animals to be grazed will be used for production-oriented purposes. That would include their being used for their meat, milk, fiber, or other animal products."

Amusingly the Congressional Research Service has just issued a new report on federal grazing regulations that cites a 1976 Department of the Interior's Office of Hearings and Appeals holding "that bison may be considered 'livestock' under the TGA [Taylor Grazing Act], where the bison are treated in substantial respects as livestock and have characteristics in common with livestock." As it happens, American Prairie arguably meets the "production-oriented purposes" requirement since it actively manages its bison and authorizes annual harvests from its herd.

In a statement hailing the new BLM ruling against American Prairie's grazing permits, Knudsen says, "I'm pleased to see this proposed decision from the Trump Administration's Bureau of Land Management today. Canceling the American Prairie Reserve's bison grazing permit will help to protect the livestock industry and ranching communities in Northeastern Montana from the elitists trying to push them out."

Since American Prairie's private agreements and purchases are entirely voluntary, it is hard to see how its project is pushing out ranchers and rural residents. In an emailed statement, American Prairie CEO Alison Fox noted, "We've had permission to graze bison on some of these allotments for 20 years and have followed the law, complied with every requirement, and prioritized transparency at every step." She added, "This creates uncertainty for livestock owners across Montana who depend on public lands for grazing." Indeed it does.

It would, of course, be better if the BLM would just sell its land to private owners like American Prairie. In the meantime, the 2021 public comment by policy director Hannah Downey at the free market environmental policy think tank, the Property Environment Research Center, remains apt:

"Montana's ranchers and agricultural producers are important conservationists, and I appreciate their concerns over the future of their industry. People can disagree with the goals of APR [American Prairie], but there is no reason for believers in individual liberty, property rights, and free markets to abandon those values when a conversation group's rights are at stake. Allowing APR to graze privately-owned bison on its federal allotments respects APR's rights and, ultimately, honors all landowners' rights to exercise their grazing privileges while promoting the health of federal lands."

The BLM should get out of the way and let buffalo roam and antelope play once again across the American prairies.

Comments

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

It would, of course, be better if the BLM would just sell its land to private owners like American Prairie.

[mad.casual]

I wish I could trust Ron but this is the guy who "inadvertently" said that once we have fake meat perfected, we'll be able to return all the ranch land to nature. Apparently, saying it without the least bit of thought to the fact that, you know, private property... private use... all that libertarian mumbo jumbo; let alone stating the obviously desirable payout of getting roaming ungulates off the land so that it can be more natural... with roaming ungulates grazing on it.

And this is before he went all 9X VAXXED! and MOAR TESTING!

[damikesc]

They tried. Too many people bitched.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'As it happens, American Prairie arguably meets the "production-oriented purposes" requirement since it actively manages its bison and authorizes annual harvests from its herd.'

From the American Prairie site: "The 2025 Public Bison Harvest drawing will be awarding 24 harvest opportunities."

So, not really production.

Yes, it would be better to sell off most public lands. But as long as Uncle Sam is the overseer and landlord, then the American people have a right to see him to optimize financial return and productivity.

[mad.casual]

So, not really production.

Article notwithstanding, bison aren't cattle and, more critically, the bison industry isn't the cattle industry. 200 head of Bison is a big bison farm and McDs isn't serving anyone Bison burgers.

As long as Uncle Sam's getting the same dollar for his land, I don't exactly see a critical concern as to whether it's $0.99 donor or tourist money and $0.01 meat sales or $1.00 meat sales.

Not to speak to MT one way or the other, but the State of Illinois maintains several bison herd (none larger than 100 head I believe) at cost.

[Incunabulum]

Sure, in a perfect world.

But in the world we live in Trump has to obey every single law and regulation, to the letter or else he is a fascist.

Unless it's something like this which Bailey supports, then he is a fascist for not ignoring the law.

[ML (now paying)]

Article notwithstanding, bison aren't cattle"

This is true, but if one wants to be pedantic, we can invoke the biological species concept. Cattle and bison are capable of hybridizing and producing fertile offspring to some extent, which means that, under the standard biological definition, they can be considered the same species.
There is also evidence suggesting that the European bison is itself a hybrid, derived in part from the steppe bison (the ancestor of modern plains and woodland bison) and the aurochs, which is the ancestor of domestic cattle. Furthermore almost all literature on aurochs call them wild cattle.

Soooo, aurochs are cattle, bison and aurochs are technically, by some definitions, the same species, ergo bison are cattle.

[Roberta]

Then what's a buffalo? And are any of them buffo? Or even buff?

[creech]

Sounds like a delicious plan!

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

States should have control of the vast majority of federal land. And they should sell it off.

[DRM]

The Taylor Grazing Act ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/43/316 ) explicitly says "livestock". And this ruling is the correct reading of that word -- check the dictionaries.

The Oxford English says "Domestic animals generally; animals of any kind kept or dealt in for use or profit."

The m-w.com says "animals kept or raised for use or pleasure especially : farm animals kept for use and profit"

The Wiktionary says "Farm animals; animals domesticated for cultivation."

Cambridge says "animals and birds that are kept on a farm, such as cows, sheep, or chickens".

Webster's New World College says "domestic animals kept for use on a ranch or farm and raised for sale and profit"

Collins English says "cattle, horses, poultry, and similar animals kept for domestic use but not as pets, esp on a farm or ranch"

So, look. Bison aren't domesticated. They aren't traditional farm animals. And these bison are not being kept/dealt in for use or profit. (I mean, seriously. American Prairie's well-documented purpose is conservation. And culling 24 animals out of 5,000 in 2025 is clearly not indicative of an intent to use or profit from the animals.) They're accordingly not livestock by the common definition, and the Taylor Grazing Act doesn't provide an alternative definition.

So. Whether or not it is good policy to reserve grazing rights for livestock, and not allow their lease for the purpose of conservation of wild animals, is neither here nor there. The law is what it is, and it's the duty of the BLM, as part of the executive branch, to execute the laws faithfully.

And that means anyone arguing the bureaucrats at the BLM should have ignored the Congressionally-enacted law and allowed the grazing of the bison is doing nothing less than declaring that both the principle of the rule of law and the principle of representative government should be thrown out.

Now, there are some circumstances when a policy is so bad that, in fact, it is justified to throw out those principles. But anyone who would throw out those principles in order to secure the grazing of wild bison can be fairly assumed to simply be an opponent of both the rule of law and of representative government in full generality.

[mad.casual]

culling 24 animals out of 5,000 in 2025

The herd isn't 5,000 animals. The land could support 5,000 animals. The herd is closer to 900 and 24 per year is not insignificant production for bison.

A stock is a supply built up or stored for future use. If horses are livestock, 24 carcasses of 900 bison a year is definitely livestock.

Conversely, the bison aren't necessarily "wild" either. Absolutely, bison aren't domesticated animals, but herds on State and Federal lands in other places are managed.

If Prairie pays dollar for dollar and agrees to forfeit the rights if they cease harvesting animals, I don't see, at the Federal level, how it's any different than any other agritourism farm, game preserve, or stocked fishing pond.

Yeah, their stated purpose is conservation but, unlike Ron "return all the ranch land to nature" Bailey, they don't seem to be trying to pull any bait and switches here. Maybe if they changed their name to Bison Unlimited a la Ducks Unlimited, they would be more legit?

[DRM]

Yes, if you deliberately ignore the definition of "livestock" (by, say, deflecting and trying to talk about "stock" more generally), you can pretend the law means whatever you want.

But, while there are edge cases in any definition, this is not one. The bison are neither domesticated animals nor being kept by American Prairie for the purposes of human use or profit. They are not "livestock".

And the grazing rights available under the law ( I mis-linked above; it's https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/43/315 ) are repeatedly stated to be for "livestock" (see uses in 315, 315b, 315c, and 315d).

You can think that's as ridiculous a restriction for the law to care about as you like. It's still not the BLM's business to be subverting a duly-enacted Federal law.

[ML (now paying)]

"Collins English says "cattle, horses, poultry, and similar animals kept for domestic use but not as pets, esp on a farm or ranch...
So, look. Bison aren't domesticated."

Here's some more pedantry. "Domesticated" isn't necessarily the same word with the same meaning as domestic.

Domestic can mean relating to a person's own country, or belonging or relating to the home, house, or family.

Most of the definitions given above say "domestic". Those bison come from North America and are kept in a manner related to the groups use, so in this usage those bison would be domestic, although not domesticated.

[mad.casual]

It doesn't matter, he's shitting himself on the internet.

He keeps saying 'domestic' but if you Ctrl+f 'domestic' for his own source, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/43/315, it returns 0 results.

I grew up raising pigs and chickens. Literally poured the foundation of a few agritourism businesses. By DRM's "no true scotsman's" livestock retardation, most of the kids raising and selling animals at auction in 4-H aren't involved in raising livestock because they don't meet the arbitrary throughput or irrelevant speciation he's pulling out of his ass (on top of his completely whimsical declarations/enforcement of 'domestication').

He can't leave this to the bureaucrats at BLM. He's not even opposing them specifically and he doesn't appear to care if he gets dollar-for-dollar return in kind. He wants the land he doesn't own and doesn't have a bid on to be parceled out according to his specification because he's a wishcasting, authoritarian asshat.

[mad.casual]

And that means anyone arguing the bureaucrats at the BLM should have ignored the Congressionally-enacted law and allowed the grazing of the bison is doing nothing less than declaring that both the principle of the rule of law and the principle of representative government should be thrown out.

This is a bit hyperbolic.

As indicated, horses are livestock. Chickens are livestock. Arguably, if they raised chickens for profit on an acre and grazed horses on the rest and produced less money and meat they would still be in compliance with the law.

Key word being "arguably". A quick Ctrl+f on the law doesn't show the word 'slaughter' either. Bureaucrats can be mindless automatons, but they're also rather specifically gatekeepers. If the bureaucrats push back, as indicated, and Prairie addresses their concerns, I don't reasonably see anything remotely resembling an upending of the Republic.

If the ranchers think there's more money to be had on the land, with cattle, they should bid higher. It sounds like a lot of the land they already have is sublet from ranchers anyway.

[mad.casual]

[TJJ2000]

Well you see. D.C. [D]emon-crap overlords in 1976 decided to 'vote' themselves as the rightful [Na]tional 'owners' of 30% of the State of Montana.

As they did with 620-Million acres (92% all Western States; 27% of the US Landmass) putting MOST of the West under 'Communist' Control of D.C.

I'm not sure why they want to worry about Bison prairies though since Bison can't vote for those 'icky' [R]epublicans. Perhaps they fear 'icky' Western [R]epublicans might show-up to take care of the Bison?

[Daddyhill]

APR's vision and strategy would be a small but meaningful act of atonement for the catastrophic destruction of the bison population, and of those peoples that depended on the buffalo for so many survival necessities, in the 19th century. Had that assault on the natural world of that age not happened, this current dispute would likewise not be happening.

[Incunabulum]

I don't know Ron, if they're not treated like livestock, aren't going to be managed like livestock - then they're not livestock.

And I thought we were all about executive agencies obeying the law and regulation.

[mad.casual]

Absolutely not to take Ron "9X VAXXED!" Bailey's side, but the days of pushing 5,000 head through the slaughterhouse at the Chicago Stockyards is behind us.

Lots and lots and lots of places are deemed agricultural and possessing of livestock that hold more animals and slaughter fewer.

I could agree if there were some sort of contest going on here, but much of the allotments they have access to are held by ranchers. I could agree if the majority share of American Prairie were held by Chinese conglomerates or whatever.

As it is, I'd say this feels equally trivial to the bureaucrats infighting to hold back SpaceX because of the chance of hitting a whale, shark, fish, large marine animal except way, way... way less consequential.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Not a well informed discussion.

What does, "managed like livestock," mean in the case of cattle on public grazing allotments? Insofar as the the BLM and its management responsibilities are concerned, it means turning the cattle loose to roam around at will seasonally, while the BLM keeps loose tabs on how destructively the rancher is loading the public grazing capacity. The only difference with the bison is that if the combined range is big enough, and the number of animals kept proportionate to the size, the bison will do a better job of range management than the BLM will do.

The capacity of the range—including its capacity to support cattle—will increase. That's how all that miraculously productive range got that way in the first place.

So the nub of the argument is special pleading by ranchers for government to subsidize over-grazing, by cattle (sheep and horses are now almost out of the picture), and consequent destruction of a publicly-owned resource. But for those interested in historical insight, in the past management of wild horses by the BLM was indistinguishable from the bison range management. Those were animals just as wild as the bison. But horses, unlike bison, were not adapted to improve the range, and tended instead to degrade it. As did sheep.

Like most conservation-related issues, this is not one which economic ideology has much proper capacity to decide. Too many ideological premises turn out paradoxical and long-term destructive. The bison range idea is the opposite of that.

Also? Tortured interpretations of legal text to force it to support ideological outcomes is obvious, destructive in itself, and repellent.

[Incunabulum]

What does it mean?

It means being managed like livestock. That is what it means.

No, legally, as far as the BLM is concerned it does not mean they're turned loose to graze. Because that is not how livestock is managed on BLM land.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Incunabulum — That is exactly how cattle are managed on public land in Idaho. Here and there a fence, I concede, but with gates typically guarded not with many real cattle guards, but only fake painted ones. The allotments encompass many square miles. The cattle go where they please, and get rounded up in the fall to be taken back to lower elevations. While on the summer range, the cattle mingle with whatever wild animals are around—deer, elk, pronghorn, moose, beavers, porcupines, possums, raccoons, rattlesnakes, coyotes, wolves, cougars, even mountain goats and bighorn sheep, for the cows which like to climb. Some of that land is Forest Service, some BLM. Farther south, along the Idaho–Nevada border it is mostly BLM.

During the summer the cattle are only subject to occasional tracking, likely from the air. To see an example take a Google look at Copper Basin, ID. That's delivers a good representation of how it works from there all the way east to the continental divide, and for hundreds of miles north as well. To see a profile of a famous exemplar of that kind of usage, and find out how it has been managed, Google the name, Bud Purdy.

[Incunabulum]

They're not just left out to roam on their own. You even admit that. Also, they're raised for commerce which the buffalo are not.

If you're not raising them for commerce and you're letting them roam wild they're not livestock.

[mad.casual]

If you're not raising them for commerce and you're letting them roam wild they're not livestock.

Fair Use back to Charter of the Forests and perfectly in line with or turnabout to the leftists "diverse Native noble savages" ideology; go shoot them.

Again, Bailey, way back when, argued in favor of "returning the ranch land to nature" without the slightest regard for property rights. If there were strip malls or oil wells or private property in contest here there might be some sort of critical issue for otherwise-uninterested people in IL or DC to intervene. As it is, if they are managing the herd, BLM can issue allotments based on their production. If they aren't managing the herd, then BLM isn't obligated to provide them allotments and there's a massive herd of bison wondering around that nobody's paying attention to.

[mad.casual]

It means being managed like livestock. That is what it means.

One person for 900 head is pretty well managed, or can be.

You could argue that they should employ more people and be producing more carcasses, but then you'd be similarly employing BLM far outside their mandate.

As indicated, as long as some of the animals are available to the public for slaughter, it's no different than any other game preserve or feed allotment for deer or game birds or stocked pond that any other farmer, or other, sets aside.

[Restoring the Dream]

Maybe, just maybe, the people in Montana believe that if anything the tiniest bit out of the ordinary is allowed, Democrats will at some point regain power and will use it as precedent for policies that would destroy them. I know, it's never happened before, but you never know...

[anomaloid]

I'm trying to figure out what traditional Republican principles are still upheld by the Trump administration. You might say they're still Republican when it comes to taxes… except for those pesky tariffs. Or they are still Republicans when it comes to deregulation except when they are using the power of executive agencies to support their donor's interests. No, the only thing republican about the Trump administration is their small dick militarism.

[Torguud]

Ahhh, special interests.