Faced
with Bureau of Land Management resistance based on opposition from
local ranchers, American Prairie Reserve revised its request to
convert 18 BLM grazing allotments from cattle to year-long bison
grazing. All 18 allotments, totaling over 450 square miles, are
attached to several APR properties.
APR
currently runs about 800 bison year-round on two of its properties.
On one of these, the bison access BLM allotments, as approved by BLM
in 2005. Impacts of this year-round grazing have been studied since
2014.
APR
proposed to convert most of its public-land allotments to bison to
accommodate current growth of its bison herd and to eventually
facilitate its long-term goal of having a natural large and
free-ranging metapopulation of bison on a large wildlife reserve that
will be available to the public. As part of the proposal, APR would
remove 300 miles of interior fence once used in rotating domestic
cattle among pastures. Fence removal would benefit other wildlife,
especially pronghorn antelope.
As
a “compromise” APR will continue year-long bison grazing on 19
square miles of public land, attached to one of its properties, as
already approved in 2005. The only expansion of bison grazing will
allow APR to graze bison seasonally on about 75 square miles of
public land associated with 3 other of its properties.
Also,
a small test of the vegetation impacts from free-ranging bison, begun
in 2014 by APR, will continue. At some undesignated time in the
future, results of this test will be used to reconsider APR’s
original proposal. We are unaware of any BLM analysis of the 5 years’
data already accumulated by APR or of any BLM review of the effects
of ongoing year-round bison grazing on federal lands in other
ecosystems. Further, there seems to be no agreement on what standards
will someday be used to judge the success or failure of this test.
The
usual standards used by range managers for judging vegetation
condition relate to a goal of maximizing annual herd productivity for
economic profit. The Livestock industry has long imposed this
standard on everyone else, no matter what other management objectives
there may be. This is not the goal of APR and such standards will not
be appropriate for judging the APR program.
APR’s
goal is akin to naturalness. Natural populations may include a large
standing crop of usually older animals, with a low and varying annual
recruitment of young. Rather than imposed rotation grazing, bison
will exercise their evolved adaptations for using a large and diverse
landscape in response to the seasons, the vagaries of weather and
perhaps to natural or prescribed burning of the vegetation. The
expected vegetation will be a mosaic of species, density and
production that results from spatial and temporal variation in bison
grazing. Much land will be in prairie dog towns. This mosaic provides
for a diversity of other wildlife and for health and resiliency of
the entire biotic community. What standards will someday be used to
assess this goal?
Moreover,
a true test of year-long bison grazing should be conducted on at
least 100 square miles of diverse habitat. At APR, that diverse
landscape should include the south-facing, topographically diverse
habitat of the Missouri breaks on the Charles M. Russell Wildlife
Refuge. If we are to evaluate the effects of wild bison, we must
provide them with access to use a full measure of habitat diversity.
This
BLM/APR “compromise” will not advance bison conservation. It
duplicates values and tests of seasonal or year-long bison grazing on
several federal areas elsewhere.
APR’s
long-term goal is to establish a large reserve for a diversity of
wildlife that would benefit from wild, free-ranging bison as a
keystone prairie species. However, attempts to restore public bison
to the abundant public land in this area have been thwarted for over
100 years by the livestock industry.
Mostly,
the BLM/APR “compromise” kicks the can of bison conservation, and
of restoring public, wild bison to Montana, down the road again.
