The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has revoked grazing permits in Phillips County, Montana, that American Prairie used to sustain its bison herd, the U.S. Department of the Interior said Friday.
The Interior announcement followed a three-and-a-half-year dispute between the Montana livestock industry, backed by Gov. Greg Gianforte and the Montana Department of Justice, and American Prairie, a conservation nonprofit focused on restoring the prairie ecosystem in north-central Montana.
Montana’s Stockgrowers Association said it welcomed the change. In a Friday press release, MSGA President Lesley Robinson said the decision by the BLM would restore grazing allotments “back to their intended usage for production livestock grazing,” calling it “an incredible win for public lands grazers, ranching families and rural communities across the West.”
American Prairie disputed the agency’s move. In a statement emailed to the media, CEO Ali Fox said the decision was “not grounded in new impacts or new information” and “appears to be completely arbitrary and is unfair.” Fox added that changing how rules are applied after a process is complete “undermines confidence in the system for everyone who relies on public lands,” and said Montana livestock owners “deserve clarity, fairness and decisions they can count on.”
Interior officials said their decision turned in part on the way American Prairie has characterized its bison herd. In a letter dated Friday and signed by Sonya Germann, the State Director for the BLM’s Montana/Dakotas office, the department described issues with American Prairie’s characterization, including that the herd was estimated in 2024 at approximately 900 animals.
The dispute centered on permits American Prairie had used to graze bison on four leases for about three years as the case moved through the Interior Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals. American Prairie has previously said it first received permission to graze bison on BLM land using other leases that were also revoked in the mid-aughts, and that it has done so successfully for the past 20 years.
The agency’s change also followed a Trump administration direction to revisit the earlier approval. In December, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum directed the BLM to reconsider the grazing authorization approved by the Biden administration in 2022, arguing that the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act requires grazing on publicly owned federal lands to be “limited to cases where the animals to be grazed are domestic and will be used for production-oriented purposes.”
In her 24-page decision letter Friday, Germann said BLM concluded that, based on American Prairie’s own admissions, the bison were not managed for production-oriented purposes and therefore did not fit the statutory meaning of “livestock and domestic.” Germann also wrote that reissuing cattle-only permits on allotments where bison, or combinations of cattle and bison, were previously authorized would ensure the BLM “is acting within the limits of its statutory authority.”
The 2022 record of decision approving American Prairie’s Montana plan had described bison grazing as permitted on some BLM leases in Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, and it said disagreements about whether effects were compatible with certain views did not amount to evidence that the project failed to meet statutory and regulatory requirements.
American Prairie has said its restoration vision aims to connect 3.2 million acres, describing it as “enough to support a healthy prairie ecosystem.” The organization’s bison effort and land acquisitions have drawn pushback from Republican politicians and neighboring livestock producers who have argued that American Prairie’s growing influence affects central Montana’s land ownership and property tax dynamics, including support under a “Save the Cowboy” slogan by critics such as the United Property Owners of Montana.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Gianforte described the reversal as a victory for Montana agriculture. Knudsen said the decision would help protect the livestock industry and ranching communities in northeastern Montana from “elitists trying to push them out.”
American Prairie signaled it could respond through the courts. In its Friday statement, the organization said it was reviewing the decisions and determining its course of action, hinting that additional legal challenges could follow.