A federal judge has put the brakes on an order that would have stripped nearly 1,000 bison from public land in Montana, a decision with real consequences for one of the country's most ambitious rewilding projects — and for anyone who wants to see wild bison on the open prairie.
The dispute centres on American Prairie, a nonprofit preserve spanning more than 600,000 acres of private land and public grazing leases on Montana's shortgrass prairie. The whole area is open to the public, with camping, hiking and wildlife-watching. The Bureau of Land Management had ordered the bison off its grazing leases by September 30, arguing under a new reading of the Taylor Grazing Act that livestock permits should go only to 'production-oriented' operations — animals raised for meat, milk or fibre, not conservation.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris wasn't convinced. In granting a preliminary injunction, he wrote that no law or precedent requires a livestock operation to ignore conservation entirely, and said he struggled to see how the BLM's ruling was consistent with the statute. The bison stay put while the case proceeds. Notably, the BLM itself concluded back in 2022 that bison grazing improves rangeland productivity and streamside health on these very lands.
The stakes were high. American Prairie's leadership had warned it might have to cull or relocate hundreds of animals if the removal went ahead, and uncertainty already forced the cancellation of the preserve's 2026 public bison harvest. Tribal partners also pushed back: the Coalition of Large Tribes wrote to the Interior Department noting that American Prairie supplies animals to tribes building their own herds and manages them in much the same way tribal herd managers do. Local ranching groups, including the Montana Stockgrowers Association, had backed the removal.
There's an ecological reason the outcome matters beyond politics. Unlike cattle, which tend to hammer one patch of grass before moving on, bison roam constantly — up to a few miles a day — grazing lightly as they go. Studies link that behaviour to higher biodiversity and better drought resilience on native grasslands. Conservationists call bison a keystone species of the prairie for exactly this reason.
For travellers, the practical upshot is that American Prairie remains what it has been for two decades: a vast, publicly accessible slice of the Great Plains where you can camp under big skies and watch bison do their thing. The injunction covers the three federal allotments where the herd currently grazes, though it didn't extend protection to three additional tracts — so the legal fight continues. If the preserve eventually lost, bison could be replaced by cattle, changing the character of the experience. For now, though, the herds stay, and CEO Alison Fox called the ruling a chance for bison to remain on a landscape they evolved with. If seeing free-roaming bison away from Yellowstone's crowds is on your list, this Montana reserve just became a lot more secure as a place to do it.
Story via Backpacker.