of sodas and Tupperwares of baked goods laid
out in the bed of a pickup until the riders trail
the cattle into the corral. Then they get to work:
sorting, roping and dragging, wrestling and
branding, vaccinating and castrating, calves
squealing wild-eyed in rebuke (“Some are kind
of theatrical,” Craig French says). We associate
this part of the world with rugged individualism,
but brandings are remarkably communitarian
rituals, willing exchanges of time and labor.
“We don’t always agree with all our neigh-
bors,” says Craig’s wife, Conni, “but we always
help each other out.”
That neighborliness, however, does not extend
to APR, which bought its first property in 2004
just south of here. Twice since then, the French
family has pitched in to buy ranches that APR
was interested in purchasing. “A neighbor wants
to help you out, not buy you out,” Bill French says.
This resistance is based on real concerns
about the future. Phillips County has lost more
than half its population since its peak of nearly
southwest of APR’s nearest property. Most of
APR’s large donors hail from even farther away—
Silicon Valley, New York City, Germany. Some
fly by helicopter to stay at APR’s luxury yurts
equipped with leather furniture, chandeliers, and
linen tablecloths. “Big fancy East Coast people
coming in and telling us how to live,” LaTray says.
Scientists speak of a landscape’s “ecological
carrying capacity”: habitat, forage, prey, and
other factors that determine how much wildlife
the land can support. But for ambitious conser-
vation projects, “social carrying capacity”—the
community’s tolerance for change—is also a
limiting factor.
“The constraint on wildlife populations is not
what the habitat will support, but what humans
will support,” says Daniel Kinka, an APR resto-
ration ecologist.
The group has always sought to engage its
neighbors, keeping properties open to the pub-
lic for hunting, camping, hiking, fishing. But
in the face of implacable opposition, it also hasthe “home place” in the family can require King
Lear–like decisions about succession planning.
Ranches are big, or they’re gone. In that context,
land set aside for conservation is land unavail-
able for ranching families to expand. “It worries
me more than water, wind, drought, prices,” says
rancher Craig French, whose family is involved
with the anti-APR movement in Phillips County,
across the Missouri River from LaTray.
French is standing in a corral on a cloudy
morning in a pasture just north of APR, where
his parents, Bill and Corky French, have con-
vened four generations of family and neighbors
to brand their calves. Their forebears settled
nearby more than a century ago; the couple run
more than a thousand head of cattle on 60,000
public and private acres.
Brandings here are chaotic, cooperative affairs,
with families traveling from ranch to ranch to
help each other out. They mill around coolers
10,000 people in 1920. Other nearby counties—
APR spans six now—have seen similar declines.
More and more property is being bought up by
wealthy, out-of-state owners. The average age of
the principal operator of a farm or ranch these
days is 58. It’s a demographic spiral that rural
Americans fear: fewer kids in the schools, fewer
tractors, balers, swathers, post pounders, cars,
pickups, semis, trailers, tires bought at local
dealers. APR buys those things too, of course:
“We’ve brought more households in to work for
APR than have left as a result of selling to us,”
says APR senior land acquisition manager Betty
Holder. “We believe we are helping to diversify
the economy.”
But the antipathy is also cultural. The orga-
nization, with roughly 50 employees, is head-
quartered in Bozeman, a trendy college town
of fly fishermen and mountaineers, artisanal
coffee and avocado toast, four hours’ drive‘THE CONSTRAINT ON WILDLIFE POPULATIONS
IS NOT WHAT THE HABITAT WILL SUPPORT,
BUT WHAT HUMANS WILL SUPPORT.’
DANIEL KINKA, RESTORATION ECOLOGISTPRAIRIE DIVIDE 77