L
AST WINTER Montana’s Republican-
dominated legislature passed a joint
resolution asking the federal Bureau
of Land Management to deny APR’s
petition to modify 18 BLM grazing allot-
ments, covering 250,000 public acres, to replace
cattle with bison. In September, responding to
local opposition, the reserve scaled back the
request to 48,000 acres.
Bison restoration is, without doubt, among
the most controversial aspects of APR’s vision.
Bison are also central to it: Scientists regard
them as “ecosystem engineers” that can fix
much of what has gone wrong, ecologically
speaking, on the plains. Bison graze selectively
over long distances, moving quickly and creat-
ing a mosaic of heterogeneous habitat that sup-
ports hundreds of native plant, insect, bird, andsmall mammal species. They wallow—rolling
to shed biting insects and loose fur—creating
moist depressions in the grass where certain
species thrive. Their waste spreads nutrients
across the landscape.
After bison are introduced to an APR property,
the staff works with volunteers to pull up fences
left over from cattle ranching, which uses fenc-
ing to separate and rotate stock from pasture to
pasture. Bison don’t require the same grazing
rotations. If barbed wire tamed the West, remov-
ing those fences restores landscape connectivity,
making it a little bit wilder again.
APR’s first batch of bison arrived in 2005 from
a herd in South Dakota. In 2011 a DNA test found
that those bison carried genes from interbreed-
ing with cattle many years before, and APR
imported a new, genetically purer batch from
Canada. This was important to the reserve’s
managers because bison handle extreme cold
better than cattle, and because APR wanted to
minimize management interventions and retain
the creatures’ wildness. “Our goal,” Austin says,
“is the largest, most genetically diverse bison
herd in North America.”
But it is this very wildness that alarms cattle
ranchers. Bison are large and unpredictable,
and can be difficult to contain. In 2011 APR’s
entire herd—240 animals, then—escaped when
a snowdrift froze across a fence; they were
herded back with a helicopter. Lone bulls get
out more frequently, and the reserve has a three-
person team to ride and maintain the fence
perimeter, Austin says. For all their “wildness,”
APR’s bison are, in fact, intensively managed.
Another concern ranchers have with bison is
a disease called brucellosis, which causes mis-
carriages and infertility in livestock, and can be
transmitted to humans. APR’s bison are tested
and vaccinated against the disease, which has
been found in wild bison and elk farther west in
Yellowstone National Park but not on APR land.
Nonetheless, ranchers fear that bison from APR
could transmit the disease to their herds.
These fears aren’t necessarily based in data.
But the fact is, we don’t have much data. Part of
APR’s mission is to study the effect that bison
restoration can have on an ecosystem. How
far must buffalo roam to fulfill their ecological
role? APR’s pastures range in size from 6,000 to
27,000 acres. Is that enough? Is 3.2 million acres
enough? How many bison do you need? How
many are too many? How long will it take?PRAIRIE DIVIDE 83