Ep. 851: The Promise and Controversy of American Prairie

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at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. What you're about to listen to is a conversation with Allison Fox, the CEO of American Prairie. For 25 years, American Prairie has been executing

on an ambitious and highly controversial plan to buy hundreds of thousands of acres of ranch land in the vicinity of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and North Central Montana, in order to ultimately compile a contiguous block

of private and public lands that are 50% larger than Yellowstone National Park all open to the public.

“So far, they've managed to buy 169,000 acres.”

Their aim is to manage the land to maximize wildlife habitat health and restore a grassland ecosystem inhabited by a full suite of native wildlife, including the American Buffalo. Fans and supporters of the plans

see a Yellowstone of the Great Plains or to steal a term from the historian Dan Flores and American Serengetti. Opponents see an evil land grab that poses an existential threat to the American cowboy.

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That's f_i_r_s_t_l_i_t_e_.com. - All right, everybody, I'm joined today by Allison Fox. She goes by Ali. - Yes, I do. - Correct.

- The CEO of American Prairie. You may have known, I didn't even catch one this happened. American Prairie at a time was American Prairie Reserve. - Yes. - But became American Prairie, how long ago?

- 2021. - Okay. - And before that, we are American Prairie Foundation. - Oh, okay. - It's been a journey.

- So now, landed officially on American Prairie. She's led the organization since February, 2018, and has been with the organization a very, very, very, very roles since 2007. Here in the state of Montana,

they're based here in the state of Montana, primarily in North Central Montana.

“I'm gonna let you explain what the mission is, okay?”

But American Prairie is, and we'll get into what it is and what it's been interpreted as and controversy surrounding the organization. But it is a one-of-a-kind effort. - That is true.

- It is a one-of-a-kind habitat restoration effort going on and it presents certain challenges. But I would like you first to lay out, and lay out for the audience, lay out for me. What is the American Prairie vision?

- Okay, let me start with what American Prairie is today. - Okay. - So, American Prairie is a nearly 25-year-old conservation organization. We are based here in Montana.

We are a team of Montana's leading this organization. And today, we managed 605,000 acres of habitat of de-did and least public lands, lands that are open to the public and are all located around the Charlie Russell National

Wildlife Refuge up in Norse Central, Montana. The ultimate vision is to using private philanthropy, purchase private lands to link together existing public lands, around the Charlie Russell National Wildlife Refuge

for eventually a landscape of about 3 million acres.

So, we've assembled 605,000 acres toward 2 million acres next to the 1.1 million acre of the Charlie Russell National Wildlife Refuge. - These lands are-- - Back those numbers up next, I wanna follow this.

- Yep. - The current Charlie Russell land. So, this is like BLM public land. - It's a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. - That's U.S. Fish, okay, I'm sorry.

- It's 1.1 million acres.

- 1.1 million acres, okay.

“- And it's a long visit for those are not familiar.”

It's a long and skinny wildlife refuge along the Missouri River River. So, it's River Bottom, steep breaks on either side, down to the river. - I guess when you were saying that,

my head, I'm mixing up the National Wildlife scenic river designation, but you're talking about the CMR, the reserve. - Yeah, yeah, the refuge, yeah. Second largest refuge in the lower 48.

And then what you're referring to is the Missouri River portion, the white cliff's portion that has wild and scenic river designation, and that goes through the monument. - Yeah.

- Yeah, that's a huge complex of public lands extending off. - Exactly, so somewhere around 400,000 acres. - Yeah, 50,000 acres. - Okay, so the refuge is how many acres? - 1.1 million.

- Just for context for people,

you also know National Park is about 2 million acres.

- Exactly, glaciers about a million. - Okay, got it. - Yeah.

“- All right, so the ultimate goal you're saying”

is to make like the shooting for 3 million contiguous acres. - Exactly. - And how many so far? - So, 605,000 next to 1.1 million acres.

- Okay, okay. There's a huge Buffalo component to this thing. - There is. - Yeah, let's explain that the folks. - Yeah.

- This is where I get interested. I'm interested in the whole thing, but this is where I have like a more detailed five-point interest. - Real tattoo or not.

- No, fake tattoo. - Fake tattoo. - Yeah. (laughing) So let's just start with what this landscape look like,

what are great planes look like for thousands and thousands of years. And that, as you know, as you've written about, was tens of millions of bison out on this landscape, profile out on this landscape in a very, very short time

and Dan Flores talks about this in his book "American Serengette" as the greatest loss of wildlife at the head human hands in modern human history, documented human history,

that we went from 30 plus million animals

to less than a thousand in Yellowstone National Park. So, good conservation has been happening

“to return bison, I think there are about a half million”

in both conservation and production herds in the country now and I think it's less than 20,000 that are in conservation herds. You may know that exactly. - Yeah, it's like about 90, I mean,

well, just a kind of a good way to understand it is about 95% of them are privately owned. - Okay, yeah, so that number's about that number's about right. And so, from the "American Prayer" is not a buffalo or bison project entirely,

we are a full ecosystem, full conservation and public access and I hope we talk a lot about public access too. - Yeah, yeah, we will. - Public access project, but from the beginning, from basically "American Prayer" start,

we recognized that bringing bison back to the landscape was an important part of demonstrating the ultimate vision and bringing that native grazer back to the land. So, "American Prayer" has grazed bison on our lands since 2005.

We bought the first property in 2004, this was a few years before my time, but that early team was brave and entrepid, and they brought 16 animals in from Wind Cave National Park in 2005.

And we have been growing this conservation herd ever since. It's about 940 animals now on two of our 12 units. So, the 605,000 acres is split up into a number of units based on which properties were available for purchase. But until the other day, I'm writing an updated afterword

for my Buffalo book, 'cause there's been 18 years. And so, I'm doing kind of a snapshot of, I don't talk about "American Prayer Animals." I'm doing a snapshot of what I define as, like really truly free-range herds

that can move across jurisdictions. - Yeah, which there are few. - Very few, right? Very few, they can move across jurisdictions. - Yeah, Henry's mountains, book cliffs.

- One that, but that discussion, in that discussion, I'm talking about the ones that live on the North Rim, and there's a population on the North Rim that can move across jurisdictions.

- Oh, they're drinking in. - Yeah, well, they move from the park onto the Kibab, they can move on to state lands up there. So, I'll talk about those, and I don't realize that at one point in time,

American prayer animals, I think some excess American prayer animals went to Arizona.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

“- So, that was used as a foundation heard”

for other conservation herds. - Yeah, yeah. - We have, you know, we have 940 animals today. We have raised more than 2,000 animals in this 20-year history of bison on the landscape.

And North of 650 have been distributed to other conservation herds, and we've helped start a number of herds. Many of those are tribal herds, but some of them are federally or state managed herds.

- You know, years ago, we did an interview with Sean Garry. - Yes. - Sean Garry, like, how do you describe what his role is in American prayer?

- Today? - Or just for historically. - So, Sean was a founder of American prayer, and he, this idea was not his and it came, and we couldn't talk about where the idea originated,

but he was a first CEO, and--

- Also, he did help the CEO position. - He helped the CEO position, and he started with the organization. I mean, he built the entire organization. He came from a consulting background.

He knew a lot about organizational management and design, and it was, you know, he was the entrepreneur who built the organization. So, Sean was the CEO presidency, so for 17 years, and then I took, I worked for Sean

for 10 years, and then took over in 2018 from Sean. And then he continued to serve on the board for a bit, and is now an emeritus director.

“- God of, what I think that we had talked about,”

when I spoke with him and it surprised me, is I sort of, maybe other people do. I used to have an association between American Prairie, like conceptually, between American Prairie, and the member of the sociologist that had this idea

of Buffalo Commons. - Yes. - He didn't like the, he was uncomfortable with the relationship, but it felt like, to me, like, if it, if not intentional,

such an interesting, it was like an interesting point of comparison, or an interesting coincidence. - Yeah. - Because I, and I want to explain a listener's quick, like a thing out that what I'm talking about

is, I think it was like Frank Popper, Mary Poppers with the last name. There's these sociologists, and they look at this idea. Well, let me back up even further to a different part of this, just for listeners understanding.

If you think of, when you think of like big national force in the West, a lot of times national force in the West,

they had always been set aside as force reserves.

They were undeveloped landscapes. In the East, you had this thing, East of the Mississippi, a lot of these big national forests, like the one I grew up near, I grew up near the Manistine National Forest.

The Manistine National Forest was assembled after the fact, like much of the Manistine National Forest had been homesteaded in people bought it for agriculture after the big logging era. But a lot of that land couldn't be made to pay.

And people bailed out of it. They bailed on back taxes. They just walked away from the land. And over time, there's this whole story where they had the weeks act.

They made money, like the government had money. And they started to reassemble a band and landscapes into the national forests that are in the Eastern US. Years ago, was in the 70s, maybe. Someone brought up this idea that these sociologists were

looking at areas on the great plains that they would see that would over time had less and less population. And they put forth this kind of observation that if landscapes, if landscapes depopulated, would you see what some sort of new,

like after the fact wilderness emerge and depopulated landscapes. And that, I think that when they were looking, they were sort of like happened to be looking in this particular area of the state.

As great plains became, as porches of the great plains became less populated.

“I think I remember reading about this in Ian Frazier's book”

Great Plans.

And ultimately, that's kind of where this idea emerged,

but it's not like a reflection of that. But I think that people hold that in their heads, maybe. - Yeah, and the idea was called Buffalo Common. So it was particularly looking at what the decimation of Buffalo on the landscape and where could Buffalo come back.

I think Sean's point and it's a good one is that they were just one of many who were looking at our great plains, even look at a global level at temperate grasslands and saying,

And so, I like to point out that it was the American painter George Catland in the 1930, 1830s,

“excuse me, who called for the establishment of a nation's park”

on our grasslands. He was just, as he was coming up the Missouri River, he was just astonished by the numbers of animals that he saw, and he has this great quote about being lifted up on a pair of imaginary wings

and seeing just endless herds of Buffalo, below him, and calling for the establishment of a nation's park for man and beast.

Which, of course, never happened,

and we never set aside a large portion of our grasslands. - Why was that? Like, they got to yellows, you hear all the stories, the conservation history stories, like someone's like Yosemite, now there's a place

that we should save a chunk of that, and they go to yellowstone, man, we should save a chunk of this, but on the grasslands, it just didn't occur to anybody. - Yeah, I think in part, it was timing.

You know, we were settling the grasslands, and, of course, you know, with the extermination of the Buffalo, we were pushing into reservations as well. And so that period from 1872,

when we established Ellison through kind of the mid 20th century,

we weren't viewing the wildlife was gone from the grasslands, and we weren't viewing that as something to be protected.

“And I think there's also the sort of scenic bias, right?”

Like, we were like, really tall mountains, and we like, and we like, deep canyons and, you know, geysers, and the subtlety, you know, this landscape, it's fast and complex and beautiful, but you don't, that's not, it's dramatic in a different way.

- Yeah, it's something you got to learn to love. - Yeah. - When I think about the timeline, you know, like, early conservationists, wait on to understand how quickly early conservationists

recognize certain things like Yellowstone, and you know, Sam would eat these like very, almost like too, like so obviously scenic, right? That Yellowstone was a protected park. Yellowstone had tourists,

when they were still fighting the Indian wars. When the Nespurse fled reservation confinement in Eastern Washington, Western Idaho, when the Nespurse were fleeing reservation confinement, and the Nespurse war started,

part of their, a part of their retreat, led them through Yellowstone, and they're having like shootouts in the park while they're a tourist there. It was like that early, that early in the history of the West,

but it's just like not-- - The wagons were already-- - Just from the-- - Yeah, at that point in time, someone had come in and said, man, you know,

let's do a couple million acres too out on the Great Plains.

They would be like, they would be as celebrated today for that decision as we celebrate, you know, the people that were involved in Yellowstone. - And those are the decades where we were really decimating those hearts.

- Yeah. - 1870s, 1880s, those were, you know, those were the years where, you know, that we were just slaughtering these animals.

“- No, what did the idea of American Prairie First take shape?”

Like, how did it take shape and when did they take shape? - Yeah, there were a number of conservation organizations and coalitions and like the late '90s-- yeah, the late '90s basically, who said, we're looking, again, at Tempura Grasslands,

across the globe, and particularly the Northern Great Plains, and recognizing that we didn't have, that those large protected areas, and it was, it was world wildlife fund was the, the organization that founded American Prairie

from the beginning as an independent 501C3 with the model that we now have today, which is private philanthropy to purchase private lands to live together existing public lands. And so that this region in Montana,

they recognized for, it's wildlife history, they recognized it for the abundance of public lands, they recognize that well over 90% has intact native prairie has not been plowed, and has been well stewarded. So the habitat is in good shape,

and those were really the factors that led them to choose this area. There were other, bigger protected grassland areas

but they chose this area for American Prairie to do what's work.

- When did you first find out about it?

“Like, how'd you first get turned on to it personally?”

- Yeah, personally, so I moved, I'm from a small town of Vermont, and I spent a summer up in Glacier National Park in College, and that was the beginning of my time in Montana. I met a Montana who's now my husband

and just completely foam love with the big landscapes of the West, the tracks of public land, I grew up hiking in the white mountains in New Hampshire and the green mountains in Vermont, but these really, really big expanses of public lands

were relatively new to me. So I would have probably come in to Montana anyway. So I moved to Boseman right after college and worked for South Dakota for a few years, and while I was here met a college classmate of mine,

whose parents were involved with American Prairie,

and that's how I learned about it. So when after I went to graduate school, we moved back to Boseman, and that's when I got involved. When American Prairie was taking shape, like it's called American Prairie Foundation at the time,

what was the first step? Like the first step had to have been like a piece of land acquisition. - I mean, the first step was building a board of directors. - Yeah, I guess the first tangible step.

- Yeah, yeah, first step was building a board, starting to raise money, and then acquiring property, the first property was the end of 2004. So we were found in 2001, that was a pretty quick turn to get the organization up off the ground.

- You know, I think that like, on that property, I want to talk about that property purchase for a minute,

'cause this is the thing that always puzzles me

about the conversations that people have around American Prairie. Is it like, you guys have always been like willing seller willing buyer? - Yes. - Okay, it's like, if someone owns land,

like most Americans, most Westerners would agree, that if someone owns a ranch, and they decide, their family decides that it's time to sell the ranch, that that would be their business. - Mm-hmm.

- Most people would agree with us, that it would be that when you want to sell a ranch, that's your call. That there wouldn't be like a government entity would come in and say, you cannot sell that ranch,

you must hold onto that ranch.

“People would agree that you should be able to do what you want.”

So you list it, and you have a price, and no one's holding a gun to your head, and you, as a free American, like a free Westerner, takes their offers, and you consider the offers that you have,

you consider the bids that you have, and you sell to the one generally speaking, I think most people are going to sell to the highest bidder, and they're gonna sell to who they choose. - Right.

- And I would feel that most Americans, most Westerners would be like, that makes sense to me. - I think they do. - Yeah, they do.

- No, I think they do. - But oftentimes, not if you guys buy it, which to me is so weird because people get it's an act. I mean, just frankly, anyone doing any kind of major thing, it becomes controversial.

Like frankly, you guys, you can't deny it. You guys are a somewhat controversial organization. - I appreciate that qualifier. - Yes, yes, no you are, absolutely. - But it's just like, and I have all kinds of things

I wonder about, and I'll ask you those questions. I think that's what I'm about, but it's like, foundationally, it surprises me how many people are antagonistic, to a principle that they have to broadly support,

“which is like, that if you want to sell the thing,”

and someone wants to buy a thing, whose business is it besides the seller and the buyer? But people get so worked up about who's buying. It's like, that's not your problem. That's kind of a view I have on it,

is I'm surprised that upsets people. - Yeah, I agree with everything you said. - I've done this 29 times now. - Yeah, by such a house, and some of bought my house, that later someone would be mad,

I'm like, dude, mind your own business. - Well, I think two things could be true, though. Steve, I think they can say, well, good for my neighbor. My neighbor found a buyer who will pay fair market value. My neighbor might have found a buyer

who has agreed to lease back to them for a number of years so they can have some transition. Their family or transition, their operations, somewhere else. They can say, could think, yes, good for my buyer.

They can also be disappointed and wish that their new neighbor

“was going to be, was a cattle rancher or was a different buyer, right?”

And was not American prairie. So it's change, and-- - It is changed, but if you were buying for a data center, then I would understand people being pissed. - Well, more, I would better understand people being pissed.

But if you imagine that there's a spectrum, okay? There's a spectrum being, like, on one end of the spectrum is data center, right? Or like, I don't know, a data center, a nuclear power plant, like whatever, there's a spectrum of refinery, okay?

- Even a large residential development, maybe. - Big, big residential, big residential development, yeah, whatever. That's on one end would be like, oh man, that's a bummer, right? On the other end would be, on the other end would be, like,

habitat preservation and restoration, which is kind of like more

of a, like, it's more of a, like, doing of not doing on one end. And then over here is, like, data center. And I would say that, like, running cattle sits very close to the habitat thing. I'm a cow's not condos guy.

- Yep. - So I would put, like, running cattle over in this area, data center over in this area, develop, like, housing development, this, right? - Right.

“- So, like, like, the fact is that the fact you guys buy land”

in order to have it be just kind of like habitat, it seems to be, like, sort of, like, even, like, that reinforces in my mind what would be like a non-issue. - Well, I'm really glad you're raising this, because I think most of our neighbors, I know most of our neighbors,

don't mind having us as a neighbor. We have a lot in common. And of course, what gets, you know, blown up, it's the loudest voices is the, is the controversy, but whether there are cows on American Prairie's lands

or bison, and there are a lot more cows than bison, and we can talk about that. The, there's a lot of common ground in the way that we're running our operations. There's a lot of common love and appreciation

and responsibility for the stewardship of these grasslands, the stewardship of these grasslands for a lot of different wildlife species, or by the same trucks, we're using the same fencing contractors. It is a, there, there is a lot, a lot of common ground,

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So you got all day of that day. But it ends right before midnight. Gobble, gobble. What in your mind, like if you had to express it to somebody, what in your mind is the,

like what in your mind do people feel is being lost on this, from your perspective? What do they feel is being lost on this like, sizable piece of ground? But not something on the scale of like,

you know, not even on the scale of what we have agreed to be a wildlife refuge.

“- Yeah, I think it's, I think it's change.”

And it's change that has been occurring on this landscape for decades. And it is perceived as a loss of a way of life. And there's been consolidation in, you know, consolidation of land ownership

There has been, you know, public lands ranching

is a very, very difficult business. It's a very difficult business. And there are a lot of global factors that are not, then America Priya has nothing to do with that are putting pressure on industry.

And then an organization comes in and then is the new kid on the block has different aims for their private lands. And is bringing in a new species like Buffalo. And it represents, it represents change.

And I think that's new, a new old. - Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, it's exactly a new old because by Senator not, of course, new to this landscape.

“But yeah, I think that's, I think that's really”

at the root of it. - What do you, what would you say in conversation? Like, you did a great, I appreciate your ability to articulate that.

A lot of people, I find don't,

the aren't comfortable articulating someone else's perspective. - Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not entirely, no, I'm not entirely comfortable too. 'Cause I don't, I'm not, you know, native to Phillips County

and I certainly have spent a lot, a lot of time on that landscape and I've, I know a lot of our neighbors, our team knows a lot of our neighbors. I've heard the perspective articulated. - Yeah.

- So I wanna be somewhat careful putting words in people's mouths. But I also see, I grew up in a small town and I know how much small towns, value, community, value tradition and you see the one room school houses

and you see, you, you hear about the traditions

“that some of which still exists that used to happen”

up there, like one time we were at one of the community halls and we were having a big community feed. It was really fun, a bunch of American folks were there and our neighbors were there and kids were all running around and the kids came out with a pole vault.

- Mm-hmm. - In the middle of Ranch Country. I didn't know what, it was a pole vault of all things and I learned that there used to be an event of these community schools that was a track meet

in, or a spelling bee in the morning and a track meet in the afternoon and like, that's a really cool, that's a really cool community tradition, right, to amongst all these country schools which there are not many anymore.

And so, you know, that human honoring that human heritage in those kind of lifeways on the prairie whether they're indigenous and are for thousands of years or if they're more recent, you know, settling, ranching families for number of generations.

Like, that is important to American prairie and recognizing that everyone's still out there and we together can look at what is the future of the landscape, what are our shared values? What do we want this place to look like?

Those are the conversations that we want to be having.

“- How many boys and you guys have on the ground right now?”

- Nine hundred or forty. - You know how many cattle are in this state? - In this, I know it's a lot more than, but a lot more cattle than people and I do in the--

- A couple of millions of people. - It's couple million, yeah, it was gonna take two - You guys had a half? - How many boys and? - Nine hundred or forty.

And they're about a half million cattle in the seven counties where we own land and on America prairie's properties, they're eight to 10,000 cattle because we're leasing either to the former owner

or leasing to a neighbor on 10 of our 12 units. - Yeah, can you remind me again, how many deeded acres you have? - About a hundred and seventy thousand deeded acres. - A hundred and seventy thousand deeded acres.

And people, you allow people, people can walk, like people can walk on all that land. - Oh yeah, it's all open, yeah.

- That people can walk, they can cross, always cross

with a couple of exceptions, like right by our staff houses, but they can cross, deeded land to get to public land. We have dispersed camping. And we could talk about how we open access but we have 80,000 acres enrolled in block management

in Montana on those properties. - Yeah, we want to talk about that. - Yeah, we can talk about that. - We want to talk about the walk in part, though, just for a minute.

- Okay. - Meaning if someone's going along on on X, they're cruising along on X, they see all the land ownership and say American prairie, right?

So if you see American prairie on on X, you'd be able to park, you can park your car, go walk around. - Yes, absolutely. - No one's gonna yell at you.

- No one's gonna yell at you. - No. - Okay. - They're gonna welcome you.

- On the land that you have grazing leases,

“the only thing you really have access to”

is you just have the leasing right. - If you have a bridge, it's a leasing privilege. - Yeah, leasing privilege, meaning if you have a lease on BLM land, that doesn't have any factor on someone going hunting birds on the BLM land.

Doing whatever they do on it, yeah. It's just like regular public lands. So when someone says, when you say you have federal lands that are leased, BLM lands that are leased,

what that means is you have an exclusivity around grazing livestock. - Yes, yes. - And that's it. It's not like, you don't have like,

doesn't come mineral rights, it doesn't come with exclusive hunting rights, it just is grazing. - That's exactly right, that's exactly right. And this part of, well, across the west,

but particularly in this part of Montana, most ranching operations are made, but their ranching operations are made up

of about a third deeded private acres

and two thirds lease acres, primarily BLM, but there are state sections in there as well. And the ranching operation depends on both that private land and that public land. But as the owner of what's called the base property,

you have that preferential grazing privilege on those associated public lands in the 10 year renewable grazing land. So when you buy a ranch, if that ranch has a lease,

the lease transfers of the new buyer. - Exactly. - God, and that's good until if you renew it or not.

“- Yeah, you have to pay your grazing fees”

and be a good steward of those lands and take care of that range land,

but yes, it continues to renew

as long as you meet those conditions. - Can you explain for me what, I kind of, I mostly understand it but I can hear you explain it. In the news lately, there's been this,

this, I don't know what I call it, there's been this like policy shift of saying that if you lease land and run, if you have a grazing lease, historically you would be able to graze

Buffalo on that ground. But there's a move now to make it that you cannot. - Yes. - That's gotta be just, that's gotta be just, 'cause that's gotta be just directed at you, right?

- Oh, yes it is, yes, it's directed just to us. So-- - Like that will not come up. - So going back to, going back to, and then we're right in the middle of this. So the final decision has not come out,

there's a proposed decision from the BLM. - Yeah, wait it's all out, this has been very interesting. - So this grazing regime that I just talked about ties back to the 1934 grazing act, the Taylor grazing act of 1934,

and that grazing act was to sort of, make sure we were taking good care of our range lands

“in the west, and that's what established”

started this precedent of these grazing privileges tied to base properties. The Taylor grazing act and the, and it's to support the livestock industry, and that the Taylor grazing act though does not say

what species and bison have been bison our livestock in Montana. So, important thing to say is that American prairie's bison are livestock, and they are our private property. We pay the livestock taxes on those.

We pay obviously the grazing fees, and we are not alone on in grazing bison on public lands. And so American prairie has been permitted to graze bison as livestock after environmental assessment is done on the affected lands.

We have been permitted to do that since 2005. So 20 years, and bison have been grazing on public lands for 40 years, and they have been grazing in six states, and they're about 40 permatees across those six states

who are grazing bison on these public lands. And that's been happening for 40 years. - That's been happening for 40 years for American prairie. It's been happening for 20 years. - Yeah, I want to make a need to pause on things

just to help listeners. This is a thing I talked about frequently, but just to help listeners understand the thing, is we recently covered on the podcast, this interesting move that Colorado made.

Colorado passed legislation that says, if a buffalo walks into the state of Colorado, like naturally, walks in on his own forehubs,

of them coming in from a, like walking in his wildlife,

that designation doesn't impact privately owned ones, which are regulated as livestock. Montana doesn't have an equivalent law. Wyoming doesn't have an equivalent law to that, meaning when they're on, when they're in the state,

they're regarded as a livestock animal. This is me talking, not you talking. Like, I wholeheartedly disagree with that. Like, I think that other states, and again, this is Steve, not Alice, and St.us.

I would love to see Montana could be doing a lot more. Wyoming could be doing a lot more to create room for buffalo to be wildlife.

They could be doing a lot more to create buffalo,

space for them as a wildlife species, which they are, but they're not legally regarded as wildlife.

“But your point being, I think is important to understand”

is that you guys have animals. You have bison, but your bison are like, they're legally livestock, and so they're registered as livestock. Like, you have to be like, each one is a registered creature. Well, we have to meet all the disease requirements,

and they are fenced obviously, and we're meeting all the requirements of Montana Department of livestock. - No. - I think what I like. - I think a difference is you got, you know what it might be,

and I want you to continue, but it's like part of the thing is, you guys, in my view, there's a sort of that, you perceive of them as, like, you perceive of them as wildlife. You're still able to imagine them as wildlife. - We managed them, and we absolutely managed them.

We managed them for their wild characteristics, and they're display of wild characteristics for it. But we are disease testing them. We are vaccinating them. We are keeping them home.

We are paying attention to stalking rates. We are removing them up and running them through our handling facility, following low stress techniques for sure, so that both we're paying a lot of attention to human safety and animal safety.

But we are absolutely managing them, but this is, you're getting at the root of what the BLM is now said, which is that our bison are not production animals, and they have not defined production.

They've never used a production standard in the past,

but they're arguing that because our animals

“are not production animals, that's why they're proposing”

changing these bison grazing permits back to cattle, only seeing permits. - So just, I want to make sure, 'cause I kind of like made us go off on that little livestock wildlife thing, just to get to reclayer

five point you made, that 40 years ago, someone allowed. It was a decided that if you had a grazing, a federal grazing lease, meaning you have the right to run your livestock on federally managed public land, say BLM, BLM ground, the BLM ground,

says open to everybody. You still hunt and hang out, do whatever you want to do on there, but someone has the right to graze it with their animals. 40 years ago, your animals could be cattle, your animals could be bison.

- They could be goats, they could be sheep. - Because on that thing, time goes on, and someone very recently is like, hey, wait a minute, I don't like what's going on, I don't like this whole bison thing going on up here,

we should have it be that that doesn't count. - Yes, and more specifically, in 2019, we put, we put it in for a change of use request to change to bison on six federal allotments, and BLM did a three year environmental analysis

to determine that, yes, American Prairie could have these bison grazing permits on these six allotments, lotments are what the chunks of BLM land are called, and they made that decision in July of 2022.

“- What did the environmental impact statement turn up?”

- It turned up that bison are good for the land. - The grass, the drop manure, kind of like cow. - Well, of course, no, the environmental impacts

impacts are good too, basically.

So they did a very thorough analysis, there was a public comment period,

“obviously it was a three year process, so it was thorough,”

and then that was immediately challenged by the governor's office and a number of state agencies and the Montana stock growers. We were winning those challenges in administrative court and then the Bureau of Land Management pulled back their decision, and January said we're gonna reevaluate this,

and then the following January, just this year, came out with this new decision, with this new reproduction requirement with this new way of looking at livestock,

and just very clearly, nothing changed about our management,

nothing changed about the conditions on the ground, they are re-interpreting their own laws, and with the very thin fact pattern and no legal precedence, 'cause some of this has been challenged in the courts over those 40 years, and Bison were an acceptable grazer

on these federal lands, and now they're proposing that they're not.

“And I think one of the, we've seen is that others”

are stepping forward to say, wait a minute, what kind of precedent does this set? If you are building your business, and American Prairie's Bison program is not inexpensive, we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on fencing,

we're spending millions and millions of dollars on this program,

and it's a important part of our business, but we've made a number of business decisions, we've made commitments to other conservation herds, to distribute animals, and so we built a lot of our, we made a lot of business decisions based on the way things had been.

And so you hear people making that slippery slope argument, like what's to say, keep a future administration from just arbitrarily changing the rules, and what does this mean for other Bison herds, and the coalition of large tribes wrote a compiling protest

“saying what impact could this have on tribal herds?”

And do the tribes have herds that graze on federal lands? They do, they do, and they recognize that, they also recognize that American Prairie has, you know, we're not an indigenous-led organization, but we are part of this Bison conservation family, right, team,

continent wide, and we have distributed, as I mentioned, 660 Bison to other conservation herds. There's a lot of exchange of genetics, exchange of animals, we've helped start conservation herds, and so if you take, you hamstring American Prairie's ability

to do that, the tribes pointed that out. They also pointed out that American Prairie's management back to your point about the way that we manage our Bison for minimal handling, low stocking rates, is natural and the landscape is possible,

that that is in the indigenous tradition, and the protest even says that, but that the American Prairie's way of managing is similar to the way that tribal herds are managed. - What, on the thing that the production's question,

in forgiveness, I'm not understanding the proposal, the change, the wording change, is the gripe that it's bison, or is the gripe that they're not being raised with meat production in mud? - The latter, more the latter.

- Okay. - Yeah, they're saying that they need to be production animals, and so they're disregard, so our response to this protest was this production standard is brand new, it's nowhere in the regulations or the case law,

but if there was a production standard, what is that production standard? Because not only is American Prairie distributing these animals to other herds, other herds, many of whom are food sovereignty herds,

so are absolutely, those animals are consumed. - American Prairie also has a robust public harvest program, and we have 370 of our animals have been harvested by the public, and that's tens of thousands of pounds of meat, and so this idea that the BLM

is gonna come in and dictate exactly how you manage

for this one species, for cows,

they're not gonna do it for bison, or for bison, they're not gonna do it for cows, is really hard to get your head around, right? - Yes. - Calipers are like, are going,

some calipers are reducing their stocking rates for conservation purposes, right? Does that, is it would that make their, would they not be meeting some sort of standard? So that's our argument is this isn't anywhere in the case law,

this isn't anywhere in the regulations, and what does production even mean? - So what'll happen next on this whole thing? - So there was a 15 day protest period we protested as I mentioned did a number of other organizations,

and then the BLM has 45 days to issue a final decision,

that final decision could come down any day now,

and then we will, assuming that their final decision has the same as their proposed decision, we will challenge this in both the administrative and the federal courts.

“- What do you think the final decision is gonna be same?”

- Yeah, we think it's gonna be same. - Just sticking it to you. - You know, Steve, what I do want to focus on is that right now those animals are out on the same lands, that we have not had to change our operations,

we have contingency plans, we have contingency plans a through F, right, and they're expensive and they're time-consuming, but we have a plan to take care of those animals and to do so safely. And we're emissions moving forward, right?

We're gonna continue to buy habitat, we're gonna continue to welcome the public to that habitat, we're gonna continue to restore habitat, we're gonna continue to raise bison. So while it may look in the public sphere,

like this is all American Paris focused on right now, it is far from what all we are focused on right now. We're focused on moving our mission forward. And I think that's been one of the most comforting things about being part of the organization,

leading the organization, we get to look decades down the road. - Interesting. - It's still a kick to the nuts though, but I understand it's still keep looking forward though, yeah. I mean, this has been fascinating to watch, man.

- Oh, yeah, I mean, yeah.

“- Probably not, that's why the word you would use for it.”

- Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a hiccup, it's a hurdle, it's, it's expensive, you know, it's time consuming. But we're committed to bison conservation. - All right, everybody, if you're getting fired up for spring turkey season, you're gonna want to hear this.

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So you got all day of that day. But it ends right before midnight. Gobble, Gobble. Let's talk about the access program in the state. Okay.

I'm gonna tell you a bunch of stuff you already know, so I'm just telling the listeners this. In the state of Montana, like many states, the state has an exit. They have a handful of access programs,

hunting access programs, one of their hunting access, they're kind of the main marquee hunting access programs called Block Management program. Where you have, again, this is like a willing, willing seller, willing buyer situation.

The state-fishing game agency, they raise funds, they fund their agency

“through hunting license sales, tags and stamps, right?”

They're able to take some of that money that they get from selling hunting licenses. I think a big chunk of the funding comes from selling non-resident hunting licenses, and they're able to, they make a pool of money.

on their land, they can get compensated by the state.

So then a public hunter can wind up. They're administered in different ways,

“like you need to get some of you to go out and hunt,”

you sign up at a sign-up box, some need to get a reservation, but however it works, they're administered in different ways, but however it works, the hunter, no costs to them is able to go hunt these block management lands.

Usually, usually a lot of agricultural lands, ranch, land, farm, country, no costs to them, the state compensates the landowner. You guys do, you guys have some enrollment in block management. What's sort of like, organizationally,

what is your attitude about the block management,

program and enrollment? How do you decide what's in, what's out, how much is in, how much is out? - Yeah, so philosophically, what we would like to see over time is larger wildlife populations on these lands.

We're not at their ecological carrying capacity. We fully provide a lot of hunting access, and what we're going for is a quality hunt, right? So fewer people, quality hunt, right? So we have a group within the organization,

called Park, the Public Access and Recreation Committee, and any time, and they set or make our public access policies, whether that's about what roads are open, what hunting access does allowed, what species are allowed on a particular property,

and they're using a lot of data and input from FTPP and from others to make those recommendations for those properties, and then those go to the leadership team to approve. So anytime we buy a new property, and we bought six last year,

“they spend about a year getting to know that property, right?”

Getting to know the roads, getting to know the infrastructure, working with the LSE, whether that's the existing LSE, or a new LSE, and understanding how we're going to open it up to the public, but within a year, our goal is to open that property up to the public.

And so each of our units has a different management. A lot of it is what's called type two block management. Type one is the sign-in box. Type two is call-in and make a reservation. So right now, we have about 80,000 acres

enrolled in block management, which makes us, I believe it's the 10th largest participant in the entire state in the block management program. So you can go at our website really clearly spells out which properties, what the hunting is allowed on the properties,

how to make a reservation, and FTPP is a great partner in managing all of that. We've done, we have one property where we manage the hunting access ourselves, and we've experimented with this in the past, and having a partner, like FTPP, to do that, to manage it,

to take those calls, to make those reservations, let alone, to do the enforcement, have the warden's on the ground. That's tremendously beneficial to us. One of the things that makes block management work is it gives the landowner can sign up in degrees.

OK, so let's say you're landowner and for whatever reason you have a thing where

you could never imagine any scenario on which someone

hurting a turkey was acceptable. You had a great affinity for turkeys. You could say, hey, I want to do block management, but here's a deal, no turkeys. And the state's going to go along.

“I believe there's a point at which the restrictions get so great”

if they don't-- that it's not worth the participation for them. Yes, but you guys are, but American Prairie, though, you have a lot of things, like your restrictions are much different than the state's hunting restrictions. Like you have big areas that are open to blind management,

but they're not open to meal deer. Yeah, so I was going to use meal deer as an example. That's-- I think you was with Senator Heinrich that you were talking about meal deer populations, right? So it's north of the river.

Regents six where we don't allow any meal deer hunting. And that's because of what the data says about the meal deer populations. So yeah, we're making those species determinations on a property by property basis, but we're allowing

a lot of access and thousands and thousands and thousands of hunter days each year. OK.

No, no, no. I imagine that as you see across the west,

“as we see white tail numbers, just generally,”

broad, wide scale, increase in white tail numbers, decrease in meal deer numbers. Most of your lands are open for white tails. Most of your lands are closed for meal deer, even if the state is allowing meal deer hunts in those areas.

Yeah. Now, what, like, is most of them open for phasant? Mm-hmm. Yep. That'd be easy because it's a non-native bird.

Yes, yeah, yeah. Most of the stuff, there's--

we have some incredible elk hunting opportunities

in the large hills in Regents six. We actually-- that's the one we manage on our own. We do a special draw. That's a special draw district within for FWP.

“And then we allow, I think, it's about 18 opportunities.”

And that is a coveted opportunity. There's some youth opportunities in there. But so, yeah, it's property by property. It is a year by year, but it all reflects our commitment to hunting and to public access.

How does it normally work? How, like, if you guys did six land acquisitions last year? What's your sort of batting average on land acquisitions? I mean, like, how many like, in the area where you're operating? How many listings are there in a year, would you say?

Yeah. And of those listings, how many are you interested in? And of the ones you're interested in, how many do you close? So six was a lot of transactions for us. That was a big year.

That was a very big year. We added about 78,000 acres through those six transactions last year. And I definitely want to talk about the anchor ranch, because that was the biggest of those transactions. That was 67,000 of those 78,000 acres was the anchor ranch.

And I don't know how to, we're not talking about a lot of properties. Like, on average, we've probably been adding two, three properties per year. There is often competition for those properties. We don't get every single one of them. And in some cases, these are family decisions that are made over, whether it's a resident

land owner or not a state land owner, their decisions that are made out over a number of years. So a number of these properties, we've been talking to the land owner for a number of years. So it's hard to say, the sample size is so small, it's hard to say a true batting average.

But hopefully that's a little bit helpful. But some presumably, some don't work out. Yeah, they don't work out. Yeah, the land owner wants a price that is not for a market value, and we're not willing to pay it.

Often, you run into a land owner that would be like, hey, your bid's higher. But I'm choosing to accept less money from a traditional cattle rancher. I mean, we don't, because none of us is public information, we don't know what other people are paying. Right, right.

We know a lot about the market from appraisal data. We know a lot about the market from brokers, we're spending a lot of time figuring out what is the fair market value, we're getting appraisals. We have no interest in paying above fair market value, because we have more property to buy and we have to raise every single dollar that goes into each of those acquisitions.

What's the organization's timeline?

“How long are you, this is going to lead to another question, like, what is the plan?”

Like, how long are you guys, how long can you imagine being solvent and continuing the mission for? Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, we intend to fulfill the mission of the organization, and all of a sudden yes, an all seriousness, if you had to say, it will take roughly how long.

The acquisition phase will be additional decades, more decades, yeah, absolutely more decades. As the land comes available, we will purchase it, and in the meantime, we will continue to steward and restore and open to the public what we have, but there is not, I think what

I've always appreciated in the market period, that there are a lot of ways to measure progress,

of course, is acres added, but we track visitor nights, like we have two campgrounds and a series of public cuts that are open to the public, and that those numbers are increasing every year.

“I think it's last year about 6600, over night visitors at our properties, so we are tracking”

miles of stream or stored, we're tracking fence removal and fence conversion. We have, we have a staff member who tracks the tonnage of metal that he's removing from the prairie, right? Because part of, you know, the d sort of junkifying the landscape, you know, that's when you're removing an old dump, or you know, you're auctioning off an old building that's

not needed anymore, like we're measuring that, so there are a lot of ways to measure progress and we're not holding ourselves, we don't need to hold ourselves to a firm timeline to complete that position.

Basically the longer it takes more expensive, it is, and the more money we need to raise,

but it's not like on an annual basis or even a five year basis, we certainly set goals, but some of those milestones or target milestones are not in control and that's okay. You realize, visitation can backfire, right?

“I mean, that was like what Yellowstone dude, it's like Yellowstone's like a nightmare.”

I mean, I live in the state, I know that, but like that needs to be turned into a wilderness area. There. There. Don't tell my whole plan, it's big, a big trailhead, I'm going to keep anything that any

highway that goes through it, I'm going to keep, this is if I'm ever emperor. Okay. The bisecting highways, I'll keep open. I would dismantle all the infrastructure, I would keep the highways that go through open, I would put in large trailheads here and there and the whole thing would be a wilderness

area, just unpark it, it's a very controversial idea. No, I mean, I was, my kid's been yelled at because I have this viewpoint. Your dad wants to, but he doesn't understand what wilderness area is, it would protect the park more, you follow me, I understand, visitation can backfire, I mean, that place

is okay, oh yeah, but there, they have four, was it five million visitors last year?

No. And we're talking, maybe ten thousand, so, but this is the first one. When you get up into the billions, let me know and I'm right, what's the point you're making, which is, you can be really thoughtful about where you put infrastructure and, you know, I did a tour of Yellowstone, sort of, behind the scenes tour and I was reminded that

“figure eight road and the placement of lodges is because that's how long a carriage ride”

was, the 17 miles, 19 miles and so that park was built for visitors in that way with the gas stations and the lodges and the, and there are a lot of roads, right? It's not just, a lot of roads, a lot of roads, right? And I understand when my plan comes in, I'm not going to mess with any kind of flow through traffic, I'm not going to mess with the interstate traffic.

I'm going to say take, take 20 through Idaho, yeah, all that's going to be fine, that's not going to be interrupted, just so people will clear our clear on those. Do you guys have like a, you guys have like, you get funding, like, you don't fund, you have a network of donors, obviously, probably globally, right? We mostly in the United States, I think, three percent of our dollars rays have come from

outside of the state. As you may, outside of the country. And we had donors from all 50 states, it's not all 50 states every year, but, and about

15 percent of our money last year came from Montana.

Okay. And when you do an acquisition, you don't fund raise specifically around an acquisition, you fund raise on the mission. It was sometimes we were fund raise for an acquisition. Yeah, sometimes we fund raise for an acquisition, yep, we've, you know, we're fund raising

to support organizations on going operations, and still adding those 600,000 acres and supporting our team of 50 people and all the roles that they play, right, in keeping a nonprofit going. And then we're, and then we're fund raising for acquisition, and then we are also fund raising for an endowment, because we once we're through with this acquisition phase, we envision

an endowment large enough to take care of the basic operations of the place. There'll be some revenue generating activities for sure, but we want that endowment to be able to pay the taxes and support the bison herd and take care of the operations.

wonder like, what is the ultimate, let's go forward a century, okay?

What is American Prairie in 100 years? Is it a park? No, capital P park, capital, no. Is there ever a point, like, is there ever a point where you'd go, like, ha, we're done. And then there's a, when there's a favorable, like, administration, you'd be like, ha, we're

done, and you'd be like, we now are handing this over. This is the national park that we did, that they didn't think to create, but we made it. No, we believe that a public, private partnership collaboration is the right solution for this landscape. That would work in perpetuity.

I think it can work in perpetuity.

“And I think if you look at the condition of our parks in the backlog, I think that there's”

a real opportunity to have multiple landowners at the table, meaning a private landowner and these agencies, managing toward common goals, toward those common wildlife and public access goals. What I wonder about, though, is like, 'cause it's so hard to anticipate. Right.

Just political changes.

You don't need to tell me that.

Okay. That, like, and even if it was the plan, I don't, I think it'd be like, hard if you guys talk about it publicly. You follow me. Yeah.

Yeah. I want you to keep it secret. Right. But I, like, that is not the plan, but do I have a crystal ball for 100 years from, like, let's talk about bison.

Yeah. What are bison going to be?

“There's going to be, here's my prediction.”

There's going to be more, in a hundred years, this is my prediction. I've been arguing a lot, not arguing, texting back and forth about she hates polymarkets, doesn't hate them.

She just, addiction market.

Okay. Potent that poll. Yeah. I don't want to put words in mouth. She views prediction markets as a, as a very volatile industry.

As people are like, this is new thing, like, one of the regulations is going to be, like, it's taking shape. I just feel like I'm kind of curious about him. She's sort of curious about what their future holds. What they need to figure out is how to do long term wagers.

I would make a hundred year wager that would benefit my children's children when I won. Right. That's, like, the bad out make. So this is one of those for the one we build, like, the way as future prediction market thing, which is, like, a state planning.

Yeah. This is a hundred years. Okay. It's like a state planning. If I could do that, I would put a lot of money on this.

If there was a reliable way to make hundred year bets that would benefit my children's children when I proved to be right. Okay. Twenty one twenty six. Yeah.

I would bet. There are, I don't want to say a lot. There are quite a bit more. There are quite a bit more. I build free roaming buffalo on the landscape that can cross political jurisdictions.

They can freely cross political jurisdictions that are wildlife that are treated as wildlife. Treated as wildlife. Yeah. There'll be more of that. There's more of that.

It's our national mammal. Steve. Yeah. That was too close. It came with nothing.

It came with nothing. It was the biggest. I was glad. I was glad. But let's be honest, it meant nothing.

It meant nothing. It was purely symbolic. Yes. But I hope it reminds our citizens of of this natural heritage and of what we had on the landscape. You need to be suspicious.

You know, you can be been alive long enough to be suspicious.

“You need to be suspicious of anything that's frictionless.”

There wasn't like, like, when they were going to, hey, it's going to be the national mammal. There wasn't like an opposition. Yeah. Okay. And if there's no opposition, then you must realize that it means nothing.

Yeah. No. It was just a symbolic point. It was cool. I was glad.

But you also, I don't know when this study, I don't think this study was repeated recently. But there was a study looking at Montana's and that Montana's wanting to see Bison in the

And it was well over 60% who wanted that.

“So I do believe that people want to see Bison back on the landscape.”

Even though leading a private effort, we're facing this resistance, it could feel like if a private organization, raising private dollars to raise a private herd is facing this resistance, certainly your dream isn't going to happen immediately. But I hope it would be before 2021, 2016. Quite a bit more.

What did I say? Not a lot, but a bit more. Quite a bit more. It was really. Real squishy.

Real squishy. All right, everybody, if you're getting fired up for spring turkey season, you're going to want to hear this. Man, I'm Tony, I'm fired up. Well, anyway, right now, we're running the ultimate spring turkey giveaway in this packed

with over $13,000 in prizes, including an incredible turkey hunting experience, gear from

SIG, a shotgun from Benelli, a $1,000 gift card from first light and a whole big pile of gear from other partner brands. One lucky winner is going to receive a spring, 2,027 Rio Grande turkey hunt in the Texas Hill Country for you and two of your buddies or family members brought to you by Bird Dog. And during the giveaway, the more you spend at first light, Phelps game calls FHF gear and

the meat eater store, the more entries you'll earn for a chance to win the entire prize package. Getting entered is easy. This head over to the first light contest page at firstlight.com, fill out the entry form in your end.

“Remember, for every 25 box you spend, you get 10 additional entries.”

One winner will be selected to win the whole damn prize pack. But don't wait around. The giveaway ends one minute before midnight on Monday, April 13th, 2020, and 26. So you got all day of that day. But it ends right before midnight, gobble, gobble.

My view on stuff, my view on things is like I had this sort of deal where from a professional standpoint, like from a professional standpoint as someone who advocates about outdoor lifestyle hunting and fishing wildlife conservation, my sort of professional promise is that like I look at situations taking place, the political landscape, the conservation world, whatever. And I try to be like, what is in the best interest, what is in the best interest of hunters

in anglers and outdoorsmen, okay, and no one's perfect by trying to strip out and explaining things to people. I try to strip out the other considerations that might come in to being a give you a case in point, talking about an impenetrable border wall between us and Mexico. I would view my professional obligation would be to speak to what it means for wildlife.

Yes. My professional obligation is not to talk about what it would mean for employment, what it would mean for the fruit industry, farming industry, hospitality industry, employment, like right.

But I go like, okay, never mind, I got to forget all my opinions about that and I need

to talk about what it means for wildlife and impenetrable walls and great for wildlife. So I have to then say to be honest with myself and to be true to my mission, I have to say like an impenetrable wall, which we know some Mexico is going to impair and impede wildlife movements and that's bad for hunters, right? But here's another thing, it's also bad for hunters that if we have tons of illegal immigration

“and you have to have an exaggerated federal state presence on the landscape dealing with”

all that, that's an impact on wildlife, right? So that has be considered. So if I'm saying it gets complicated, when I look at American Prairie, you look like you're uncomfortable. No, no, I'm settling in for this.

When I look to American Prairie, I just want what I want, what I wish there would be and I know you can't do it. I wish there would be that like written in the charter is like a promise to hunters and anglers that it would be memorialized that there would be a deal codified, right?

or whatever, but like they stand by hunters and anglers. Yeah. But you can't, because it's too complicated. Well, you're not, so where I thought you were going to go is some sort of, you know, public access easements and the reason that those are tricky for us is because we don't know what

old land will ultimately own.

And when you put an easement on it, you reduce its value and we're trying to borrow against our existing properties and we could sell something that's on the, you know, if we concentration of land ends up over here, we could sell something. So I'm not going, we don't want to hamstring a future management team by doing an easement at this point.

We do have conservation easements on our property with inherited conservation easements. We're not anti easement. We can work with them, but that's sort of the, but if, and what we say is, look at our track record, right? Like look at what we've done for the last 20 years of owning land.

It's increased access, it's increased hop hunting opportunity that will continue, but,

but, but you're not the first to suggest some sort of contract with Montana or charter

“and that, that, that, that, that goes beyond a communications tool, right?”

It's, it's, it is, it reflects a conversation in a commitment and so it's not a terrible idea. No, it's not a terrible idea. Because that's, like, when I was saying down the road, if you viewed it like, if, if, if, we started our conversation, we were talking about parks, right, they didn't do one of those,

right? But I think that, if there was a, if there was a, if there was a, a large area that would be, um, the aim was to make it a, increase wildlife, better habitat, right, um, with, like, with a, open to regulated hunting activities in accordance with state objectives in perpetuity, I think that, that, that, a lot that some of the tension would trickle

away. Yeah, I, I, I, I, I hear you, I, also though that's kind of what's happening right now, once the 100,000 acres, right? No, it's done. And it's, and I don't know if the, the tension Steve comes, is much from that, but, from, we

are seeing more support from hunters and anglers and less doubt and less skepticism and more appreciation.

“And I think, you know, there are a lot of conservation efforts in this state.”

Some of them are species focused, some of them are regionals, but, but regionally focused, some of them are, pay our private lands, focus, working private land owners, I don't think there's anyone, there isn't anyone who is creating the access that we're creating in every single year, right? The access to our deeded land, the access through our deeded land to public lands.

I mean, that response to the, our purchase of the anchor ranch was astonishing. Well, that was, that was, that was an important thing. It was, it, and, and for those who don't know, we immediately opened a 3.9 mile private road, the gate to a 3.9 mile private road, the access 50,000 acres, the bulllacker road, that, that, that opened 50,000 acres of public land, that was, that wasn't accessible.

I mean, it was accessible for the, the very hardy, but now it is accessible through this road. And that gate was, those, no trespassing signs were immediately taken down. And that gate was immediately thrown open.

“Remember talking about the next purse war?”

That's right there. They crossed in there. That's right there. I was standing there this fall with my family. Yeah, because there's, there's forward there.

They crossed, there was a bit of a shout out. Yeah, there's a bit of a shootout down there, but it wasn't that big of a deal, but they crossed there. Yeah, it's, it is tremendous, tremendous country. It is, that, that, that whole Cal Creek drainage and the, that foothold, so the bear's

paw there. So, again, not about idea, but our track record is, that was widely, that was, in my community, that was, that was celebrated. Yes, yes. And, you know, we, we, it just happened that we made that announcement right before the

Choctuary Festival in Louis Town.

We always have a booth at the Choctuary Festival.

of people came by to say, thank you. We noticed that. Thank you.

“So, so that's what we, well, that's what we're doing and that's what we're looking”

for you to do. What, how long, how long will you stick with this, you think? I don't know. I'm still having so much fun. Yeah.

It is fun. You're like, you enjoy it? Oh, it's so, yeah.

First of all, it's an amazing team, right?

We've got, we've got incredibly talented team. I was up with our, our bison team, the week before last, and we have two new team members on that, in that group, both females, which is cool. And I hadn't seen our new handling facility in the new design of the handling facility. And they're world-class.

They are world-class in the way that they're managing those animals in the, the way that they're adapting the way that our management to, to take good care of the animals and make sure people are safe too. So it's a, it's an incredible team. We've got an incredible board.

We have supporters around the country who believe in, in this mission, believe in this idea, care about this landscape, care about the, the wildlife and the human communities, and I get to interact with all of them. So it's challenging, and it's a, it's a lot of nights away from home, and whether they're up in, whether I'm, I'm spending them up in, we're central Montana or around the country.

But as long as, as long as the board wants me, I will, I will be here. How big's you guys, board? It's 22. Okay. Yep.

22 from all over the country, handful of Montana's. You're going to bring my suggestions to the board. Yes. Thank you. They'll, they'll hear you.

They'll hear them. Well, yeah, because they'll be vetting how well you do. Yeah. Yeah.

“What did I not ask you about that, that when you get vetted, what did I not ask about that?”

You wish I would ask you about, you can just answer it. Whew. We've covered a lot. We have covered a lot. Um, I guess I would just say come visit us and, you know, we're, certainly, we have

a lot of people hunting out there. That is our number one recreational activity. But wildlife watching is a close second, our, our vice president of recreation and access follows all the trends in Montana and, you know, scenic drives and camping and wildlife watching

and birding and floating the rivers are all, um, are all, incredible activities to do

out there. So, you know what's interesting about, you guys, you mentioned wildlife viewing, what was interesting about you guys is like, now and then just for people listening, now and then Grizzlies will kind of come out of the, uh, Grizzlies will kind of come out of the Rockies up in the north part of the state, uh, and they'll strike out east out onto the

Great Plains. And like what people lose track of is historically, that was a great Plains animal, um, cluster and is chief scout, bloody knife. I mean, they killed a Grizzly out in South Dakota. Right. I mean, Grizzlies were, you know, you think of all these big Grizzly mollings like Hugh

Glass when he got mauled and the story that was told in the revenue, he got mauled out on the Plains, like, they were a Plains animal, when Lewis and Clark ran into Grizzly Bears, it was out on the Plains every day and May of 18, oh, yeah, you'd be going down these big valleys, you mentioned chope cherries and stuff. Like, yeah, you're traveling these big valleys and you'd read Mount Man accounts, they'll run into like nine Grizzlies

in a day out on the big valleys out on the Plains. People would be like, oh, they got pushed into the mountains. They think of pushing into the mountains. Just the ones that were on the Plains are gone. And there's some, they didn't like migrate to the mountains. That's like a misconception to be that they were there. They remained there where they're not as on the Plains, but now and then one will strike out and he'll head east. And when that

happens, oftentimes people are like, good Lord, the end of the world. But you guys had a Grizzly a number of years ago, turn up and I remember you were like a rare voice, be like, oh, a Grizzly. Oh, yeah, and it's a lot of like hand ringing about what the, it's like the end of civilization is we know. Well, you know, I think I think other aren't some of our neighbors were happy to do, but yeah, yeah, and it hasn't just been that one,

we've spotted a number in that area for sure now, like even a mom and cubs. So yeah, I know they're coming. They're absolutely coming and they're coming exactly where we, how we thought

“they would come. And that's why, you know, one of the things we didn't touch on is the way that”

American Prairie works with neighboring landowners. And one of those ways, I talked about the 25 families that run 8 to 10,000 head of cattle on our properties. But we also work with private

landowners to a program called Wild Sky, where we are make payments basically rent for wildlife

camera trap, they get a check for that mountain lion that camera trap. And what we're recognizing

“is that this wildlife is there in the middle of these working lands and that these landowners are”

providing that habitat. And we cost share on habitat restoration projects too, including the reason I brought this up is because we have a rain-triining program that is right there in the, in the breaks where, where those grizzly bears were, and there haven't been any issues with those those grizzly bears in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, that was definitely done by now. Yeah, there were, I mean, we, we, we, where our visitors were seeing, you know,

we're seeing evidence of grizzly bears and, you know, there have been bears in some of the island mountain ranges around there too. But, but yeah, we, we, it was a day, we celebrated in terms of advocating for bear proof dumpsters and educating our visitors about carrying bear spray and immediately putting bear boxes at all of our public facilities out there because, you know,

“we don't, we don't want that any conflict, of course, and, and nor do any of our, our neighbors.”

So, but yeah, they're, they're moving east. And, um, here's what I didn't ask about.

You guys are like, you guys are not in, like, you don't participate in any kind of predator management programs. Like, you know, like, you don't, you don't do any predator management on your lands. You're sort of like, just, you're not comfortable with it. Like, what's the sort of, what's the viewpoint on it? You don't view, you don't, because I guess, because you're not, you're not in the livestock business necessarily. It's not a huge issue for you. Yeah, and we, and we want to see

everything resort to the landscape. Do you view that, that if you look at stuff like, uh, like, declining meal deer, right, or, like, protecting big horn sheep, do you ever, do you ever weigh that out to be like, what is that, if, if, mule deer, if you're taking steps, like, you don't want human harvest of mule deer, right? So if both of those species isn't it disease, with mule deer? No, habitat, predation habitat. So if you were looking like, let's say you were looking at

a species of concern, okay, it would be mule deer, harsh winners. That's an issue, predations an issue, habitat loss is an issue. What if you looked at a thing, like, mule deer, and you thought, like, as a species of particular concern, we want to, like, help build and recover

mule deer during low points, you would never make the calculation that even if you knew empirically

that predation from coyotes on mule deer fawns was having a population level negative impact, you would not participate in predetermined, you would not participate in coyote management to, to bring up mule deer numbers. Those are just not conversations that we're, that we're having, yeah, those are just not, yeah, those are just not the, the reality out there on that thing. You're not looking at it at that kind of a detail level. Yeah.

Um, what else do you want to talk about? Or things that you wish I had asked you about?

“You know, I think we, we've covered a, covered a good, good range of topics.”

How best do people go find out more about your organization? There's great information on our website, and where this year will be improving the, the visit pages. So it's clear how to rent a facility, how to get a hunting reservation, how to go out and, and experience the landscape. One of our colleagues, he's currently feeding on one right now, and I've been eating some of it, too, is he,

his wife had a permit to hunt, yes, the Buffalo and your guys placed. Another one of my colleagues every year, he goes with a veteran. Yep. He, he participates in a veteran hunt. Yeah, we didn't, we, I mentioned that 370 bison have been harvested, but I didn't, I didn't go into the details of how popular that program is. And so every year, he's a public application. Yeah, it's a public application, 20 to 30 opportunities every year and thousands and thousands of

people apply. Those opportunities are weighted to mountains and they're weighted to the seven counties that we work in. So harder to get one of those if you're, if you're not in the state, but those are immensely popular. The other thing we do. But then, they don't live here in town, but his wife got one. Yeah, well, she was really lucky then. Well, galatin county wouldn't be weighted, so she was just one of those part. How many weighted? No, no, she just got lucky. Yeah,

she just got lucky. And then we, other thing we do is we donate harvest to other nonprofits to auction them off. So as an example, the, the Glasgow Reds baseball team up in Glasgow,

America, where it went for over $30,000. Yeah, raising money for that for that organization.

Our body that works here, it goes with the wounded veteran. I'm not sure what organization he goes with.

“Wounded warriors, I think, I believe, but could be. Yeah, yeah, so definitely definitely definitely definitely”

that. It's an annual late winter thing they go. Yep, yep. There are a couple, there are some organizations that we've partnered with year, year after year, like that. But yeah, I mean, if anyone has an organization that they want America for a sport, give us a call and also put in for those, put in for that drawing every year. And you, so people should go check out your website. Yeah, website's the best place. What is your, what is the website?

AmericaPurry.org. Oh, it's two eyes and three. It's easy to find.

Two eyes and three. That was the fox. Thanks for coming on the show, man. Yeah, thank you.

Really appreciate you having us back. Yeah, well, I should, I don't want to say you can come on any time, but you can come on almost every time. Oh, thank you. That's very generous of you. Yeah, especially there's new stuff to talk about. We didn't talk about your bison tattoo now. No,

“not speeding out on a fake one. I really thought that was why that you got that in my own. Well,”

the deal, I've talked with this all the time, but the deal is my wife and I, we were going to provide like a service by being the last untat to American couple. Oh, but you might be my husband and I her part of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the sweat, the sweat, the sweat, the American couple. And then now you're telling me my kids are also not going to get tattooed. I'll get into that. Great of detail. Well, that, but that, no, I appreciate you being, I mean, you know, coming on and being such a

good sport about asking a bunch of questions. Yeah, I know, happy to. I appreciate we appreciate the opportunity to tell the story. I guess the other thing I would say is, you know, we in 2021, we opened our discovery center in Louis town. And that's really the headquarters of the organization. We've got about 15 staff based there. That facility is open for public events. There's an exhibit hall. There's a children's area. We have a new black foot of ferret. We have a, so let's just go in

and visit it. Go to an event there and meet our team and ask any question you have about American prayer. That is, we are committed to being open and transparent and available. And it's

been amazing to see that having that physical place where people can go, we call it a discovery center

“because it's not quite a visitor center. It's not quite a community center. It's both. And that's why”

we chose the word discovery. But it's open and go talk to a member of our team. Do you guys have any black foot of ferret on the ground? We don't. We don't. So we don't have the, the, the, the, the extent to the prairie dog towns are not large enough yet to support black foot of ferrets. There are black foot of ferrets on Fort Belnap. That's the closest population now and they have been there for for decades. I would have thought that I would, I would just feel that you have enough prairie dog

colonies for black foot of ferrets. So they need a huge area. They need huge areas, thousands of acres and working toward that or absolutely working toward that. But, but not, we, we don't have them any now. So some little football field size town isn't going to do it. Nope. Nope. You need a towns that are big enough so that some play out. They can, they can go to other towns. No, I see what you're saying. Connected network. Yeah, if he's like down in the valley

floor hanging out and, like I said, like maybe something a couple football fields. But then also and you realize there's not one left because they got, because they all died. Yep, thank you. That that guy's screw. Other other populations. But we do, we have an ambassador ferret at Discovery Center. You can point at him be like someday. Yeah. Right. No. I mean, it's the National Blackfoot of the Ferret Center in Fort Collins, which has a captive breeding program. And some ferrets

prove themselves able to survive and be reintroduced to some of the reintroduction sites around the, around the Great Plains and some do not. And so our little guy bandet eats two rats a day instead. Is that like, is there a permitting problem? Like, let's say you just wanted to try it out in cut one loose, cut a, not cut one, cut 10 on the loose. Right. Oh, they're endangered species. No, no, we're saying like, if you're like, no, we're going to

do three males, seven females. We're just going to, like, is that, can you not do it? Because is it, is that a huge permitting permission issue? Yeah, there's no. Because they're in ESA species. Yeah. Well, and yes, they're in ESA species. And then, of course, every Merckbury doesn't have the authority to reintroduce any animals, right? Sure. Or something or something. Yeah, so you would, yeah, it would be, is it impossible or is it just hard? No, I don't think it's impossible. There are,

there are reintroduction sites. There are sites in Montana. There are sites in South Dakota.

are, yeah, there are private landsites. I believe that there are sites that are, you know,

“the mix of public and private lands. So, I would wonder about on, on ferrets, if you have,”

if the captive breeding program, this is a whole their conversation with a different guest. But this is why I would ask them. If there's a black, if you were a black-footed ferret expert, yeah, I would say, is the captive breeding program so successful that you can roll the dice now and then, or is a black-footed, is an individual black-footed ferret of such rarity and value that you can't be risky. Mm-hmm. Do you follow me? I do follow you. I do follow you and I don't know.

It's hundreds of animals in the captive breeding program at least and, and, and

so I suspect that they, they can, they can take a chance, but, um, because, you know, you don't

take a chance with a rhino, like white rhino, you do not take a chance. You don't go, I don't turn, let us see what happens. But I wonder if you can, like if there's ever enough ferrets

“where you can start trying some stuff, you know. Yeah, well, there's a concept of a kind of like a”

nursery site where there might be smaller, but you're training those ferrets to be ferret, like, in a, in a wild landscape again. So, um, no, we learned the other day. We had a rough growth expert on, and rough growth are not doing well in a lot of the areas in the southern end of their range. And he was pointing out that, unlike the wild turkey, rough growths don't do well with, with spot reintroductions.

They have to bleed out. Oh, interesting. You, you can't jump ahead, like it is don't, they, what kind of distances are we talking? I don't know, but he said it, like, they have very poor success rates leapfrogging, like they need to, they need to bleed from, have it intact. And they're, have it. Yeah, they need to be like stable populations in good habitat, and they need to spread like that, putting them in a box, and moving them forward and

dropping them doesn't work for them. I don't know if it's just that they can't learn the area quick enough. Yeah. They make too many mistakes. They're not familiar. They got to ease into it. They're too vulnerable, whatever, but it doesn't work like that. So, the conservation efforts are focused on expanding habitat. Yeah, off for him. As you say, it has the off core habitat and move it that way, like it doesn't work to jump to leap for them. Yeah. Yeah. What if that was the plan

on black-footed ferris, this is going to be a long road to recovery? Yeah. If you weren't able to establish your flat population, there aren't any. There's no place, there's just very few places to start from. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, call me when you get a black-footed ferris on the ground, I'll be curious about that. Yeah. I'm rooting for that one. There's a little animals. Yeah, no, they're cool. Yeah. I mean, obviously. I did get at the opportunity once to spotlight

when there was a site in the Terely Russell, and I got to drive around all night and it was obscene. I'd like to see like one doing his deal. Oh, yeah. The green eye shine in the middle of the night. Was that how the eye shine? Yeah. And then there's a reader that you put over the hole and you stuff some hay down there. And so you can tell when it's come out and then you get the reader, and they know they're all chips, so they know. Oh, yeah. They're doing basically a ferret.

They were doing it like a ferret census every fall to see. And then capturing the new kits and and tagging them. So they have a good their eyes show green. Yeah. Yeah. So you're driving on the spotlight on the top of the car and looking for them on the parade lockdown all night long. Are they school experience? No. I mean, they're chill. Yeah. No, they are. And they're small. All right. They're a couple, they're a couple of paths, and they're they're their prize a couple

pounds. So that's cool. Amazing to think about. They eat a parade, the parade dog going last

some a couple days, eat one every three days. No. Seems like it was plenty of mouth there, but I see what you're saying about eating those huge towns. Yeah. We'll let alone all the other species that the rattlesnakes and the badgers and the burrowing owls and all the other species that depend on on those parade dog towns and all the ungulates that are eating that fresh growth and they're

“important part of the ecosystem, even though not everyone loves them. Yeah. All right, man. Thanks again.”

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you coming on. Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

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