We’re fighting to keep bison on public lands

A challenge to American Prairie’s bison permits is about more than one herd. It’s about whether public lands will be managed for native wildlife or livestock industry politics.

Satirical illustration depicting the Department of the Interior's preference for cattle over bison on public lands.

Consider the iconic bison, the symbol of the American West and, indeed, the logo of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Now consider that the Trump Administration, following the lead of Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and his Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen, are seeking to remove bison from Bureau of Land Management grazing allotments in northeastern Montana, inventing a wholly new standard for livestock grazing permits in order to justify their pro-cattle bias.

Consider that the Bureau did this—insisted on replacing bison with cattle—without any environmental analysis of the change, and consider too that this outcome is exactly what Budd-Falen sought when she was in private practice advocating for her rancher clients against the bison permits.

Now, forget bison; something smells fishy.

For decades, the cattle industry has opposed efforts to restore bison to public lands despite their natural compatibility with huge swaths of the western range. Bison evolved with North American ecosystems, and unlike cattle are compatible with the conservation of American wildlife and plants. In arid areas, bison will forage far from water, spreading their impacts more broadly, while cattle concentrate their impacts on fragile riparian areas that are crucial to the survival of more than 70% of native wildlife species.

The ecological advantages of bison over cattle are particularly pronounced in the High Plains of eastern Montana, perhaps the reason that the cattle industry finds rewilding with bison so threatening. Or perhaps it just reminds the industry of the millennia that preceded livestock on the landscape, back before the cowboys were treated like kings. Perhaps to them, every bison represents a backward slide towards a time when ranchers didn’t control the West. Maybe that’s the threat.

But consider this: Western Watersheds Project, represented by Western Environmental Law Center, appealed the American Prairie bison decision, and we fully expect to prevail in court. Because you can’t just invent new rules and change the playing field without a process. America is still a country governed by laws, and the Bureau’s May 2026 decision to renege on its agreements to graze bison broke these laws.

Our appeal asserts three main arguments:

1. The Bureau is holding American Prairie to standards that allow only “production-oriented” livestock operations on public lands, which is not actually a requirement of the Taylor Grazing Act, the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, or the Public Rangelands Improvement Act.

2. The Bureau failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. You have to complete an environmental analysis for any action with potential to significantly affect the human environment. Insisting these allotments be grazed by non-native herbivores after years of bison grazing certainly qualifies.

3. The agency de facto is creating new rules for public lands grazing authorizations without a public process. The application of the new “production-oriented livestock” language on the American Prairie decision actually precedes new rulemaking in which the Bureau hopes to impose this unlawful standard nationwide.

If the precedent of American Prairie is allowed to stand, and if the new proposed regulations are adopted, future bison restoration efforts could be obstructed. It also creates roadblocks for tribal bison restoration efforts, some of which involve public lands. And it would block other public-land grazing lessees from switching from cattle to less-harmful bison, to the detriment of healthy lands and native wildlife.

This is more than about American Prairie’s permits, and it’s about more than just whether bison deserve a place on our shared public lands.

It’s about the livestock industry maintaining its entitlement to the landscape since they nearly wiped out bison by 1890.

It’s about enshrining one destructive land use above the needs of native species, one relatively-recent economic system of animal exploitation above the interdependent relationships between people and animals that have existed for centuries.

It’s about special interest mouthpieces being given roles in a fundamentally corrupt administration that favors extraction above ecosystems.

Greta Anderson is the deputy director for Western Watersheds Project