If there’s anything that more symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of this administration, I don’t know what it is.
American Prairie’s director of public affairs Beth Saboe notes that of the 600,000 acres managed by American Prairie, approximately 500,000 acres are being leased back to cattle ranchers. But it seems like that’s not enough, and they want 100% of the public land for their cattle.
Source: Outdoor Life
The U.S. Department of the Interior has said it will revoke the grazing permits that have allowed American Prairie to run bison on roughly 63,000 acres of federal public land in Montana. This decision would affect seven parcels managed by the Bureau of Land Management in Phillips County, and it would hinder the organization’s larger goals of conserving large swaths of intact grasslands while restoring the native grazers to those landscapes.
The Interior’s rationale for yanking the permits, according to its Jan. 16 proposed decision, is that under the Taylor Grazing Act, the BLM can only issue grazing permits for livestock managed for “production-oriented” purposes. It claims that American Prairie’s emphasis on conservation runs counter to those purposes.
American Prairie CEO Alison Fox criticized this reasoning as both unfair and inconsistent with long-standing public-lands grazing practices in Montana. She said in a response to the decision that it creates uncertainty, not just for American Prairie — which has been grazing bison using federal leases since 2005 — but for all other livestock owners in the West. She added that American Prairie plans to protest the decision and will take further legal action, if necessary.
More background here, from the Western Ag Network.
