Top-Down Denial of American Prairie Leases Is COrrupt

The Trump administration grifters and the Interior Department think Montanans are stupid, implying that denying American Prairie’s grazing permits for its livestock bison is a move meant to save ranchers.

However, the Trump administration can’t be concerned with American farmers and ranchers. Its market-crushing trade war, through penal tariffs, proves that. Trump even said he wants to import more beef from Argentina. Trump’s tariffs cost our producers $45 billion while $12 billion in taxpayer subsidies is being paid to American producers.

The Trump administration’s move to revoke grazing permits by American Prairie for its bison is meant to let a tiny group control vast swaths of our public lands – at the expense of public hunters, anglers, recreationists, and healthy lands that all Americans have a stake in.

American Prairie has an impeccable record as a public-land grazer and partner with Montana in managing the public’s wildlife. It has complied with every regulation, grazing roughly 800 livestock bison on its deeded and public grazing lands. It has 10 times as many domestic cattle on those lands – offering attractive grazing rates to nearby ranchers in the region where it operates.

American Prairie contributes much to the communities where it operates. It extends public hunting access, including allowing access to tens of thousands of acres of adjoining public lands that were off-limits. In fact, the group is the eighth largest participant in Montana’s popular Block Management hunting access program, something I appreciate as a public hunter. It also extends access to many others wishing to enjoy this prairie landscape.

The group’s record on land and water health is just as sterling. The rangeland and water health in the area has improved dramatically since AP started managing land there, something the BLM acknowledged in its environmental studies. And the group employs dozens of people in central Montana, bringing young families and dollars into the region.

You would think, with such an upstanding record, American Prairie would be welcomed by our leaders. Instead, Gov. Gianforte and our congressional delegation have vilified American Prairie.

If they actually cared about our rural communities, farmers, ranchers, and public access, they would have spoken out against the billionaires in the Crazy Mountains who took water from area ranchers for a golf course And they would aggressively push back on the Trump administration for its market-crushing tariffs.

This is what’s really going on in America and Montana – there’s an oligarchy of the uber-rich in which a handful of billionaires don’t have to play by the rules.

It’s folly to assert that American Prairie is the only landowner buying land primarily for its wildlife values. Billionaires are gobbling up private elk hunting ranches, and then putting a few cows out as lawn ornaments so they can get the huge tax breaks while they bring in business associates and politicians to impress them with big bulls.

How about the lawsuit the Montana Stockgrowers Association joined on behalf of a billionaire in Wyoming, who argued that barring his ability to keep the public out of public lands was costing him millions of dollars by denying him exclusive access to public elk on public lands?

It’s also worth looking at who’s driving this decision within the Interior Department – the infamous Karen Budd-Falen, the lead attorney in the lawsuit against American Prairie’s permits who now holds the No. 3 position at the Department of the Interior, is making the decision.

This is the same grifter who, during the first Trump administration, approved a mining lease to a company that bought water rights worth millions of dollars from her husband – a clear conflict of interest that should disqualify her from any job in the department. She also, years ago, argued that wildlife isn’t public but rather owned by landowners.

Denial of American Prairie’s grazing permits is just another nail in the coffin of our public lands, waters, fish, and wildlife, because American Prairie has proven its values. The Trump administration aims to sell it all to the uber rich, at the expense of the public who enjoys these public resources.

- JW Westman