00:00:00
Speaker 1: Here’s something I never thought i’d get the chance to say, I went on a bison hunt. Yes, in the early spring of twenty twenty six, I got the incredible chance to hunt an American buffalo, the most iconic, impressive, fascinating animal quite possibly in our country. And I had this chance because of an organization known as the American Prairie. In this grand, audacious goal, they have to create the largest privately kind of put together but publicly accessible nature reserve in the north central plains of Montana, and to try to restore to this landscape the full complement of wildlife that once roamed there, including our nation’s mammal bison. So if you have not heard of the American Prairie, here’s the very quick cliff notes. This conservation organization is trying to create a nature reserve on par with the Yellowstone but for the grasslands, and their plan to do that is to acquire private lands, purchase private lands from willing sellers, to patch together a bunch of accessible ground in between two large pre existing pieces of public land, and to bridge that gap create a relatively contigious, more than three million acre swath of grassland and prairie habitat that then could be restored and worked on to bring back populations of elk and bighorn sheep and pronghorn and mule deer and yes, bison at levels that you know, maybe have not been seen in decades and decades or hundreds of years.
00:01:43
Speaker 2: That is the dream.
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Speaker 1: That is the goal that they are working towards, and so far they’re making pretty impressive progress.
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Speaker 3: To date.
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Speaker 2: It’s been you know, twenty plus years.
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Speaker 1: To date, they have acquired around six hundred thousand acres of both owned and leased public lands that are now under their management, and there are somewhere around one thousand bison that they have brought back to this landscape, all in about forty thousand acres of that swath between private and public lands that they have access to. And all of this is what made possible, you know, my incredible opportunity to go on a buffalo hunt out there and to hunt a bison in.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: A vast wild, you.
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Speaker 1: Know, seemingly endless, unfenced landscape that I could go travel cross for miles and miles and miles and feel almost like I went back in time.
00:02:33
Speaker 2: That made this opportunity possible.
00:02:36
Speaker 1: This this just once in a lifetime experience that honestly blew my mind in many ways.
00:02:43
Speaker 4: And in a.
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Speaker 1: World where you know, we’re often talking about decreasing opportunity and decreasing wildlife or access to wild places, this is this is a really cool opportunity to celebrate the opposite. More access, more wildlife, more healthy landscapes that we can go and hunt on, or bike across, or hike across.
00:03:06
Speaker 2: It’s a really exciting positive.
00:03:09
Speaker 1: Story that I’m excited to share here today, and our guest today is going to help us discuss this. So today I’m joined by Scott Idabrink, the director of Landscape Stewardship for the American Prairie, for discussion around the on the ground lived experience of working on a conservation project like this.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: What’s it like to.
00:03:31
Speaker 1: Wake up in the morning and know that you are on the front lines of this kind of project. What’s it like to be the guy that’s actually out there on the ground helping restore bison to the great planes To wake up in the morning and know that you’re going to go out there and actually do something with your hands that’s going to bring back more mule deer, more buffalo, more pronghorn. I’d love to hear that story. I want to hear that story, and that’s why Scott joins me here today. And I also want on understand why is it that a conservation project like this, in which we are trying to restore a landscape, restore wildlife populations, why does that project also involve hunting, just like what I was able to experience. That is the plan for our conversation here today, and it’s a conversation.
00:04:18
Speaker 2: I’m really excited to share.
00:04:20
Speaker 1: And when I recorded this interview several weeks back, that was simply how I was looking at this as a exciting conversation, as a celebration of something that I think is is much needed these days, which is a opportunity of a conservation win. But there is one part of this American prairie story that I have left out to this point, and that’s the fact that there are some who do not want to see the American prairie fulfill their mission.
00:04:51
Speaker 2: And the reasons for.
00:04:53
Speaker 1: That are complex, and there are many different kinds of reasons for that, but most of them stem from concerns around the future of ranching and agriculture in this landscape. Concerns about traditional.
00:05:09
Speaker 2: Ways of life.
00:05:10
Speaker 1: And then there’s also some simple, you know, just anti conservation pushback as well, and we purposely didn’t get into that side of things very much in this conversation because I just wanted to focus on, you know, what’s happening on the ground here. That said, I don’t mean to suggest that this part of the story is not an important one and that these questions and concerns are not worth asking. I think they are, and my colleague Steve Rinella did ask many of those questions in another episode of his podcast, The Mediator Podcast.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: With the CEO of American Prairie.
00:05:44
Speaker 1: So if you’re interested in that part of this, I’d highly suggest you go listen to I believe this episode eight point fifty one of the Meat Eater podcast. But the upshot of these concerns in this controversy is that politics and politicians have now gotten involved with this American Prairie project to some degree, and most recently, the federal government, by way of the Bureau of Land Management, has now rescinded has proposed canceling the grazing permits that American Prairie has that allow them to have bison on public lands. So those permits, the ability for them to have bison on public lands and their owned private lands is what made my experience possible because I was out there hunting buffalo on a landscape that seemed, you know, endless, that seemed unfenced, that seemed like it was all just one vast ocean of grass. But actually in reality it’s actually a patchwork, a checkerboard of public and private lands altogether.
00:06:50
Speaker 2: But I didn’t have to see that.
00:06:51
Speaker 1: I could just experience this big, open landscape because of the fact that they owned land and then had grazing permits on that public now is suggesting that those permits should no longer be valid, despite the fact that American Prairie has had them for twenty plus years, and so unfortunately, because of this news just recently, Scott had to make an announcement of the fact that this hunt that I was able to be a part of, in which in this conversation you’re going to hear him discuss, is something he wants to and plans to and had documented plans to continue into the future, and definitely now as of just the last few days, he’s had to announce that they will be canceling that hunting opportunity for this coming season, and I’ll quote his text right now. In that announcement, he wrote, the uncertainty and ambiguities surrounding recent state and federal actions have made it impossible to move.
00:07:49
Speaker 2: Forward with this year’s harvest.
00:07:51
Speaker 1: The truth is that we are facing a growing and coordinated effort by state and federal officials to restrict bison from public lands in Montana and perhaps eventually across the country.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: So my bison hunt was the last.
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Speaker 1: Of the twenty twenty five twenty six season, and now, given this announcement, it’s gonna be the last one for an unknown period of time. So the question is is this still a triumphant story? And I think that it is, But it is seemingly now a story that’s complex and full of fits and.
00:08:27
Speaker 2: Starts, and you know what, that’s life, right.
00:08:31
Speaker 1: So why should we expect the conservation of wildlife in wild places to.
00:08:36
Speaker 2: Be any different?
00:08:38
Speaker 4: Thanks for being here, all right?
00:08:46
Speaker 1: Joining me now is Scott High to Brink Scott, thanks for being here.
00:08:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me Mark.
00:08:54
Speaker 1: I want to start with a hypothetical scenario. Let’s amas imagine that you are stuck on an elevator, and I know it’s a pretty long drive maybe to get to most elevators near where you live. So let’s say your Billings or Missoula or something, and you’re on an elevator going into let’s say a hotel room, and there’s someone in that elevator with you who’s obviously not from town, they’re not from Montana, they’re traveling from Afar. And they look over at you and you say, hey, you know, what do you what do you do? And you have to explain to them in the span of this we’ll call it a long elevator ride. What American Prairie is, who this organization is that you work for, what you guys are doing in the world. How do you explain that to someone in those kinds of situations.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I usually start, like, my typical thing is, you know, we’re a nonprofit conservation organization, which that’s a super broad category to throw yourself into. So to get a little more specific, we’re here in north central Montane and what we do is we purchase lands that are for sale, and our focus on management is around the ecosystem, So looking at all the pieces of the ecosystem puzzle and keeping the ones that are still existing and intact on the ground, keeping those going. And then is there anything missing from the ecosystem that we can return So is that habitat related it could be you know, riparian restoration, or is that animal related. Could that mean more elk or bison or blackfooted ferrets. So looking at every piece of the puzzle, bringing them back to the landscape and really completing that picture with opening up a landscape where people can can come see that intact ecosystem, experience a prairie, experience those animals. Why does why does that kind of work matter? Why does this vision matter for me? It’s it’s real simple. There’s not a lot of grasslands left in the world. It’s one of the it’s the most endangered ecosystem in worldwide and there’s really only four places left on the planet where there are large scale grasslands left and intact, and maybe they’re missing a few pieces. But with a little help, we can see you know what those people two hundred years ago saw when they showed up on the prairies, and you know, have a place for people to experience those ecosystems that are that are disappearing at an alarming rate.
00:11:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so you just mentioned this, this vision of the past, right, what do these people two hundred years ago see when they when they showed up on the Gray Plains? I frequently wonder about the same thing, and I have a picture that gets painted in my head when I when I think about that. What picture do you paint in your head when you imagine that past and what that might have looked like? What’s what’s your vision when you when you imagine that?
00:12:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I think the biggest thing that I see as bison, because that’s what I work with on a daily basis here. But the you know, the tons of wildlife, you know, and all the readings I’ve done and stuff like that. You the the accounts of the wildlife out on the prairie are just phenomenal and really second to not anywhere else. It’s comparable to like the Serengeti of Africa, where you know, you have herds of thousands and thousands of animals, whether that’s pronghorn or deer, elk, bison. I think that’s that’s the biggest thing I see. And then just you know, imagining the habitat as it historically would have been with those. You know, you have these large swaths swaths of grass and sagebrush out there, but then in between those, you have these, you know, creek bottoms and riprairian areas, little wetlands that are like little oasis out there where there’s gonna be tons of wildlife, tons of birds, tons of insects, things like that. So it’s all those those really uh you know, ripe perion areas. I think that really tie everything together and make all those animals, plants, everything interact and function together.
00:13:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, what I can assume based on what you just shared me there. But I’m curious when you first caught wind of this whole idea and we’re considering joining, why why did you do it? Why did this vision call to you?
00:13:40
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:13:41
Speaker 4: I think it’s interesting because I’m I’m a prairie guy, like through and through. I love grasslands and that’s always been where my passion has been.
00:13:51
Speaker 3: But I think when I you know, early in my.
00:13:54
Speaker 4: Career, I was doing restoration and tall grass prairie restoration, and I really enjoyed it, but I was working on a smaller landscape and that’s great, people should keep doing that. But I always wanted something bigger and thought of, you know, how do we make things bigger, how do we bring back animals that maybe aren’t present on the landscape or a habitat that’s really degraded. And so when I found American prairie, it kind of put all those pieces together for me, where like the scale is big enough, and you know, you’re focusing on all parts of the ecosystem, not just grass, or not just one species of wildlife or just birds. It’s all all encompassing. So that’s what was really attractive about it.
00:14:46
Speaker 1: Was there a moment, I don’t know when you were actually out there in the field at some point or really any point in your time where this vision became.
00:14:56
Speaker 2: Real for you.
00:14:57
Speaker 1: I gotta believe there was like this hypothetical You’re like, oh wow, there’s this really cool mission this organization has. They want to do all those things you just described. But I’m sure it must have just seemed like this distant, out there idea. Was there at some point where all of a sudden you realized, oh wow, this is a real thing. It could actually happen, or I’m starting to see it happen, or anything like that.
00:15:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think like when, yeah, when you’re thinking about that, like realization of something happening. I think there are those moments. You get glimpses of those moments where a lot of the pieces kind of collide again and there they’re you know, it’s whole for a few seconds again where you know, you look one direction, there are no bison, but you turn around and oh, there’s a you know, two thousand bison grazing in a bottom. And I can think of one specific moment I was out. This was I don’t know, seven eight years ago. I was out check of fence early in the morning. There’s you know, a little fog on down in the bottom, there’s dew on the grass, and I just I stopped to fix something on the fence. I fixed it, and then I turned around and I was putting everything back in my four wheeler, and half a dozen sharp tails, you know, flushed twenty feet away from me. They’ve been there the whole entire time. And then, you know, I look a little further down the draw and there’s you know, ten or fifteen.
00:16:23
Speaker 3: Meal deer grazing.
00:16:25
Speaker 4: And then I look further down the draw and there there are like two dozen bison down there grazing and that’s what really. You know, the sun was just right, the you know, all the pieces were there, the birds were singing, things like that, and so you get that glimpse into seeing all those things interacting at one time. So that’s that’s one moment, and you get those kind of on a daily basis, you see those semblances of that stuff. You don’t get it all every day, but but there are a lot of moments like that.
00:16:57
Speaker 1: What does that feel like when you see that and you see a little bit of a a glimmer of that possibility.
00:17:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s real. It’s really exciting for me, Like I you know, I can I’ve wanted to see things like this my whole life and so being able to be part of that it’s really exciting.
00:17:19
Speaker 3: But then you know, when you’re actually there.
00:17:21
Speaker 4: In that moment, it’s it’s like one of those times where you just like lean back and smile and you’re like, this is where I want to be, you know, type of type of moment. And so there’s just like this joy that comes with experiencing those those little glimpses, those little moments.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to do I want to kind of rewind just a little bit. We’re talking about why this work matters, and you talked about how grasslands are the most you know, threatened and in declined ecosystems across the world. But I’m not sure everybody understands why grasslands actually matter. You mentioned that they support a lot of wildlife, but why does this kind of habitat matter and why do these animals still matter today?
00:18:05
Speaker 3: Right?
00:18:06
Speaker 4: You know?
00:18:06
Speaker 1: You mentioned bison, you mentioned sharp tails, you mentioned mule deer and pronghorn, all these different things that live out there in a world like we live in today, a modern world that is pretty far removed from a lot of that stuff. Most people, why is this something worth paying attention to and working on?
00:18:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it’s kind of twofold.
00:18:30
Speaker 4: There’s like the environmental side, and then there’s like that there’s the human side, and so like environmentally, like just looking at it through like a a climate change lens or you know, biodiversity loss globally things like that like this can definitely impact those things in a positive way, slow them or stop them in certain areas like ours here. But I think the bigger thing for me is like the human part of this, Like we live in this fast, noisy world, you know, everything’s always go, go, go, And the prairie is a place when when you take the time to get out there and spend time out there, it’s dark, it’s quiet, it’s calm, and those are things that we have rapidly lost in the last hundred years. And I think people are now realizing and studies are showing that, you know, people need nature, people need those calm, quiet spaces, especially in a world like today’s world. And so this is one of those places that you can still get that and experience that. And so those are a couple of reasons I really think it’s important. Yeah.
00:19:45
Speaker 2: So, so walk me through a little bit of the progress so far.
00:19:48
Speaker 1: You mentioned that you guys are trying to buy land that is up for sale and help kind of accumulate this land base, bring back these pieces these wildlife that have been missing.
00:20:00
Speaker 2: How’s it going.
00:20:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s going well.
00:20:03
Speaker 4: You know, we we lease and own land, and so in total, we manage a little over six hundred thousand acres of private land d n r C, which is owned by the State of Montana and Bureau of Land Management land and so progress wise, you know, we we have a huge land base. We’re starting to connect to those public pieces of land by buying those smaller pieces in between. And you know, from a from a people standpoint, we allow access to almost all of our property for various uses, and so people wise, this has been very successful. People can come out experience the prairie when we’re looking at it through restoration lens. You know, bison are the ones that always make the headline, and we have we have a little over nine hundred bison right now in two herds on a little over forty thousand acres, and so that’s a big win for us. We can get those animals back on the landscape and then habitat wise, you know, we’ve we’ve got a lot going on. We’re restored several thousand acres of previous crop ground and so that has been returned back to prairie. And then we do a lot of ripe prairie and work and prairie dog work as well, and so putting in beaver dam analogs and log structures to help slow down water and help helping areas where erosion has been a factor in these creek bottoms. And then prairie dogs are another keystone species, so we do a lot of work around plague mitigation and keeping those prairie dogs alive and on the landscape. And so yeah, Bison, those creek areas and prairie dogs are the three areas where we’ve we’ve really done a lot of work.
00:21:59
Speaker 2: And you might have said, and I missed it, but what’s the scale of the landscape that you guys own or manage between all the leasing and the owning and the opportunities you guys have there. What’s that number?
00:22:10
Speaker 4: Now, a little over six hundred thousand acres that we manage.
00:22:14
Speaker 1: Okay, and then there’s the million acres of the Charles and Russell, right.
00:22:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then that’s adjacent to most of our lands and yeah, then we’re right next door to the Upper Missouri Breaks Monument as well, which is about a little over three hundred thousand acres.
00:22:30
Speaker 1: Okay, So you’re you could look at that as saying, there’s almost two million acres of you know, relatively protected landscape in this zone, right, that’s a pretty substantial footprint.
00:22:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s a really cool region because you, yeah, you have the Fish and Wildlife Service there with the refuge American Prairie is there, you have the monument, which has some more protections on it. And then you know, the ranching community too has really like there’s a lot a ton of people that have put concervation easements on their places or are doing their own you know, beaver dam analog work and things like that, and so it’s kind of a an area of the country where there’s a ton of conservation work happening across the board with all different kinds of landowners.
00:23:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s uh. I definitely felt like.
00:23:20
Speaker 1: You could feel you were in a wild place, even though it was also a worked place in some portions, it was still that wild kind of beating heart of the place was very much alive, you know. Going through there, I remember thinking like, we better make sure we’ve got plenty of gas because you’ve got a long ways to go. But between any kind of fuel up opportunities, I mean, it’s it’s a wild, out there place, and you could definitely.
00:23:48
Speaker 2: In many ways it almost I mean not almost.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: It did feel more remote and wilder than much of Yellowstone than much of like national parks. I’ve been to her National Force, I have been to where there’s so many people and so much tourism. Your region had all of the wild elements of that with a much smaller human footprint, which was which was really cool. You brought up bison. We got to talk about bison, We got to talk about buffalo. I you know, had this amazing experience they’re getting to participate in that public hunt you guys have there. But you, if I remember right, were very involved from the early days of your time with American prayer with bison and your your kind of role has continued to evolve to now overseeing a lot of that stuff. But this whole idea of bringing bison back to a landscape that sounds complicated, That sounds like a lot of work, but it’s all very kind of just I can imagine, but I don’t really know what it looks like on the ground. Tell me a little bit about what that entails, and I guess give me a little bit of better. When you think about bison, Uh, there’s such there’s such a unique species right in our nation. There are national mammal They’re iconic. I think we all imagine them as this unbelievable animal that used to exist in great abundance. And you know, most people probably know that they don’t exist like they used to, but they probably don’t quite know that they hardly roam free anywhere anymore. Right, So why have you guys been trying to help establish something like that again with that species in particular, And tell me what that process has been like over the last you know, years and years that you’ve been involved.
00:25:37
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, I mean reason number one we’re we’re involved in in the bison world is the ecology of it. And so you have this species that used to number in the millions on the planes and they had an outsized impact on everything out there from the habitat to all the other animals. And so with without that, without the bison on the land escape it, it cannot be a fully functioning ecosystem. There’s just a role they play that is outsized and so important to the ecology of the region. So that’s why we have bison. Now. Yeah, the bison are complicated, like you said, like extremely complicated, and so you know, they’re one of the few animals in the country that have dual classification as livestock and wildlife. And in our case, our bison are classified as livestock, which is great for us because we can get them back on the landscape right now. And so what that what that looks like for us is. You know, we brought our first sixteen bison in two thousand and five. I’ve been here for a little over ten years now, and so I’ve seen the program ramp up and grow a lot, and so in many senses, you know, we’re we’re very similar to a ranch operation. And in other senses, we have a bunch of biologists on staff too that know a ton about wildlife management, and so we’ve kind of found this spot where, yes, our bison our livestock, but we can manage our bison to see the benefits of the species being back on the ground, and so we can allow all those natural interactions to take place while still following all the livestock rules and regulations that the state and the federal government have. And so you know, we have to handle our bison, we harvest bison, things like that, and we’re able to do it at a quicker pace than you know, if bison were in the region were to be classified as wildlife, the state or the federal government have to run that public process to reintroduce bison back to the landscape. So we’re able to do it much quicker because we’re private landowner and we can own bison.
00:28:03
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think to the public to like in my experience, nobody would know, right, they seem like wild byson out there. I mean they are, as far as I’m concerned, they are wild bison out there living wild bison lives, doing buffalo stuff on a vast basically unfenced, unfettered landscape.
00:28:23
Speaker 2: Right.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: It just comes down to this kind of bureaucratic stuff you guys have to deal with, Right, That comes down to this what we can call them, and then all these other rules and regulations you guys have to face. Do you think that bison being designated as wildlife is a thing that will happen in our lifetime? You know, in a state like Montana or or somewhere like that. Is that something that we might be able to look forward to someday and to you guys being able to, you know, take down your outer fence and just let them roam again like they used to without worries about all this crazy stuff.
00:28:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, I I do think it will happen in our lifetime. And for a few reasons. I think One, you know, like you.
00:29:06
Speaker 3: Said earlier, it’s they’re national mammal.
00:29:10
Speaker 4: And then on top of that, when you when you look at do people love bison, Yes, they do. Like the every survey result that I’ve ever seen, people in general love bison. They love bison as wildlife. And so I think the public support is there. It’s an education and awareness issue that haven’t been addressed yet. And and if you look at the history of you know, North American wildlife management, there’s one animal really left that has kind of been untouched from a from a state or federal management uh approach, and that’s BiCon. And so I think because of those reasons, when when the time is right, when the politics are right, you know, I think it’s coming, it’s just a matter of when.
00:30:00
Speaker 1: So how do you think that your guys’ work lines up with them? Like what if you had to envision the future, what do you see American Prairie’s role in that maybe possible future down the road?
00:30:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think. I think we’re an intermediate step to that. You know, I think when you look back at bison and bison conservation, it started with ranching and ranchers gathering up the few last bison, and then the federal government protecting a few bison, and we’re in this like interim phase which has been one hundred plus years now of bison being behind fences and heavily managed. And when I looked at the bison industry as a whole, it has trended towards, you know, letting bison be bison and those natural interactions playing out on the landscape. And you know, I think we we can help push the at forward and you know, bring bison to kind of the forefront of conservation and that awareness and education need. And then at some point though, the either the state or federal government or the and or the public are are going to have to be the ones that step up to take over, like we’re you know, yes, we have these animals, and but I think we’re we’re here to show that what is possible. That’s not our job to implement it necessarily, and so we can we can help that process. We can work out all the kinks, like what is it like to manage bison on large landscapes. You know, we can plain a very important role here. And then when when everyone else is ready, then let’s let’s talk about wild bison. Yeah, so.
00:31:55
Speaker 1: Walk me through a little bit more of the details of the impact they have in the landscape, right we’ve heard about how bison are possibly like a keystone species. They change the landscape around them. What’s that actually look like on the ground. How do they actually do that? What’s the trickle effects of the ripple effects of you know, them them being back. Have you started to actually see that in you know, the twenty years or whatever it’s been that they’ve been back.
00:32:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, we’ve got we’ve got several different research projects going on and most of our long term looking at the long term impact of bison grazing. And that’s that’s one thing about the prairie ecosystem is because of the lack of moisture, it is slow to change. It takes decades to really notice big impacts, and maybe even longer multiple you know decades, and so with you know, we’re we’re in our second decade with bison. We just just went past twenty years and we’re starting to see some little things show up. And you know, in in practice, I think when you like seeing the bison out on the landscape and kind of researching what they’ve done over the past twenty years, the big things we see is their movement and how they move and where they spend their time, and so generally bison being a prey animal, they don’t like to be in confined places, they don’t like to be where they can’t see. And because they’re adapted to a hot, dry prairie ecosystem.
00:33:29
Speaker 3: They don’t need water all the time.
00:33:32
Speaker 4: And so we see a lot of improvement and change in our riparian areas, and so in those creeks and wetlands, we’re seeing a lot more of like the sedges and cat tails show up. Woody species are starting to come back in the draws where it’s a little wetter, so like willows, things like that. Other brush are starting to increase, which you know has ripple effects for birds and voles and you name it. And so largely that’s because of how they’re grazing and using the landscape, that they’re spending their time upland and not focused on those lower areas.
00:34:14
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I remember when we were out there walking around, you pointing out some of these different creek areas and riparian areas where there was definitely this this lush growth and all sorts of new shrubbery and things that you said had not been there, which has got to be that’s got to be pretty neat to see that just in your own time there see, even if it’s slow, seeing how the earth can change, how the vegetative diversity can change, how you know that that canvas can shift right in front of your eyes over the course of some number of years. That’s got to be a really exciting part of this project. What about the challenges though, I gotta imagine, I mean, just being kind of up close with bison, the little bit that I was. They’re a little bit edgy creatures. I mean, I can only imagine what kinds of experiences you have had walk me through what some of the challenges have been with bringing these animals back, managing them, you know, letting them be bison. But at the same time, I’m sure you guys have some constraints. You guys have neighbors that don’t want them on their land, You’ve got all this other stuff.
00:35:21
Speaker 2: What have some of those things been.
00:35:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, That’s that’s one thing I definitely did not anticipate when I started working here, is the challenges I guess, you know, and the amount of time spent with the relationships and people. And it’s not just it’s not honestly, it’s the bison don’t take the majority of the time. It’s the people that we spend most of our time with, whether that’s a neighbor or the you know, the politics of it, you know, other partners, conservation districts, you you name it, across the board. Bison take a lot of people time and that’s okay, that’s and that’s what it takes. There are you know, the political challenges are very real and so I you know, it does give the opportunity though to show people that like there there are there is a place for bison. It can be done successfully and and like you said, edgy creature, that’s a that’s a very true statement. You definitely just like I had to shift my my approach to working more with like neighbors or conservation districts and and focused on that people part of bison management. You also have to shift your perception on animal management just in general, because they are such a different critter and they really do take a like do take a different mindset to be successful with Yeah.
00:37:00
Speaker 1: Uh, when I think about them being edgy creatures, I think about one of the stories that I think that you shared with me.
00:37:06
Speaker 4: It was either you or.
00:37:09
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, Lars maybe shared it with me about a hunt that you guys were on, or he was on one of the two of you, and you guys have had some problems with like bachelor groups of bulls coming in on you while you’re butchering a bison. Can you tell me about that, if you’ve seen that, if that was you who had that experience, could you could you walk me through some of those types of experiences.
00:37:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, Lars and I actually had a real interesting experience it because it was in the dark. I had shot a bull late in the day. You know, it was ten below and we were like, okay, we got to hurry, we gotta get out of here. Well, of course it’s a bison. Like nothing, there’s nothing quick as you know.
00:37:51
Speaker 5: And and yeah, we we we’re gutting this animal, going to corner it out, carry it out, and you know, we keep hearing this crunching in the snow, and it keeps getting louder and closer, and then all of a sudden you can hear breath and snorting a little bit, and you’re like, where is this coming from? And you know, we have headlamps on, and finally we like they’re close enough, which is probably within thirty yards. We you know, shine our headlamps up and you can see their eyes, just these handful bulls just staring at us, like what what is going on?
00:38:23
Speaker 4: You know what? And they’re curious, you know, they’re yeah, they’re just trying to figure out what the heck is going on. And you know, we we you know, stand up and wave at them and shout a little bit and doesn’t appear to do anything. So we go back to gutting and look back up and there are a few steps closer, and you’re like, okay, at this point, that’s too close. And so we actually had a sled to sled out some of the meat. And so we got the big sled up and stood it up in the air and started banging on it, making some odd noises for a very quiet prairie at night, you know, And and that was enough to make them go back to like fifty yards. But they they hung out with us the whole entire time until we got the bison out of there. Wow.
00:39:05
Speaker 1: So in Yellowstone, like every year seems like somebody gets charged by one or two or you know, several a year. Have you guys ever had an actual like dangerous encounter with them?
00:39:14
Speaker 2: Yet?
00:39:16
Speaker 4: No, not not with the public. We we’ve had real good luck. We do.
00:39:22
Speaker 3: We try to educate.
00:39:23
Speaker 4: Our guests as much as possible on on respecting those animals and their bubble, but then also showing people the signs of you know what, uh what what a bison’s temperature is, essentially and giving people the tools to be successful. And in general, I think because we harvest our bison every year, we harvest a portion of the herd, they’re a little weary of people on foot, and I think that helps.
00:39:51
Speaker 3: Us a little bit.
00:39:52
Speaker 4: They they’re they they look at every person with a little hesitation and and generally, if if you’re paying attention to those bison, they tell you, you know, when they’re comfortable and when they’re uncomfortable. And so I think because of that education and the guess we get like it’s not easy to come out to the prairie and hang out with our bison, Like you get some pretty hardy party folks. They’re experienced folks. And I think that also helps is the people we are getting our experience with wildlife. They understand, they read, they know what’s going on out there, and so I think that prevents a lot of issues.
00:40:30
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, so you brought up the harvest or the hunt. Why is a public hunting opportunity part of what you guys prioritize.
00:40:40
Speaker 2: And make happen out there.
00:40:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s you know, it’s it’s written into our management that you know, these that bison are although they are classified as livestock, they they historically have been wildlife and they’re one of you know, our big wildlife species in North America and the uh you know, Wildlife Management North America. It’s a it’s a public trust, speed you know, their public trust. And so we although we own these bison, they’re on American prey lands all that stuff, we still try to we want these animals to be viewed as though they are everybody’s you know, they they are part of the ecosystem.
00:41:27
Speaker 3: They are wild. They are not.
00:41:31
Speaker 4: At by definition they are classified as livestock, but at in practice they are a wild animal and historically were, and so we want to make sure everybody has that opportunity. So, yeah, we have that public harvest opportunity where you can put your name in the drawing and you can, you know, you can come out and have that chance to harvest a bison and experience that animal just like you would a deer, an elka pronghorn.
00:41:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, so so walk me through what that what that process looks like? How many tags you guys give out in a year? You know, I got I got to live at firsthand. But for those who have not had that unique chance, what does that look like? What’s a bison hunt? If you were going to describe a bison hunt or harvest out there, you know, for someone, how do you how do you paint that picture for them?
00:42:22
Speaker 4: Yeah? So we you know, we generally have between twenty and thirty opportunities a year for for the public, and we base that number one off of we want everyone to have a good experience, and so we everyone has a their own three day block of time to come out and there’s gonna be no one else chasing the bice and heard around at that time, so it’s kind of your playground at that point. And then so we we get our number. So our schedule is kind of limited by giving people that really good experience, you can only have so many you know, time periods every year. And then we also run modeling software on our population, on our herds, and so we know kind of what amount of animals we need to harvest, whether they’re younger, older bulls, cows, et cetera. And so our managers can say, we need to harvest this many mature bowls this year, and so we can put those into the drawing and people can have that opportunity. And so, yeah, we’ve we’ve grown from in twenty eighteen was our first public harvest. We I think we had six bison harvested that year, and we’ve grown it up to thirty on most years, and we get about five thousand applicants now for those thirty opportunities. So it’s become really really popular, and I think, you know, it’s experience wise. I try to tell people it’s like I compare it to a prairie l hunt, Like use the train, use the wind. Most days, those animals are a little wary of people on the ground because they they are hunted, they are harvested, and so yeah, it’s not as easy as some people make it out to be.
00:44:14
Speaker 2: Uh, it’s I agree with that.
00:44:17
Speaker 1: I would also say that the challenge definitely continues after the animals on the ground. The scale of these animals just blew my mind.
00:44:31
Speaker 2: You know.
00:44:31
Speaker 1: I was just super fortunate to get a chance to find a mature bowl and a little bachelor group of bulls betted in a perfect location. I was able to do this big swing, go down this other ridge line, sneak up the backside of it, get down wind of them, had a belly crawl up and over this ridge line through some cactus, got a bunch of nasty cactus spines in me.
00:44:55
Speaker 2: It was picture perfect.
00:44:56
Speaker 1: Otherwise, I got to lay down about eighty yards away from the big old bull and just wait till he finally stood up. And then when he did, got a good shot, got him down. And I knew he was big, and I knew all of these guys were big. But when you stand next to it in real life and see that when it’s on its side, the side of his belly is almost up to your chest, I mean, these things are gigantic. I remember thinking, this is like a dinosaur laying.
00:45:24
Speaker 2: Next to me.
00:45:28
Speaker 1: How you’ve been able to do this a bunch yourself? How have you thought about these hunts, How these hunts are harvest gone for you? How about the breakdown, what’s been your experience on butchering and moving these animals? I mean that was just a big thing for me.
00:45:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, no. I mean I’ve had the luxury of, you know, when doing stuff for work, being able to use equipment, which is spectacular. But with these public opportunities and the ones I’ve harvested personally, I don’t get to use this skiner a tractor. So I have packed out plenty of ice of meat on my back, on sleds, on game cards, through sage brush. You know, you you you experienced all this, but I like that is probably one of the number one things we get feedback on is like I didn’t realize.
00:46:21
Speaker 3: And these are.
00:46:22
Speaker 4: Experienced people that I’ve been to Africa, They’ve shot a ton of elk, you know, and people are like, wow, that was a lot of work, and and yeah it it is. I mean when you’re you know, you’re talking one quarter you know, with a bone in it can weigh well over two hundred pounds, Like how do you pack that thing out?
00:46:41
Speaker 1: You know? I feel like I can still feel up my shoulders, I think when we bring it up, Yeah, for sure, it’s crazy.
00:46:51
Speaker 4: You know.
00:46:52
Speaker 1: One thing I was just thinking for people listening, especially if somebody who maybe isn’t a hunter themselves, they might be thinking, well, these guys say they’re trying to recover bison. Why are they shooting them? To that person, why are we shooting these bison? Your big goal, one of your major missions and visions, is to restore buffalo back to the prairie at some scale resembling what it used to be in the past. Why did you let Mark Kenyon go out there and kill one of these buffalo that you’re trying to bring back and make numerous again? Help that part of it, I think it needs a little more clarification.
00:47:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s, uh, you know, at its most basic, it’s it’s a capacity question. It’s a management tool, and so it’s it is not easy or uncomplicated to keep expanding Byson acreage. And so you have federal processes, state processes. You have the money question. You know, how much does this cost to raise these bison? Things like that, and so there are fact that slow down the expansion of like the amount of acreage the bison have.
00:48:06
Speaker 3: And we’re actively working on increasing that.
00:48:08
Speaker 4: But in the meantime, we have a limited number of acres and we know how many bison we can have on those acres, and so this is one of the management tools we can use to control that number of bison on the landscape. And I think the bigger thing for me when I look at our management is how like, yes, I could go ship those bison tomorrow, Like we wouldn’t have to harvest these bison. But what a better way to create more advocates and create awareness and education for bison than letting people experience them. And that’s why it’s written into our management plan, like, yes, we’re going to harvest some of these animals.
00:48:51
Speaker 3: People.
00:48:52
Speaker 4: Historic byson have been hunted for tens of thousands of years, So why can’t we Like why shouldn’t we hunt them today? And so when when I can invite somebody out and you know, we draw their name and you know they may they probably have never had the opportunity to issue a bison, they may never again, and so we can we can kind of serve the greater you know, bison conservation story and education and awareness while fulfilling a management goal at the same time. So it’s kind of a two pronged management style there, which is it’s really fun to see, Like I just actually read through our uh we we send out a survey to everyone that has a bison harvest, and I read through the results. This morning, and it’s like, this is the greatest thing ever. I’ve never thought I would get to experience this. I’m so thankful for this opportunity. You know, that’s the feedback we get from almost one hundred percent of people. And so I know there are people coming out of this experience that didn’t you know, they maybe didn’t know a lot about buy some conservation or the specie or the experience you can have with bison, and now they do. And so those are advocates down the road.
00:50:07
Speaker 2: You know.
00:50:07
Speaker 1: Another thing I noticed while I was out there was that when I switched the like I toggled the switch in my mind and shifted from just watching buffalo or bison like I have my whole life right and in Yellowstone or Theodore Roosevelt National Park or different places like that. I’ve been around bison a lot. But when I switched into hunt mode, I all of a sudden saw things I never saw before. I noticed things that I had never noticed for I was. I was paying attention to these different things. It was a totally different experience. All of a sudden, all of these behaviors that I had ignored or kind of looked past, like, stood out as very important, like oh, this is what this tail raise means, or here’s how you know they’re reacting to my behavior in this situation. And it was just fascinating how different of an experience I had with these animals when I was able to actually be a hunter and go from just being an observer to truly a participant on the landscape with them, you know, participating in a thing like you just said that humans have been doing for tens of thousands of years. That was a powerful thing to live through. And then I love the fact that you have that, you know, written into your management plan and like a very concrete, durable way, like this is a big part of what we are and what we’re doing, what we plan to do.
00:51:34
Speaker 2: I’m thrilled to hear that.
00:51:37
Speaker 1: What’s the long term trajectory for your buffalo herd? You’re just shy of a thousand right now? I know you mentioned you guys have something like just shy of fifty thousand acres that they can currently graze on, and that’s a mixture right of owned acres and permitted acres of public.
00:51:57
Speaker 2: Land, right.
00:52:00
Speaker 1: What kind of herd size realistically do you think you can get to in ten years? Or twenty years and what’s kind of standing the way of reaching that goal.
00:52:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this, this is the challenging part of Byson management is how do you expand acreage? And so like, like you said, we’re a little over nine hundred right now, and we’ll be hovering for the next couple of years around that thousand, maybe a little more than a thousand number is the plan. And then we do have opportunity to expand to some more land, you know, looking out two, three, four years, and so we can you know, by a year five from today, you know, we can we can think about you know, approaching twelve hundred and thirteen fourteen hundred bison beyond that, that’s where the challenges come in is how do you expand onto more blm lands or state lands and and that’s the politics part of this, and so we’re actively working on that, but there are some significant challenges to that politically, and so I’m I’m hesitant to say where we could be in ten or twenty because of the challenges we’re facing right now. And so I would I would say, you know, we are going to continue to try to grow grow our herds. You know, we can get to that like thirteen fourteen hundred mark in five years beyond that, though, I think, you know, the politics have a bigger influence than I ever thought it would, and so you know.
00:53:37
Speaker 3: We’re working on it, and we’ll keep working on it.
00:53:40
Speaker 1: Okay, let’s just imagine though, twenty years from now. Let’s say the politics are right and it puts you guys in the position to be able to expand that acreage. Twenty years from now, best case scenario, my oldest son will be twenty eight. He’ll be an adult out there on his own, maybe living in Montana, wants to go on a bison hunt some day, likes old man did.
00:54:06
Speaker 2: What do you think that my son.
00:54:08
Speaker 1: Evert will possibly be able to see out there twenty years best case scenario, if things line up right, walk me through that imagined future.
00:54:18
Speaker 4: You know, I think if if it’s bison has livestock on the landscape, there will be more than now, and I think there will be more opportunity than now as far as harvesting. And so you know, when we start talking about herds that are growing to thirteen fourteen hundred animals, you know your rate of increase on that herd is going to be twenty to twenty five percent a year of animals that either need to be shipped or harvested. If there’s limited acreage and so like, opportunity is going to go up, I think even five years from now. But when you think about twenty years from now, if the land is there, there’s tons of opportunity for everyone. It’s going to be a whole different ballgame of you know, people being able to experience these animals on the landscape because they’re you know, the the reproductive potential of bison is extremely high. And so if we make the acreage available, like you said, if the politics are right, if the acreage is right, there’s gonna be a ton of opportunity.
00:55:19
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I’m going I’m gonna force you to pick a number. Oh, pick a number.
00:55:25
Speaker 1: Let’s just say you guys own six hundred thousand acres or own least six hundred thousand right now right own? In case yep, yeah, so you own you own in least six hundred thousand acres right now. Let’s just say to give us something to work with. Hypothetically, it is now politically and bureaucratically feasible to run bison on all of that in twenty years. What do you think what kind of hurd could be out there on that kind of scale.
00:55:54
Speaker 4: Uh, you know, if it’s politically possible, that doesn’t mean it’s financially possible. So I’m throw that caveat in there.
00:56:01
Speaker 3: There.
00:56:01
Speaker 4: There won’t be bison on every acre out there, you know. But you know, when even if we added to you know, two or three more management units that had bison on it, you know, you’re easily talking, you know, growing herds to three to five thousand animals pretty pretty rapidly.
00:56:20
Speaker 1: If if all the pieces are lined up, amazing? Could is there ever a world where something like the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge could have them running out there?
00:56:31
Speaker 2: Two?
00:56:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it would not be probably under American prairie management. That would be a different scenario where where bison are classified as live or as wildlife, you know, whether that’s by the state or federal government. You know, it’s in their management plan. They can have this large native grazer. But but again, the politics have to be right for that to happen.
00:56:57
Speaker 1: So Okay, someday maybe, So you keep on like randing on my parade with politics. So I’m going to ask you one more politics question. So, there’s been this recent news coming out of the BLM which has proposed revoking your guys’s grazing permits on the BLM lands that you currently graze bison on. Steve and Allison talked about this on the Mediator podcast a few months ago. So if anybody wants to get into the nitty gritty of that whole thing, they can. What I’m interested in is like the on the ground impact. Let’s say that stands, that holds, and you guys have your grazing permits revoked, you no longer can can run bison on you know, many of these lands. And I’ve been out there on your guys’ stuff. There’s lots of it’s all mixed right, there’s BLM and American praier Land and BLM and American praier Land, and there’s no fences out there. I would never know that I was on BLM land or American Prairie. It also feels like one giant grassland. The only way I knew it is I could look on my you know app and see those property lines. But if all of a sudden, you guys couldn’t run them.
00:58:07
Speaker 2: On that land.
00:58:09
Speaker 1: What does that mean for your buffalo program? What would you guys have to do, what would they be restricted to? You know, I’m just curious, like what the on the ground impacts of this political situation might be.
00:58:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does so, Yeah, though that change would necessitate some big management changes in the short term, you know, long term, I think, you know, we’re we’re still going to move forward. But in the short term, you know, we would have to consider building more fences in these places that are currently unfenced to get bison off of BLM land onto the onto the pieces of ground that are our private and so there there would be some shifting around with that. I think, you know, we we hope that we don’t plan on getting rid of any extra bison. We think because because we do own a lot of private land, we can move some bison around and kind of weather the storm. Essentially by just changing where they’re grazing. We may have to reduce populations a little bit, which would mean more harvest in the short term.
00:59:21
Speaker 3: But you know, realistically, it.
00:59:25
Speaker 4: Makes the crew on the ground is the one that’s gonna feel impacted. My team on the ground, our manager or texts are specialists, the ones that are out there with the bison every day. It’s going to make their jobs, you know, a little more difficult. It’s going to be more management of those bison, putting more bison on less acres, things like that for the short term while while everything plays out. So slight reduction maybe in population, but very different management. And it could change the harvest stuff because of the acres the bison are would have to go to where it might not be conducive to a good harvest experience, and so there could be reduced harvest in that way. I would hope that the harvest doesn’t have to get shut down, but I can’t guarantee that with these changes. Yeah.
01:00:19
Speaker 1: Well, thankfully all that stuff’s TBD as as that proposal works his way through the system. I’m sure there’ll be challenging. There are challenges already and and all that kind of stuff. But something you mentioned there, you know, shipping bison other places, you guys have been involved in helping restore Buffalo and other places other than just you know, your own footprint. What have you guys been doing on that front.
01:00:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s like one of my favorite parts of the job is that, you know, helping others get bison back on their landscapes or working with partners to supplement herds, things like that, And so yeah, we’ve shipped out roughly, I believe it’s just under seven hundred bison to other herds around the country, So Arizona, Washington, South Dakota, Montana, you name it, a lot of different places. And so we’re doing that for a number of reasons. A bunch of it is too tribal herds that are either they’re getting started and building their own herds so we can help build that population, or for genetics, So we have taken kind of a deep dive into the genetics of our bison, and we know where they came from. They’re highly diverse, and so they’re very desirable from a conservation standpoint or for production standpoint. They can add a lot of genetic diversity into other herds, and so yeah, that’s one of the big reasons we ship out. And so yeah, with those, you know, I think the seven hundred we’ve shipped out have went to fourteen different herds in nine different states.
01:02:00
Speaker 1: So yeah, and who knows how many how many more animals those seven hundred have created, right, that’s the riple effects they’ve got to be pretty amazing.
01:02:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
01:02:13
Speaker 2: What about other critters? We’ve talked a lot about buffalo.
01:02:17
Speaker 1: What are some of the other species that you are most excited about or have seen the most progress with over your time there. I know there’s there’s so many kind of charismatic animals that live out there that we’ve you know, come to know and love for a lot of us from Afar. But do you have any other success stories or hey, this is looking like we can make a difference here kind of stories that you’re excited about keeping an eye on or working on in the future.
01:02:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you know, there’s two more that come to mind, and they’re probably just about as controversial as bison. So I guess I have a thing for controversial species.
01:02:53
Speaker 3: Pretty dogs are one.
01:02:54
Speaker 4: Big area where not not a lot of people think of them, you know, as the super important thing, but in our ecosystem they’re they’re extremely important, and so we’ve we’ve done a lot of work to increase the size of our prairie dog towns, with the plan down the road being to reintroduce the endangered blackfooted ferret. And so that’s one one big thing where we’ve seen significant acreage increases in prairie dogs. And then the other one I.
01:03:23
Speaker 1: Hold on before you go any further, before you any further, I got to press on that a little bit. Uh, why are prairie dogs important? Like why is that something that we want to have back on the landscape? And then number two, why are blackfooted ferrets somehow tied to them? Just want to make sure people understand that.
01:03:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the importance of prairie dogs. So they they disrupt the landscape in a big way, but through their grazing. And so they’re grazing and clipping, so they’re eating vegetation, but they’re also clipping vegetation because they love to see. And so they in this sea of you know, sage brush and grasses that are you know, twelve to twenty four inches tall, they’re clipping these areas and they’re keeping them clipped kind of like a lawn. And so there are a lot of species that certain bird species that will only nest in that type of habitat. There’s also it changes the plant diversity on those prairie dog towns and so different plants at different densities, and so it might have benefits to certain insects or you know, there’s some like vetch is one that does pretty well in a prairie dog town. It’s pretty nutritious, and so other animals like prong horn will show up and eat that.
01:04:39
Speaker 3: And then prairie dogs are a.
01:04:40
Speaker 4: Food source for tons and tons of animals, So badgers, coyotes, hawks, eagles. You can just run down the list of things that eat prairie dogs. So and then in relation to ferrets, the other thing that eats prairie dogs, it’s they they their diet.
01:04:58
Speaker 3: It’s like about.
01:04:58
Speaker 4: Ninety five percent of their diet is prairie dogs. They’re pretty much exclusive to prairie dogs. And so without prairie dogs, blackfooted ferrets don’t survive.
01:05:07
Speaker 1: Okay, and they are endangered, missing from most of their home range. But there have been some reintroduction efforts in the general neighborhood, right.
01:05:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there’s in total, I believe there’s a little over four hundred ferrets in the wild in North America. The in our area, there used to be a population in the CMR refuge that that population is no longer present. The prairie dogs got plagued and therefore died, and the reintroduction wasn’t successful. But on the Fort Bell Knap Reservation they’ve been very successful. They have between forty and fifty ferrets out there right now on the reservation. So really cool conservation success there. Okay, so that’s exciting. Do you think that you would ever be able to restore them on ap lands? Yeah, we’re hopeful. I mean we’re headed in that direction. You need a minimum of fifteen hundred acres of prairie dogs like a in a complex within one kilometer of each other, and so it’s a significant amount of acreage. And so prairie dogs grow every year, it seems like. But they’re also susceptible to big weather swings and things like that and disease, and so it’s a constant balancing act of trying to keep them growing and alive and then you know, increasing that prairie dog acreage.
01:06:37
Speaker 3: So we’ll get there eventually.
01:06:38
Speaker 4: It just takes time. Okay.
01:06:40
Speaker 1: And what was the other controversial animal you’re excited about or interested in?
01:06:47
Speaker 4: Grizzly bears?
01:06:49
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, seeing.
01:06:52
Speaker 4: You know, I still have not witnessed one in the prairie ecosystem, and I have not found any tracks myself. But when I get videos and you know, pictures from guests or people who are out on the landscape and they find a set of tracks in the mud down by the river. You know, like that something that is that big and and you know has that kind of larger than life presence on the landscape. All of a sudden showing up in your you know, on one of our properties is just like an amazing, amazing thing to smile about.
01:07:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean, I think a lot of people think about grizzlies as a mountain animal, right, and that’s because today that’s primarily the only place we encounter them.
01:07:41
Speaker 2: But historically they were a prairie species.
01:07:43
Speaker 1: Right when Lewis and Clark were, you know, coming down the Missouri River, they were seeing grizzlies all along the way once they got into the Dakotas and eastern Montana and all of that. So this is their old home range, this is where they thrived in the past. And now they’re slowly filtered out of the Rocky mountain front heading east and they’re hitting this complex that you guys are a part of now and finding pretty welcome territory. What’s walk me through like the the exciting parts of that, and then what possible challenges might there be with that happening too, And how are you guys thinking about, you know, how your mission and vision includes them as they start naturally, you know, arriving.
01:08:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you know.
01:08:34
Speaker 4: A rancher that runs some cattle on the property that we have documented grizzlies over the past three years, he summed it up pretty well for me one time where he said, like, the landscape is still delicious, the flavor just changed a little bit. And yeah, and I love that quote because he, you know, he understands he has to change just for that bear to be there. And that’s what we’ve changed our management, you know, made things more bear friendly, bear safe, and you know we have staff that that’s what they work on. They go out to neighbors, they help prevent problems so those bears can be successful. So we work with those folks with those cattle to make sure that bear can be successful. We just that I believe three years ago was the first documented set of tracks we had. We’ve had photos since then and we just had about I think it was about two weeks ago we had confirmed tracks again in the mud and so they’re still bear around, which is really cool.
01:09:44
Speaker 1: I’m gonna be there in like a month and a half or something, So just make sure to remind me of what little zone this is. So I’m on my A game when we come paddling through or camping at night.
01:09:55
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, it definitely you know, canoeing the rivers and stuff that. You know, most people don’t carry bear spray in the prairie, but we definitely recommend it. Now.
01:10:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there is something.
01:10:10
Speaker 1: I recognize and I’ve you know, experienced, like there are challenges with sharing the landscape with an animal like that, of course, and you have to respect that. But at the same time, to your earlier point, it changes the entire aura of the place. When you’re out there. When you know an animal like that is also out there with you, you pay attention to things differently, you operate differently. There is a different energy in the air. There is an electricity present. I’ve often described it like all my senses are turned.
01:10:45
Speaker 2: Up to eleven.
01:10:46
Speaker 1: I am at my human best when I know I am walking through grizzly territory because you’ve got to be on your A game, right And so that sense of wildness that it’s bringing back to the prayer and bringing back to this swath of country that you guys are trying to help, you know, to some degree restore to its prior glory. Of course, that’s like an important part of that. Challenges acknowledged, but also benefits acknowledged. So it’s it’s a very interesting microcosm of the entire story of what you guys are trying to do, which is restore this landscape to some semblance of what it once was, so that the land is healthy again, so that people can experience what this used to be like, so people can have this connection with the natural world and with wildlife, so we can see wildlife with that scale as it used to be, so we can experience this vast, unfenced, you know, relatively unchanged, big wild grassland place that’s you know, the scale of something like that’s so incredible to experience. You know, I person can attest to that. But at the same time, you know, we talked about the politics earlier, right, I know, you guys have faced all sorts of challenges and trying to do that because it’s something different. Grizzlies are something different, Bison are something different. You guys running a program like this with conservation goals is different. Than some of the traditional ranching practices in the area. And so change raises, hackles, change raises question marks, change can be scary. Right, all of those things I think are probably true. But at the same time, I think that this is a really unique story of pursuing a dream with hope and tackling those challenges though in a in a common sense, practical way, like you guys haven’t just you know, from everything I’ve been able to see from afar, you guys haven’t just said, oh, we want to chase this conservation dream and if you dis.
01:13:00
Speaker 2: Agree with us, well screw you.
01:13:02
Speaker 4: Uh.
01:13:02
Speaker 1: You guys have seemed to take this very kind of let’s be a good neighbor approach to this, and in trying to work with folks who see things differently than you and trying to you know, open things to the public and.
01:13:14
Speaker 2: Bring the public I mean, not not tried it all.
01:13:16
Speaker 1: You guys have opened it almost entirely to the public and welcome people out there. And can you just give me a little bit more of a semblance of how you think about being a good neighbor, how you as you know, managing your landscape programs and sometimes having to think about this wider landscape beyond just your own land.
01:13:36
Speaker 2: How that, you know.
01:13:37
Speaker 1: Makes the community aspect of this, you know, maybe just as important as anything.
01:13:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, you know I think the it like that that challenging part of that social part of of change is kind of what what gives us like some huge opportunities here to do some really like fun and innovative things where you know, there there’s a lot of you know, there’s kind of a in the conservation world, you know, decades and decades ago, there was kind of a preservationist lock it up attitude towards conservation or towards wild places and not and that there couldn’t be this like kind of bringing together of landscapes where you have a working landscape and you have conservation and you have wildlife, and you have all these pieces they don’t have to be separate. And so that’s kind of how I go into like all of my conversations with neighbors and communities is like, Okay, what what do you need?
01:14:43
Speaker 3: You know, why are you here?
01:14:45
Speaker 4: What part of you know, management at American prairies you know scares you or.
01:14:54
Speaker 3: Are what are you concerned about?
01:14:56
Speaker 4: Like, let’s let’s throw all that stuff on the table and let’s just talk about it. Like my goal is always to be able to have coffee with everybody, and so if I can have a cup of coffee and we can, we can talk about those things. At the end of the day. Eighty percent probably or more of what we talk about we have in common, Like we all love grass we all love being outside, we all love wildlife. And so if you know we’re only twenty percent apart, that’s not that big a deal. We can figure that stuff out. And so I think, you know, being able to like show folks that like it’s not in this or that it’s a both. And yeah, it’s going to be complicated. There’s gonna be lots of hard conversations, but that’s when you have something that’s as special as these grasslands are, Like that’s what you have to do, Like, no matter what side of the table you’re on, like you want to come to it because that that place means something to you. It provides value to you. It’s it’s part of you. You you know at the end of the day, and so it’s it’s important to go into all those things with an open mind and understanding you know, what everyone what everyone needs and then you know, we can you know, build together rather than than a part.
01:16:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s uh. I think it’s a smart way to approach it. And I think that you know, you guys have done a good job on the other side of engaging other you know, possible constituents and other possible supporters, and that being you know, the outdoor community. Right, you guys have opened up the land to outdoor recreation. You have a lot of hunting opportunities and access in the area for someone listening who wants to get out there and who is a hunter, walk me through you know what’s you know.
01:16:50
Speaker 2: And actually not just as a hunter.
01:16:51
Speaker 1: Let’s let’s talk about all of the outdoor opportunities there on ap lands. How much of the land is accessible for hunting, what kinds of opportunities for that?
01:17:02
Speaker 2: But then also beyond that, give.
01:17:04
Speaker 1: Me like uh Scott Heidebrink’s American Prairie recommended tour what what’s what’s like the top things I should go do if I want to go see this place and experience it and feel and see and and kind of immerse myself in one of our last great vestiges of the great planes.
01:17:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, so favorites. So I I do hunt. I love to hunt, and there that is a great way to get out and experience things because you know, you’re you’re crawling around, you’re getting poked by prickly pair of cactuses like you and I both have. You know, you see all the little things on the ground when you’re when you’re out hunting.
01:17:44
Speaker 3: So that’s a great way.
01:17:44
Speaker 4: About half of our acreage, uh deded acres and then are are enrolled in block management or some other form of hunting program for various species depending on the year. But then you know, my I’m also kind of a bird nerd, and so like right now this time of year, May, May, June are spectacular if you if you like birds or you know, if you have a life list, it’s a great place to come for birds.
01:18:14
Speaker 3: We also just we’re in.
01:18:17
Speaker 4: The process of constructing a track for mountain biking and so that’ll be coming online soon, hopefully in the next you know, six.
01:18:27
Speaker 3: To nine months.
01:18:28
Speaker 4: So yeah, I just encourage everyone to get out and experience a prairie and whatever way you like, you can hike, bike, run, hunt, bird watch, you name it, you can do it on the prairie. So, uh, just get out there. All right, that’s it’s hard to argue with that. There’s no shorage of options.
01:18:46
Speaker 1: Uh if I were to start, get you guys have a number of big chunks of ground, but they’re they’re kind of disparate. There’s some in you know, the closer to the Missouri Breaks, there’s some you know, adjacent to the Charlie and Russell Refuge, or some kind of in between. Is there any one of those units that it’s like, hey, this is probably my favorite, or this one be the one to start or.
01:19:10
Speaker 2: Is that a hard question to put a finger on.
01:19:14
Speaker 3: It is a hard question to answer.
01:19:16
Speaker 4: I mean, I it is always fun to see bison on the landscape.
01:19:19
Speaker 3: So sun Prairie is a great.
01:19:22
Speaker 4: One, you know, where where you had to your bison harvest. Uh So I always tell people to go there first, just because it because of the bison. Outside of that, I would say anything in the Missouri Breaks, you know, So anything along the Missouri River is spectacular terrain. You can have everything from you know, flat bench tops for easy hiking to some of the roughest stuff you can get into that are going to make you really work. So that and and the breaks just provide so many different habitat varieties from bad lands to to those sage brush prairies, and so I like the breaks.
01:20:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can’t wait to get back from my return and explore that part of the area. Last kind of two part question, I guess it’s actually just just two just two questions, not really a two part two separate questions. What has this project taught you about hope?
01:20:27
Speaker 2: When it comes to conservation goals? I see a lot of hope.
01:20:31
Speaker 1: I see a lot of positive progress when I look at what you guys are trying to do, this big, audacious, crazy thing. You guys are trying to do in the face of a good amount of pushback and a lot of questions, a lot of you know, you know, misinformation, all this kind of stuff. But I still see that you guys seem to be chasing something that gives me hope. I’m curious what this has taught you about that?
01:20:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, you know, I would have said, you know, ten years ago when I started this, like I was a little crazy, like with the amount of hope I had, like this is something I wanted to see and oh it’s possible. So I would have said I was a little crazy, And I think now, like having folks like you, or just some some folks that camp at one of our campgrounds, or somebody that comes out bird watching or somebody that sees the bison and they’re like, this is really cool, Like I can totally see this like that.
01:21:29
Speaker 3: It’s really empowering because there.
01:21:31
Speaker 4: Are a lot of other people maybe that don’t have that hope or even awareness that like this is possible. And so like, yeah, seeing other people like that, that switch go off in their head of like, oh, this is really neat, this is really cool. I want to be part of this. I want to see this, you know in whatever way that Yeah, I love that.
01:21:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then I gotta believe that that is a first step to one of the most important probably mountains for you guys to climb, which is just getting that broader public support, right, yeah, exactly, yep, Yeah, all right, last thing I would like to leave us with here, and I’ve asked you to do this a few different times on specific issues or specific parts of this, but I just want to leave this conversation with a clear vision of the future fifty years from now. Now we’ve talked twenty years from now, when my son’s twenty eight but let’s zoom out to fifty years from now you and I are hopefully retired, and we’re looking back on what you’ve achieved at American Prairie and what your whole team has achieved there. What does that landscape look like in fifty years? What’s out there in twenty you know, seventy six?
01:22:52
Speaker 2: I guess it would be.
01:22:55
Speaker 1: What’s on the American Prairie? What’s that place like, what’s the what’s the draw for the rest of the world to come and see.
01:23:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, so.
01:23:05
Speaker 4: I think, you know, the grass is still going to be there, uh, because it’s it’s grass, it’s prairie, and everybody loves it. So so we got the habitat, you know. And then I think about like the way ranching is shifting and changing, like there’s gonna be less fences, and I also think there’s gonna be a ton more wildlife. But I also think there’s still going to be cattle operations operating on the landscape.
01:23:30
Speaker 3: Like it’s I I.
01:23:33
Speaker 4: Think it is going to be a like showcase of having working lands with tons of wildlife and tons of conservation all working together and so and then with people visiting it, seeing it, experiencing it, and.
01:23:51
Speaker 3: So I I really do.
01:23:53
Speaker 4: Think all that’s possible, especially in fifty years. That’s a long time. Uh, So I think I think we’ll get there. I think every buddy, everybody realizes how special it is out here, and and I think everything, like all those pieces are gonna come together. It’s just gonna take a little bit of time.
01:24:11
Speaker 2: All right.
01:24:12
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I’m gonna be gosh, I guess I’m gonna be almost ninety at that point. So hopefully the technology and the medicine will be good enough that I’m still gonna be kicking and slowly hiking.
01:24:26
Speaker 2: My way around.
01:24:27
Speaker 1: And I plan to visit and uh, follow up with you and let you know whether or not we reach that dream. And hopefull I’ll be giving you a pat in the back and saying thank you for making it all possible.
01:24:38
Speaker 3: That sounds good.
01:24:38
Speaker 2: So that’s that’s the plan. And uh and thank you Scott for this conversation.
01:24:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having us.
01:24:45
Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
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