A photo of buffaloes with a July 30 article about land use on the Northern Plains was incompletely credited. The photo was by Valerie Bruchon for the American Prairie Foundation.
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In the New West, Do They Want Buffalo to Roam?
"It is cheaper and faster," she said.
After six years and without spending tens of millions of dollars on land, Poole said, the Nature Conservancy has changed the conservation practices of 18 private ranchers on 350,000 acres.
  For the first time in more than a century, buffalo calves were born in eastern Montana on land the American Prairie Foundation owns. (Valerie Bruchon -- American Prairie Foundation And World Wildlife Fund) |
Veseth and other ranchers have swallowed their distaste for mixing prairie dogs and cattle to become champions of the Nature Conservancy approach. "This is really the way to go," Veseth said. "Without creating conflicts, the Nature Conservancy is taking advantage of a low-cost workforce that loves it here."
Big schemes to restore the Great Plains -- called the "buffalo commons" and the "big open" -- were floated in the 1980s.
The proposals, which advocated the phasing out of ranching in favor of wildlife and tourism, stirred up intense local opposition and a strong political backlash.
But two decades later, with the local economy continuing to implode and the aging population of eastern Montana continuing to leave the land, the Prairie Foundation has yet to encounter strong headwinds from state political leaders.
Local ranchers say that is only because the foundation has so far placed just 19 buffalo on its land, and that those beasts have yet to break out from behind electric fences. "The grumbles will come when the bison escape and start showing up on other people's land," said Troy Blunt, a rancher and Phillips County commissioner.
Knowing that its no-cow goals rankle the ranching community, the Prairie Foundation is trying to mollify county businessmen by doing its banking in Malta and buying tractors, pickups and construction supplies from local merchants. To a degree, it is working.
"They are very good customers and very good people to visit with," said Ron Scott, longtime president of First State Bank in Malta. "They have been more than fair in their land deals."
But Scott doubts that the foundation, once it buys what it needs, can match the economic contribution of ranching. "When they take land out of production and run buffalo, it will hurt," he said.
The Prairie Foundation disagrees. It points to a number of economic studies showing that Western communities with well-managed access to wild lands have substantially higher incomes and job growth than those without.
Still, even ranchers who have sold their land to the foundation are doubtful about its goals.
"It won't work because this is the 21st century, not the 1800s," said Dan Weiderreck, who with his brother Ross sold the family ranch to the foundation for $2 million in 2003. "Tourists aren't going to come here."
The prospect that wolves and grizzly bears might return one day particularly enrages ranchers, whose grandparents had to fight such animals off. While it is a long-term goal of the Prairie Foundation to bring these predators back, the group insists they will not return until there is widespread public acceptance.
Weiderreck, who lives in Malta, said that acceptance will never come. As long as ranchers live in the county, he said, reintroduced wolves and grizzly bears would disappear.
"Shoot, shovel and shut up," he said. "That's what would happen."
