Grasslands on a Grand Scale
by Jeffrey P. Cohn
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On a cold, windy November day last year, Bill Eichbaum stared in awe as 16 American bison (Bison bison) that had been confined in a 100-acre outdoor pen for six weeks noticed an open gate in their paddocks. They ambled slowly out, led by a dominant bull, and entered the seemingly endless prairie of northeastern Montana. Suddenly, like wind whipping through tall grasses, they bolted across the prairie for a few minutes, then settled down to graze as if nothing had happened. Eichbaum and other spectators watched and cheered, some teary eyed.

A new reserve in Montana is restoring a grassland ecosystem on former ranch land. (APF/Deane Sommerville)

The bison were released into the wild in a part of the northern Great Plains that had not seen the shaggy animals running free in more than a century. "Maybe I'm a bit of a romantic at heart, but it really moved me," says Eichbaum, the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) vice president for endangered species. "It was really inspiring. We were all a bit giddy."

The scene unfolded on a ranch in Phillips County, Montana, just north of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, which straddles the Missouri River. The ranch is part of what the WWF and its partner, the American Prairie Foundation (APF), hope will become a grasslands reserve encompassing several million acres of mixed-grass prairies, riparian woodlands, and ephemeral streams. "We want to piece together public and private land to bring back the grandeur of the Great Plains," says Curtis Freese, the WWF's program director for the northern Great Plains.

Other conservation groups have purchased large tracts of land for wildlife reserves, but none on the scale that the WWF and the APF (which was created by but is now independent of the WWF) have proposed for their grassland reserve in Montana. The National Audubon Society, for example, owns the 26,000-acre Paul J. Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary in Louisiana and others around the country, and The Nature Conservancy has the 60,000-acre Matador Ranch in Montana and about 1,400 other reserves throughout the United States.

The WWF and the APF see bison as a first step in their plans to recreate grasslands in northeastern Montana, and "to provide visitors a rich visual experience over a large landscape," Eichbaum says. The 16 bison released in November 2005 came from a herd at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota; unlike many bison in the West, which are interbred with cattle on ranches to make them easier to handle and better meat producers, they are genetically pure. They're also free of brucellosis, a disease that among cattle causes calves to be stillborn.

In addition to bison, the landscape once included elk, mule deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and prairie dogs, as well as pumas, wolves, grizzly bears, swift foxes, and black-footed ferrets. Most of these species were eliminated from the area or significantly reduced in numbers after white settlers began to farm and ranch there in the 19th century. Bighorn sheep, elk, and pronghorn have been reintroduced to portions of northeastern Montana, while pumas have returned on their own. Some of the others may, like bison, need help coming back.

Sean Gerrity, the APF's president, says "We are very excited to have bison back. They are a symbol of the West, but they are just one species. We want to restore the whole community of plains plants and animals."

Big Plans for the Great Plains
The idea of creating a grasslands reserve in the northern Great Plains stems, in part, from two controversial proposals made in the 1980s. Frank Popper, a professor of urban studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and his wife Deborah Popper, a geography professor at the City University of New York on Staten Island, wanted to establish "buffalo commons." Around the same time, Robert Scott, a retired engineer and rare book dealer with a longstanding interest in the Great Plains, wanted to create what he called the "big open."

Both proposals advocated phasing out ranches—which had long dominated prairie landscapes, the economies of prairie towns, and the politics of western states—and replacing them with an economy based on wildlife and ecotourism. "Farming has never been very profitable and ranching has economic problems," says Frank Popper. Not only are ranching and farming not profitable on the northeastern Montana plains, but Scott notes they are heavily subsidized by government agencies as well.

The American Prairie Foundation hopes bison and other grassland species will flourish on its Montana reserve. (Jack Dykinga/USDA ARS)

"It's always been boom and bust on the Great Plains," Popper adds. "We're in a long bust period that began about 1920." He points to the area's lack of rainfall (12 inches or less on average in northeastern Montana), falling beef prices as people eat less red meat, a declining and aging population, depressed land values, and a stagnant economy in northern and northeastern Montana. "Plan A no longer works," Popper states. "Montana needs to find an alternative."

Census and other data seem to support the Poppers' argument, according to a 2004 report of the Northern Plains Conservation Network, a coalition of environmental groups. Take population. As young people leave Montana ranches, farms, and small towns for better economic and professional opportunities elsewhere, the average age of the region's ranchers and farmers now stands at 60. Not surprisingly, the numbers of most demographic groups have declined. Especially hard-hit are counties that average fewer than two people per square mile, those not adjacent to population centers like Bozeman or Billings, and those that lack natural amenities such as parks and wilderness areas that attract tourists.

Nevertheless, the "buffalo commons" and "big open" concepts ran into opposition in Montana and elsewhere in the West. The ideas "were too revolutionary," says Scott. Some local residents worried that the federal government would use the proposals to create new parks and reserves, and institute new rules and regulations telling ranchers and other landowners how to run their lands. As a result of significant opposition, nothing happened for nearly two decades.

The WWF's interest in the northern Great Plains began in the late 1990s, when it decided to shift some of its focus to North American ecosystems. In 2000, the WWF and 16 other conservation groups formed the Northern Plains Conservation Network, which identified priority areas where biodiversity was most in need of conservation.

"We recognized the need to think big," Freese says, arguing that only large reserves can truly protect intact ecosystems. Toward that end, the WWF and the APF envision a grasslands reserve that might grow to three to four million acres over the next 20 or 30 years. It would include the 1.1-million-acre Charles M. Russell NWR plus other federal- and state-owned lands. The WWF will provide scientific and technical support while the APF will buy, own, and manage the land. To date, the APF has bought five ranches totaling 9,000 acres, with grazing rights on public lands for more than 22,000 acres. Freese estimates it could cost more than $300 million to accumulate several hundred thousand acres. Although no fundraising effort has yet been launched, the APF has raised about $9 million from donations, grants, and loans.

Nowhere else in the United States is conservation more possible and more essential than in northeastern Montana's plains, says Jonathan Proctor, the southern Rockies and Great Plains representative of Defenders of Wildlife. There are no large national parks or monuments protecting the Great Plains (the Charles M. Russell NWR encompasses prairies only on its fringes) and only 1.5 percent of U.S. grasslands are publicly owned. Most of those are in national grasslands that feature cattle, not bison. "The plains are the least represented ecosystem in our national parks," Proctor adds.

A Native Landscape
Montana's prairies are large, diverse, and mostly unplowed, especially on APF ranches. All of the original native plant species and mixture of plants thought to be on the northern Great Plains before settlement are still present on the ranches today. "We have an intact, native prairie with few exotic species," Freese says. "We don't need to do a lot of restoration" to accommodate the return of bison and other plains animals.

The riparian woodlands along the APF ranches' ephemeral streams are an exception. Decades of cattle grazing and diversions to irrigate farm fields and create livestock ponds have lowered groundwater levels, altered stream flows, and eliminated the occasional floods that supported diverse habitats for plants and wildlife, says Martha Kauffman, a hydrologist and president of Oxbow, Inc., a Bozeman water research company. "Those streams were damaged and old," she adds, thus reducing the number and diversity of woody plants in riparian areas.

To address those problems, the WWF and the APF hired Kauffman to lead a restoration project that began in 2005. Dikes were torn down, berms modified, and culverts added to help restore stream flow on the APF's ranches and the Charles M. Russell NWR. In addition, more than 3,000 cottonwood, willow, and box elder trees were planted along with chokeberry, a tree-like shrub. More dikes and berms will be altered and more trees and shrubs planted this year. Kauffman hopes that these efforts will result in more water flowing in the streams, which could attract more deer, birds, fish, and eventually even beaver again.

The Montana reserve provides habitat for great horned owls and other birds.

Beyond the riparian areas, other researchers have been surveying the ranches' plants and animals. Elizabeth Robinson, director of Wild Things Unlimited, a Bozeman-based education and research firm, spent the better part of two months in 2005 looking for birds. She found 123 species, more than she had expected. Most used riparian woodlands at least partially for nesting, food gathering, or simply resting while migrating through. In places where cattle have overgrazed riparian areas, Robinson found the number of bird species dropped by up to 85 percent. "The higher the plant diversity, the greater the bird diversity," she says.

Among the birds Robinson found on the ranches were black-billed cuckoos, yellow-breasted chats, and black terns, species usually found farther east. The list also included the mountain plover, a bird of special concern in Montana, and the long-billed curlew, a bird found elsewhere along lakes and marshes that in Montana nests in tall prairie grasses. Golden eagles, ferruginous and red-tailed hawks, merlins, prairie falcons, and great-horned and burrowing owls patrol the skies. "Birders would find this a fascinating area," Robinson says. "It's so open and so remote."

Finding the ranches' different birds was difficult and sometimes downright dangerous. Robinson had to drive for miles over dirt and gravel roads, which often became impassable after rain- or snowstorms, even for four-wheel-drive vehicles. Several times she found herself alone on the prairie with lightning and hail approaching from the west. "I kept thinking, 'Okay, where will I be safe?' but there was no place to hide," Robinson says. Fortunately, most storms passed quickly.

Matt Lavin's surveys of the plant communities on the APF's ranches lacked such adventure. Lavin, a professor of botany at Montana State University in Bozeman, and his graduate student Tom Seipel found as great a diversity of plants as Lavin and other researchers have reported elsewhere in Montana. He identified 128 species on 24 test plots, with grass species outnumbering other plant species. Lavin used that number to estimate a total of 337 species based on his and others' work. "Those are as good numbers as you can get out on Montana's sagebrush prairies," he says.

More important, perhaps, Lavin found few exotic or other introduced plants. Less than one percent of the ground cover was taken up by invasive species. Even the weeds Lavin found growing along roadsides were common species native to Montana's grasslands. The most common exotic was sweet clover, which was introduced to feed cattle. Today, with cattle removed from the ranches, it feeds grouse.

Lavin also found that the ranches' grasslands are characterized more by sagebrush and other shrubs than by grasses. The area represents more of an intermediate zone between the tall-grass prairies to the east and mountain woodlands to the west, he says. "We have to know what's out there to be able to know what should be there and what we need to restore," Lavin adds.

On one memorable occasion, Lavin looked up from the plants he was examining to see a group of male pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) approaching. The pronghorn, which are often called antelopes even though they are not closely related to the antelopes of Africa and Asia, slowly walked toward Lavin, grunting and snorting as if warning a dangerous predator to go away. "As soon as they found out I was a human, they left," a laughing Lavin reports. "It was a classic western scene."

Controversy and Compromise
The WWF's and the APF's plans to create a grasslands reserve in northeastern Montana are not the only ones designed to restore the Great Plains. In Nebraska, for example, the Grassland Foundation is advocating the preservation of ten percent of the state's remaining unplowed prairies. The land might be owned by conservation groups, local or state government agencies, private landowners, or private-public partnerships, says Tyler Sutton, the Grassland Foundation's president.

In particular, Sutton hopes that landowners recognize that wilderness areas on or adjacent to their properties can attract visitors and add income. "It's already happening," Sutton says. A lot of ranchers and farmers in Nebraska sell hunting permits, promote bird-watching trips, or operate bed-and-breakfast facilities on their land. Sutton notes that the idea is also catching elsewhere in the west. For instance, a 5,000-acre Kansas Audubon Society reserve combines wildlife conservation with historic preservation near Bassett, Nebraska.

Sutton warns, however, that efforts to preserve the Great Plains will likely be as controversial in Nebraska as they have been in Montana and other western states. "Many people here fear a massive federal acquisition of land," he says. "It's a very sensitive issue around here. That's why we want to see a local initiative."

It's sensitive in northeastern Montana as well, where some residents and local politicians fear the loss of a ranching lifestyle that has for so long permeated Montana and much of the West, says Randy Shores, a machine-shop owner who sold his family's 2,000-acre ranch to the APF in 2005. On the other hand, Shores adds, ranching in Montana is not what it once was. "It takes a large ranch out here to be profitable," he says. "The land here is not worth much. There are bigger and bigger ranches with fewer ranchers. We wanted to keep some land ungrazed by cattle. That leaves more room for birds and deer."

Preserving the area's wildlife and its ranching lifestyle will be challenging. (Jack Dykinga/USDA ARS)

Local fear of too much government intervention may be unfounded. Neither the WWF or the APF are government agencies such as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) or the National Park Service. "[The WWF and the APF] can be seen as unaligned with the government and refuge," says Barron Crawford, a USFWS project leader who oversees the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes) recovery program at the Charles M. Russell NWR. The WWF and the APF have to obey the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws and regulations, but they cannot impose their own rules on neighboring landowners.

To make sure local residents understand the distinction, Freese, Gerrity, and other WWF and APF staffers attend county council sessions, meet with local officials, and listen to the local advisory committee they formed. "We spent a lot of time talking and listening over coffee and cookies," Freese says. "We also respect our neighbors' concerns," he says, by erecting fences to keep bison on APF lands and radiocollaring them to ensure that wayward bison will be found quickly and brought back.

Further, the APF hired a local rancher to manage its ranches and local workers to build fences and undertake other maintenance projects, Gerrity says. The conservation groups buy food, supplies, and insurance as well as bank locally. They continue to provide hunters access to their lands. And they are helping ranchers and other local residents organize recreational outings to APF ranches.

Perhaps most important, the APF buys land only from willing sellers. Many of the ranches the APF bought were on the market for months with few, if any, interested buyers. In some cases, the only other potential buyers are people who want to develop the land or turn the ranches into private hunting reserves that exclude the public. Other potential buyers might be farmers who will plow the land and change the area's ranching lifestyle. The bottom line for most westerners, Shores says, is "It's [the APF's] land, they can do whatever they want with it."

Eventually, Eichbaum, Freese, and Gerrity hope that the grasslands reserve attracts visitors from nearby Montana towns as well as faraway places. "We will continue to provide public access to the land" for hunting, bird-watching, hiking, camping, and horseback-riding, says Sarah Myers, the APF's director of marketing. "We don't want to be just a museum piece that no one sees."

So far, the reserve averages about 250 visitors a year, without coordinated marketing or advertising campaigns, Gerrity says. He hopes one day it will attract thousands each year. To draw visitors and preserve a part of the Great Plains' social history, the APF has also restored a one-room house on the ranch that for decades served as the area's only school.

In the end, WWF and APF staffers harbor no illusions. To recreate a functioning prairie in northeastern Montana that both attracts tourists and maintains the West's ranching lifestyle, while also supporting the local economy and protecting wildlife and wild places, is a daunting task for conservation groups. "It's a challenge," admits Eichbaum. "We're deliberately going slowly to make sure we do this right."

—Jeffrey P. Cohn is a freelance writer who lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, and specializes in conservation subjects.

ZooGoer 35(4) 2006. Copyright 2006 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.



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