Court: BLM can’t push American Prairie bison off grazing leases

Montana Free Press · Robert Chaney · September 4, 2026

Redefining the words “live” and “stock” is no way to justify excluding bison from federal livestock grazing lands, according to a U.S. District Court ruling.

A 29-page decision filed Friday granted American Prairie a temporary restraining order against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, blocking the agency’s effort to force the conservation group to remove more than 300 privately owned bison from three grazing allotments in Montana’s Phillips County by September 30. Federal and state officials had argued that bison were not “livestock” as defined by the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act, which controls ranching activity on federal lands.

“No statutory language or judicial precedent exists that requires a livestock operation to focus exclusively on production and entirely ignore conservation, range improvement, preservation or other values,” U.S. District Judge Brian Morris wrote in his opinion. “The Court struggles to see how BLM’s decisions both to require production-oriented operations, and to ignore the evidence demonstrating American Prairie’s production-oriented bison operation, are not ‘arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and otherwise not in accordance with the law.’”

American Prairie, formerly American Prairie Reserve, is one of the largest nature reserves in the United States and runs nearly 1,000 bison and 8,000 domestic cattle on its ranches along the Missouri River in north-central Montana. Since its founding in 2001 , the nonprofit has amassed more than 500,000 acres of deeded and leased ranchland.

“Bison belong on this landscape, and today’s ruling gives them a chance to stay,” Alison Fox, CEO of American Prairie, said in a September 4 press release . “For more than 20 years, our bison have grazed these lands under federal authorization and without grazing violations. The court recognized the concrete harm that removing them would cause, not just to our work, but to our Tribal partners and the broader effort to return bison to their native home.”

The legal battle flared when AP updated its grazing plan with requests to use seven federal allotments in 2019, and BLM issued a final decision approving the plan in 2022 during the Biden administration. The federal government defended that position from 2022 until the beginning of 2025, when Trump administration officials replaced their Biden counterparts and reversed course on January 16 by canceling the permits.

Montana Republican state officials had also fought AP’s expansion. Attorney General Austin Knudsen started challenging the BLM permits in 2021. In May, he applauded BLM’s cancellation of AP’s permits, saying it was necessary to “protect the hardworking livestock and ranching communities in that region and keep the elitists from destroying their livelihood.”

But Morris found that both BLM and Montana law consider AP’s bison as livestock, subject to state disease and sanitation laws, federal grazing regulations and range improvement requirements, and per capita fees of $6.32 per animal. “BLM concluded it no longer had authority under [the Taylor Grazing Act] to issue grazing permits to American Prairie,” Morris wrote. “BLM determined that American Prairie’s bison failed to satisfy the agency’s new interpretation of the word ‘livestock.’”

Morris also noted BLM initially authorized AP to use federal grazing allotments two decades ago, and that other bison owners use federal grazing allotments in Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

BLM and Montana state offices did not return requests for comment on Friday about the court decision.

AP argued the BLM final decision would force it to cull or transfer about 300 of its bison by September 30. Finding and preparing new pasture and fencing for those animals would cost an estimated $405,000, AP said, while getting rid of the animals would cost $739,800 plus $184,950 a year in lost calves.

“The basic premise behind [federal and Montana] arguments is that all livestock owners who want to graze their herd on BLM lands must comply with all traditional livestock practices and most avoid restorative or otherwise not entirely maximum-profit-oriented motives,” Morris countered. “This premise remains unsupported by statute or case law.”

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