A Judge Keeps American Prairie Bison on Public Land

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris on September 4 blocked the Bureau of Land Management from pushing more than 900 bison off three Montana public grazing allotments. The order is a preliminary injunction, not a final ruling, and it froze a removal the agency had set for September 30.

The fight is not over torn-up grass. American Prairie has held bison permits since 2005 and says it has no grazing violations. The BLM’s 2026 move recast those animals as wildlife because the herd is managed for restoration, even as the same bureau still permits 8,831 other bison as domestic livestock.

Three Allotments Keep Their Bison, for Now

The injunction blocked the removal order on three allotments in Phillips County where the nonprofit’s bison actually graze: Telegraph Creek, Box Elder and Whiterock. Morris found a likelihood of success on the merits and that pulling the animals would cause concrete harm. He did not extend that freeze to three other tracts named in the motion, Flat Creek, French Coulee and Garey Coulee, because bison are not on those acres now.

THE SIX ALLOTMENTS IN COURT

The BLM’s May 8 decision had gone further than those six names. It sought to rescind grazing permits for seven allotments in Phillips County, issue cattle-only paper where it could, and clear bison from the public acres by September 30. The bureau said it was not evicting bison from Montana and that the herd could still occupy American Prairie’s private land. Alison Fox, the nonprofit’s CEO, said the court saw harm beyond a map of leases, including to tribal partners and to the work of putting bison back on their native home.

BLM Approved This Herd, Then Called It Wildlife

In 2022 the BLM signed off on American Prairie’s bison grazing plan. On January 16, 2026, after a remand from the Secretary of the Interior, the bureau reversed that reading of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. The new test was “production-oriented” livestock, animals used in an operation that turns out meat, milk, fiber or other products. Acting BLM Director Bill Groffy said public lands are central to ranching and livestock communities. The May 8 decision concluded American Prairie manages bison as wildlife for restoration, not as that kind of livestock.

Morris was not persuaded. In the 29-page order he wrote that the Taylor Grazing Act does not force a livestock operation to chase production and ignore conservation, range improvement or preservation. He also wrote that even if the new test were the law, the file showed American Prairie meeting it. Nearly half the bison, he found, had been sourced for meat or sent to other operators for meat production or other valid uses.

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.

Brian Morris, U.S. District Judge, September 4 order

Mary Cochenour, attorney for American Prairie, said the ruling is what the group had argued from the start: the 1934 law does not require a grazing operation to ignore restoration. Jenny Harbine, managing attorney in Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies office, which filed for the injunction with Cochenour Law in August, said forcing more than 900 bison off federal land was illegal. Montana classifies these bison as livestock, except for animals in Yellowstone and on tribal land, and collects an annual per-head tax on them.

HOW THE PERMITS GOT PULLED

1. October 2005: Sixteen bison from Wind Cave National Park arrive; BLM bison grazing permits begin the same year.
2. 2022: BLM issues a final decision approving American Prairie’s bison grazing plan.
3. January 16, 2026: BLM reverses that 2022 decision after a Interior remand.
4. April 20, 2026: The Montana State Land Board votes to start rulemaking that would favor production-oriented operators on state trust land.
5. May 8, 2026: BLM issues its final decision and sets a September 30 removal date.
6. May 12, 2026: Interior publishes a proposed rewrite of grazing rules for BLM range.
7. September 4, 2026: Morris freezes removal on the three occupied allotments; the lawsuit continues.

The bureau’s own earlier work sits in that file. Earthjustice noted that the BLM had documented improved rangeland productivity and riparian health under bison grazing on these lands. Morris wrote that he struggled to see how imposing a production test and then ignoring evidence of a production-oriented operation could be consistent with federal law.

Sun Prairie Is Still Bison Country

Travelers who come for the herd are not a footnote in a permit fight. American Prairie says visitors can hike, camp, hunt and explore more than 600,000 acres of publicly accessible prairie, a land base the group compares with a large national park in the Lower 48. In 2024 it hosted over 6,600 overnight guests at huts and campgrounds and 5,000 visitors at the National Discovery Center in Lewistown. Two herds totaling more than 900 animals now roam almost 50,000 acres on the White Rock and Sun Prairie properties, the same country the injunction just kept in play.

The viewing is not a zoo loop. The group’s trip page points people to Sun Prairie, where the bison herd is most visible, a remote unit about 2.5 hours from Lewistown with the last 50 miles on gravel, limited cell service, and a high-clearance recommendation after rain. Buffalo Camp there runs May through October with tent sites, RV hookups and pit toilets. Early morning and evening are the hours the group flags for auto-touring property roads. The Discovery Center in downtown Lewistown is the staging room: maps, current road conditions, a live black-footed ferret, and the Ken Burns theater before the gravel starts.

HOW A VISIT IS SET UP

• Sun Prairie: Remote bison country, gravel access, May through October, tent and RV sites at Buffalo Camp.
• Mars Vista and the PN: Cabins, tipis, RV hookups, tent camping, and equipped huts on other units of the preserve.
• Dispersed camping: Tents on deeded land at least a quarter mile off any road, three-night limit at one site, no fires.
• Hunting access: 82,000 acres enrolled in Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Block Management, among the state’s larger private-land openings.

The vast majority of the ground is open year-round without a permission slip, and the group says it welcomes people to cross deeded land to reach adjacent public acres. That is the visitor product the May 8 order would have changed without touching a trailhead sign: the animals people drive those last 50 miles to see would have been pulled off the public grass under the leases.

What a September 30 Removal Would Have Cost

Had Morris not stepped in, American Prairie said it would have had to take hundreds of bison off the affected public lands by September 30. Relocated animals would have needed hay. The group put that supplemental feed at about $70,000. Beth Saboe, American Prairie’s director of public relations, said in May the worst case was getting rid of hundreds of animals. The organization cancelled its 2026 public bison harvest while that uncertainty sat on the herd, a program that in other years let drawn hunters take animals on Sun Prairie.

COSTS ALREADY ON THE LEDGER

• Animals moving: Hundreds would have left the public allotments by September 30 if the order had stood.
• Winter feed: About $70,000 in hay for bison pushed onto other ground.
• The hunt: The 2026 public harvest is cancelled; American Prairie has not put it back on the calendar since the injunction.
• Open tracts: Flat Creek, French Coulee and Garey Coulee still have no bison protection from this order.

Saboe has described bison as the ungulates that evolved with this prairie, a species whose grazing, movement and wallows rearrange grass and water in ways cattle usually do not. Bison tend to keep moving, covering a couple of miles a day, instead of pounding one corner of a pasture. If the public leases are lost for good, the group could stock those acres with cattle. That is the replacement the BLM’s cattle-only permits already sketched in May.

Tribal Herds Already Depend on These Animals

Morris called American Prairie’s account of harm to Indigenous partners compelling and found the balance of equities tipped toward the group. The preserve says it has sent more than 600 bison to tribal communities and other operations, animals used for cultural connection, food programs and breeding stock. It also leases grass to 25 local ranchers and contracts Fort Belknap guides to interpret the prairie for visitors. The Coalition of Large Tribes protested the BLM decision. In a January 2026 letter to the Interior secretary, J. Garret Renville, chairman of the coalition and of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation, wrote that American Prairie had supplied animals to tribes growing their own herds and that its methods were largely indistinguishable from tribal herd managers.

Bison belong on this landscape, and today’s ruling gives them a chance to stay. 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.

Alison Fox, CEO, American Prairie, September 4 statement

The BLM’s May 8 release said the decision does not touch treaty rights, tribal grazing authorizations or tribal bison herds, and it named ongoing work with the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ National Bison Range. That assurance is about other programs. It does not replace the 600-plus animals this herd has already moved into tribal programs, which is the pipeline the court treated as real harm.

Cattle-Only Permits Behind the Same Gates

The injunction keeps bison on three allotments. It does not change who else uses this range. American Prairie still leases grass to 25 local ranchers, and the BLM said in May it would issue cattle-only permits where appropriate. Gov. Greg Gianforte has argued that Taylor Grazing Act permits are for domestic livestock production, not for building a nature reserve that, in his words, displaces families who have stewarded the land for generations. The Montana Stockgrowers Association backed the permit revocation and argued in the case, with the State of Montana, that a 2000 Supreme Court decision on conservation use should keep this herd off the grass. Morris found those attempts to distinguish that precedent unpersuasive at this stage.

Cattle remain the default animal on BLM paper. The 2026 federal grazing fee is $1.69 per animal unit month, the charge for one cow and calf on public land for 30 days, up from $1.35 in 2025. Bison in Montana, outside Yellowstone and tribal land, are already taxed and fenced as livestock. The agency’s complaint was not that these bison skipped the livestock rules. It was that restoration was the point of the herd, even after Morris found meat moving through the same operation.

Conservation Grazing Is Still on the Clock

The September 4 order holds the line only while the lawsuit runs. Four days after the May 8 eviction decision, Interior published a proposed grazing rule for about 155 million acres of BLM land. The text includes a proposed definition of production-oriented livestock that matches the test used against American Prairie: animals used in an operation that provides meat, milk, fiber or other products, plus horses used to work those herds. American Prairie says that rewrite could shut conservation bison, and other native grazers, out of public allotments far beyond Phillips County. The BLM still lists 8,831 bison on federal grazing permits as domestic livestock. This herd was the one told it no longer fit.

Sun Prairie’s roads are still open. The bison that draw people up the last 50 miles of gravel are still on Telegraph Creek, Box Elder and Whiterock. The 2026 public harvest is not coming back this season, three allotments still have no protection, and the merits case will decide whether those animals are livestock under a 1934 statute or wildlife the BLM can order off the public grass.