In a remote corner of the short grass prairie plains south of Malta, something new and something ancient is recreating itself. It’s not simple and not universally supported, but through the efforts of American Prairie – previously known as the American Prairie Foundation – bison and other foundational species of Montana’s short-grass prairie have returned to what some have described as the American Serengeti.

Last week staff and veterinarians working for American Prairie gathered for an annual fall handling. Roughly a third of the foundation’s 900 plus bison are herded together to be inspected and tested for disease and genetic sampling.

“The goals for this handling are to screen 50 bison for disease, collect 25 blood samples for trace mineral testing, deploy 24 GPS (Global Positioning System) ear tags for monitoring and to collect hair samples for genetic analysis,” explained American Prairie Public Relations Manager Beth Saboe.

The handling’s other purpose was to cut out 100 young bison for shipment to other conservation herds managed by the Blackfeet and Rocky Boy native American tribes in Montana, as well as the One Spirit tribe in South Dakota.

“We have four gentlemen here today from the Rocky Boy’s Reservation,” said Corrine Williamson, Senior Outreach Manager for American Prairie. Rocky Boy established a herd on the reservation three years ago and we that started with bison gifted from American Prairie and from the Confederated Salish-Kootenai tribes, and we’re going to send them some more bison this year. We’re picking animals specifically for Rocky Boys, but some groups want just a general sampling. We want to keep good ratios in our age and sex classes.” 

American Prairie’s operations have ignited much controversy in Montana. Founded in 2001 as an offshoot of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the American Prairie concept was to purchase as much intact shortgrass prairie habitat adjacent to the federally managed C. M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR) and Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument as possible.

Combined the CMR and Breaks Monument encompass nearly 1.3 million acres, making them the largest short-grass prairie habitat still in existence in North America. American Prairie’s plan was to add to that total, picking up ranchlands on the periphery whenever they became available on the open market. The goal was not only to obtain land, but to manage it with the objective of reintroducing foundational plains species like the American bison, prairie dog, and beaver.

That angered a lot of local communities, whose citizens argued that American Prairie was anti-ranching, driving up property values, and introducing species that could infect livestock with catastrophic diseases like brucellosis. American Prairie was seen as an outsider, a conservation organization funded by east coast millionaires with little concern or understanding of the communities and values of northcentral Montana.

That was 20 years ago. While some of the acrimony remains, American Prairie has worked to repair local relationships. From more humble beginnings it has now amassed more than 126,000 deeded acres that come with an additional 337,000 acres of land leased to then from the Bureau of Land Management and State of Montana. In total, American Prairie now manages of herd of over 900 bison while continuing to extend contracts that lease grazing land to producers amounting to 7,000 cattle.

“This will not be a national park, it’s never going to be donated back to the government,” said American Prairie Advisory Board Member Randy Gray. “All the land the American Prairie Reserve owns still stays on the tax rolls and we still pay property tax on to help with the schools and the fire districts and all that kind of stuff. Every acre we buy we’re just leaving on the tax rolls as they are.”

“Over time it has improved, and my belief is that will continue,” Gray said of American Prairie’s relation with local communities. “There will be an understanding that there is opportunity here. We buy all our equipment locally – lots of trucks and tractors and all kinds of stuff. We employ people locally, so all those things over time are going to keep generating opportunities.”

Face to face with a bison

At Wednesday’s handling the politics of American Prairie’s mission were set aside to make room for the bison. Over several days 315 bison were rounded up, penned, and inspected to ensure their disease-free status and to cull the herd down to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recommendations.

“This is an opportunity for us to tell our neighbors are serious about working with them and that are bison are healthy,” Gray said, that our bison do not haver brucellosis or other diseases that they need to be worried about.”

 American Prairie manages slightly more than 900 bison. They are divided into three herds contained upon three distinct range units: Dry Fork, White Rock, and Sun Prairie. The handling that took place this past week was at Sun Prairie, American Prairie’s first property acquisition, just north of Fourchette Bay on the Missouri River and 50 miles from any paved road.

“We can only maintain a certain number of bison,” explained Mark Cool, Vice-President, and Chief Marketing Officer for American Prairie. “We run all of our properties below carrying capacity, so every year we look at pasture size, pasture health and herd size. We give away around 100 bison a year to other tribal or conservation herds and then we’ll open a public bison harvest on this property.”

“This year we gave away 17 tags,” Cool added. “There were a couple given away just for locals, there were a couple given away just for youth hunts, and then there were others opened up for folks outside of Montana.”

The bison corrals are unique in both their size and design. A mature American bison bull can stand more than six-feet tall and weigh up to 2,000 pounds. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior they are extremely agile, can run up to 35-miles-per-hour, and can jump a high fence. They are nothing to be trifled with and the corrals required to contain them prove the point.

At Sun Prairie the corrals were made from solid iron panels standing higher than a man’s head.  They are erected to form an alley in a large oval pattern leading from the pens where the bison stand placidly, around to a series of sliding doors designed to capture and separate individual animals as they move forward within a narrow chute.

None of the handlers stand directly inside the corral with the bison. Instead, roughly a dozen men and women stand in strategic positions along an elevated catwalk that rims both sides of alley. Each holds a long fiberglass rod with a flag attached at one end used to coax the bison along the alley. The end goal is to persuade the bison to move forward by their own free will. They don’t want to be contained and view the curving alley more as a way of escape rather than as an obstruction.

The work is done in near complete silence, and the handlers avoid being seen by the bison as much as possible. Bison are very alert to their surroundings, and the fewer humans they see or hear the less likely they are to balk, fight or refuse to move forward.

The handlers use pre-determined hand signals to indicate when they are ready for the next animals – two hands on top of the head means everything is ready. They also duck down to conceal themselves behind the iron panels as each bison moves ahead. This is strictly enforced. Any unnecessary noise or movement is met by a quick rebuke from the operations manager.

The only sounds are those the bison make themselves and an occasional squawk from a handheld radio. The safety of both humans and bison is the primary objective.

The final stage is to force the bison into the confines of a hydraulic squeeze chute where they can be restrained and examined. It’s the most stressful portion of the process, for both American Prairie staff and the bison. Some of the cows and bulls enter urgently, slamming into the rounded steel head gate as they see a clear exit on the other side. Others grind their feet into the ground, buck and jump to avoid the squeeze chute’s restraint and the humans standing on either side. All the bison are eventually restrained, some uttering guttural groans and snorts.

Once the bison are trapped the American Prairie handlers and veterinarians do as much as they can to reduce the stress on the animals. The person standing at the head of the squeeze chute covers the eyes of the bison block its view, and the crew of handlers work quickly and in concert.

“We are taking blood samples for disease testing,” said Corrine Williamson, Senior Outreach Manager for American Prairie. “We have an agreement with the Phillips County Conservation District to test for certain number of diseases and we do that with a representative sample of the herd.”

“We’re taking some blood samples to do that disease work,” Williamson added. “We’re also taking hair samples for genetic testing so we can have a full picture of our herd’s genetic health. We’re also doing a little bit of trace mineral sampling … and if an animal doesn’t already have an ear tag and a PIT (Passive Integrated Transponder) we’re putting those on.

The PIT tags are tracking tags that do not require power. Instead, they have an internal microchip that is activated when it passes close to a special antenna. The antenna is connected to a computer that records the identity of the tag and the time that it was passed.

Each handling takes close to 10 minutes. It’s as much wait time as it is working, but the payoff could be profound.