Three days before George W. Bush took office in January 2001,
President Bill Clinton, with the stroke of a pen, created eight new
national monuments that amounted to more than a million acres of
land. One of these was the half-million acre Missouri Breaks
National Monument in northeastern Montana. Now it appears that
groundwork is being laid for more of the same here in Big Sky
Country, perhaps during the waning days of President Obama’s second
term.
National monuments were originally intended to be, well,
monuments — small places of historical or geological significance
such as Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, Jewel Cave in South Dakota, or
the Statue of Liberty. But that didn’t stop President Clinton and
his advisors in the environmentalist community from thinking big,
and they did.
The vast national monuments are generally comprised of acreage
that was already public land, and usually land that is under the
purview of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Why does
reclassification matter? Because BLM land is public land, but
legally designated as “multiple use.” This allows for commercial
leases to be issued: for grazing by ranchers, mineral extraction by
mining companies, drilling by oil companies, and recreation by
hunters, anglers, hikers, horseback riders, and others. Once land
is declared a national monument, however, all bets are off on the
degree of restriction on commercial activities that can go into
effect.
This is likely the backdrop to a subtle land grab that we saw
begin in northeastern Montana, one that went largely unnoticed
during the hubbub of the recent presidential election. The size of
the grab, however, is not subtle – a
150,000-acre ranch is the latest piece to be moved on this
particular chessboard and the real prize is the size of the state
of Connecticut. The way it is all happening, however, is very
subtle. Oozy, even.
The players in the story: First, agencies of the federal
government that control the vast
Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (“the CMR”) plus
additional public lands surrounding it — hundreds of thousands of
acres around the massive Ft. Peck Reservoir, a large inland lake
created by the damming of the Missouri River in eastern Montana.
Second, the adjacent historic “South Ranch” of the famed
Etchart ranching family, who built one of the state’s largest
family livestock operations in a physically remote and harsh corner
of the state. Third, the American Prairie Reserve, a
private environmentalist group whose vision is to “assemble a
multi-million acre wildlife park” in northeastern Montana. The
ranch in question — made up both of deeded private land and public
land leases attached to the deeded land — was, last fall, sold
voluntarily by the ranching family to the American Prairie
Reserve.
“Voluntary,” “sold,” and “private” aren’t words usually found in
the same paragraph as “land grab.” But that’s where the “subtle”
part comes in. In reading a statement released by family
representative Steve Page, one learns that they had been made an
offer they couldn’t refuse, so to speak. While the statement has
been excerpted in various news stories, it has only been published
in its
entirety on the website of the regionally influential and
agriculturally based Northern News Network. To read Page’s stark
and unembellished account of the ranch’s history over the last
several decades is to experience how ranching families are being
gradually worn down by the federal government, until giving up and
selling the ranch to environmentalists seems like the only good
option.
Page notes that his family and their predecessors have “dealt
with… land-use issues over a long period of time.” He goes on to
state that they “have concluded that traditional ranching
operations on public land [around the CMR Wildlife Refuge] are
in jeopardy of becoming history in the not so distant future.”
According to environmentalists, this sale was part of a
“market
approach” that is ostensibly a win-win for everyone. For many
of us with roots in the ranching culture, however, it provoked a
sinking feeling, and was yet another reminder that a lot of people
outside of the West — people with deep pockets (in this case,
billionaire heirs to the
Mars candy fortune) — are deadly serious about converting large
swaths of traditional ranching country into a giant federal
wildlife preserve.
If a casual visitor goes to the part of Montana in question, he
might be tempted to wonder, “What’s the fuss?” Compared to the vast
majority of the American subcontinent, it already is a
vast wilderness area. Deer, elk, bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope,
coyotes, waterfowl, upland game birds, and wildlife of every
description are more plentiful than at any time since Lewis and
Clark first explored the region, and they share the landscape
peacefully with ranchers and their herds of cattle and sheep. It
really is a paradise — or at least we think so out here. But not
paradise enough, it seems, to suit the environmentalist groups that
covet it. As is so often the case, the reason comes down to a
single species, one that ironically isn’t even endangered: the
American bison, hundreds of thousands of which can be found across
the American West on ranches and in wilder settings like national
and state parks. Bison have already returned to the Great Plains to
an extent that would astound a time-traveler from even 50 years
ago, and they have emerged in an organic fashion that melds with
the existing economy and culture of ranching in the West.
What is missing, say bison purists, is a large range where
truly wild bison can truly range across a vast,
human-free habitat. To create what the purists want — huge,
free-ranging herds of wild bison wandering the Great Plains —
millions of acres would need to be returned to the state they were
in 150 years ago. Unfortunately, pretty much all of the land on the
Great Plains has been part of someone’s ranch for more than a
century, whether by direct ownership or time-honored leases so
settled and prescriptive that they would set an old-school Burkean
heart aflutter. (Why they need to start with a part of Montana the
size of Connecticut, and can’t just use Connecticut itself, we are
never told.)
Carving out national parks, national monuments, and national
wilderness areas has always been surrounded by controversy. Every
time it’s done, existing ranching, logging, and mining operations
have been shut down, and families have been displaced from their
traditional homes. Even in as beloved a place as Wyoming’s Grand
Teton National Park, one doesn’t have to dig far beneath the
surface to
unearth bitter memories of the secrecy, shell games,
half-truths, and outright manipulation by the informal
“private-public” partnership between John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and
the federal government that led up to its creation in 1950.
Ranchers around Jackson who sold their land at the time thought
they were selling to other ranching operations, and most had no
idea that they were participants in eliminating the area’s ranching
culture forever.
The same can’t be said this time, which is part of why the Page
statement is important. It sets forth, for the benefit of friends,
neighbors, and other Montanans, the compelling case that this time
the final outcome has already been determined by others, and the
family is bowing to that reality. The sale has been unpopular with
many Montanans, but at the same time, most who read the story
understand that this sale was far from “voluntary,” in the truest
sense of the word. It was the family’s one and perhaps only shot at
recouping the real value of their land, giving future generations a
chance to start again elsewhere.
Is anywhere completely safe, though? At one time, those of us
who grew up ranching on the rough ridges and vast openness of the
high plains thought we would be very safe. The ranchers being
bought, bribed, and muscled out of their operations have long
tended to be those whose forebears had settled in physically harsh
but breathtakingly beautiful mountain valleys like Jackson Hole.
While we thought our family lands on the high plains were equally
beautiful in their own way, we knew they weren’t sexy enough for
environmentalists or developers ever to covet them. We hadn’t
anticipated, however, the intensely priapic effect that visions of
wild bison can apparently induce.
This vision is that of the “buffalo
commons,” an idea first articulated by a pair of academics —
Frank and Deborah Popper — and tirelessly marketed by them and
their acolytes ever since. In their imagining of the future of the
West, the natural decrease in rural populations on the Great Plains
should be sped along by having the government buy out farmers and
ranchers, turning the land into a grand buffalo theme park
stretching from Canada to Mexico, largely empty of people and full
of bison. People will of course visit this theme park, and the
future eco-tourists will be far more spiritually attuned to nature
than, say, mere ranching families that have lived and worked on the
land for generations.
It is a long way from the recent sale of a ranch in northeastern
Montana to the creation of a vast “buffalo commons,” with tens of
millions of acres emptied of permanent residents. It is, however, a
clear step, and neither the fact that it is “voluntary” nor the
fact that it is touted as a “market-based” solution can change the
fact that we are watching a “public-private partnership” between
deep-pocketed conservation groups and the federal
government.
Roger Scruton, in his recent and excellent book How to Think
Seriously About the Planet, asserts that “wise government…
should not have a goal beyond that of reconciling, as best it can,
the goals of its citizens.” What ranchers throughout the West have
been discovering, however, is that the government is not trying to
reconcile anything, but is rather picking winners and losers. When
environmentalists want what ranchers have, ranchers are
consistently finding that it is they who are the designated
losers.
Image courtesy Ceasol. Photo
above: Wikimedia Commons.
