SEATTLE—The Trump administration’s “final decision” banning bison grazing on public land is legally convoluted—and curiously narrow.
Released earlier this month, it targets a single nonprofit, conservation-focused bison operation in one state, while offering conciliatory assurances to scores of Native American tribes with much larger herds of bison across the West.
The Interior Department described its ban as “responsible stewardship.” A coalition of bison-raising tribes said it was “heartened” by Interior’s concern for their sovereignty in Indian Country. But the bison outfit that is the decision’s only target threatened legal action while complaining of a “politically motivated reversal that threatens decades of established public land management.”
The decision is a bureaucratic rifle shot from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum aimed only at rescinding a four-year-old Biden administration decision to award seven grazing leases on 63,000 acres of federal land in northeastern Montana to American Prairie, a foundation largely funded by wealthy coastal environmentalists. The organization wants to revive the Great Plains with bison, which scientists say are better for a prairie ecosystem than cattle.
