The final decision reverses a Biden-era authorization that allowed non-production bison to graze on more than 63,000 acres of federal land, ending a four-year legal and political fight by Montana’s governor, attorney general, and congressional delegation.
The Bureau of Land Management issued a final decision canceling the American Prairie Reserve’s bison grazing permits on more than 63,000 acres of federal public lands in northeastern Montana, handing a significant victory to the state’s agricultural community after years of litigation, administrative appeals, and lobbying by Montana officials at every level of government.
The decision rescinds APR’s bison grazing authorizations, issues cattle-only permits where appropriate, and requires the removal of bison from public lands by Sept. 30, 2026.
Gov. Greg Gianforte and Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who have led Montana’s opposition to the permits since 2021, both hailed the ruling as a vindication of the state’s ranching communities and a rebuke of what they characterized as an ideologically driven departure from federal grazing law.
“This final decision is a victory for the rule of law and the generations of Montanans who have stewarded our lands with care,” Gianforte said. “For far too long, the Biden administration ignored the clear language of the Taylor Grazing Act in favor of an ideological experiment.”
Knudsen was equally direct. “The decision by the Trump administration to cancel the American Prairie Reserve’s bison grazing permit is a huge victory for Montana farmers and ranchers,” he said. “For more than four years, my office has been working tirelessly to cancel APR’s permit, and it’s great to see that hard work pay off.”
A Four-Year Fight
Montana’s opposition to the permits dates to September 2021, when Gianforte, joined by the state departments of Natural Resources and Conservation, Fish Wildlife and Parks, Livestock, and Agriculture, formally objected to BLM’s environmental analysis and asked that the permits be denied. The state argued the agency had failed to adequately assess economic impacts on local communities, risks from inadequate fencing and containment, and the effect on Montana’s state trust lands — many of which are fenced in common with adjacent BLM parcels, resulting in unauthorized bison crossing onto state property.
BLM authorized the grazing change in July 2022 despite those objections. The Gianforte administration appealed the decision to the Interior Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals the following month, where the matter stalled for more than two years without resolution.
Knudsen had been pressing BLM to scrap what he called APR’s illegal grazing change of use permit proposal since 2021, filing formal comments, hosting a public listening session in Malta attended by more than 250 residents, and challenging the decision in federal court. In December 2024, the Gianforte administration filed a separate federal district court action seeking review of the appeals office’s failure to stay the original BLM decision while the administrative appeal remained pending.
In February 2025, Gianforte wrote directly to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asking him to assume jurisdiction and vacate the permits. In September 2025, the governor and Montana’s entire federal congressional delegation followed up with a letter to Burgum pressing the case and describing how the conservation bison permits undermined both the state’s livestock industry and the law. Burgum assumed jurisdiction in December and remanded the matter to BLM, which issued a proposed decision to cancel the permits in January before finalizing it.
The Underlying Legal Dispute
At the core of Montana’s challenge was the argument that the Taylor Grazing Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and the Public Rangelands Improvement Act all require federal grazing permits to support productive livestock use — not conservation or rewilding purposes. APR, a nonprofit organization working to restore native grasslands and wildlife across a large swath of northeastern Montana, had sought to use its federal grazing allotments for non-production bison rather than cattle, a model that state officials and neighboring ranchers argued fell outside the statutory framework governing public land grazing.
Gianforte credited Interior Secretary Burgum and BLM with resolving the dispute in a manner consistent with the law and Montana’s agricultural heritage. “I thank Secretary Burgum and BLM for putting Montanans first,” he said.
By: DNU Staff