Gov. Greg Gianforte has taken Montana’s long fight with American Prairie to the Ninth Circuit, asking the federal appeals court to undo an injunction that lets the conservation group keep bison on three federal grazing allotments in Phillips County.
The state filed its opening brief on Nov. 2. The same day, a separate state agency’s environmental review undercut one of the main arguments the governor’s allies have made against bison on public land.
The appeal
The case turns on what kind of animals federal grazing permits can cover. In May 2026, the Bureau of Land Management canceled American Prairie’s bison grazing authorizations and reissued the permits for cattle only. American Prairie sued, and a federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction that partly blocked the decision. Bison have stayed on the Box Elder, Telegraph and Whiterock Coulee allotments since.
“The district court fundamentally misunderstood what Congress authorized in the Taylor Grazing Act,” Gianforte said in a statement. “The Bureau of Land Management made the correct and lawful decision to cancel these permits. Our administration will continue advocating for the generations of Montanans who have stewarded our lands with care.”
The state’s brief argues that the Taylor Grazing Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the Public Rangelands Improvement Act all authorize permits for domestic livestock, not a free-ranging conservation herd. It also says the district court accepted American Prairie’s claims of financial and genetic harm without testing them against the record, noting that the 2026 decision reissued the group’s cattle permits on the same allotments at the same stocking rates, and that the foundation reported more than $202 million in assets on its 2024 tax filing.
Five years of fighting
The dispute goes back to 2021, when Gianforte and four state agencies (Natural Resources and Conservation, Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Livestock, and Agriculture) objected to the BLM’s environmental analysis of American Prairie’s request. The BLM approved the change anyway in July 2022. The state appealed to the Interior Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals, where the case sat unresolved for more than two years.
In December 2024, the administration went to federal court over the stalled appeal. In February 2025, Gianforte asked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to take over the case and vacate the permits, and in September 2025 the governor and Montana’s entire congressional delegation wrote Burgum again. Burgum assumed jurisdiction in December and sent the matter back to the BLM, which proposed canceling the permits in January 2026 and finalized the cancellation in May.
The governor’s office has argued all along that replacing production cattle with conservation bison hurts local ranch economies and that bison have wandered onto state trust lands that are often fenced in common with BLM ground.
A state review that cuts the other way
That last point got harder to make this week. A checklist environmental assessment from the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, dated Oct. 22 and reported Nov. 2 by the Helena Independent Record, found that letting American Prairie graze bison instead of cattle on one state section in eastern Montana “will not result in significant environmental impacts.”
DNRC received 280 public comments during a 14-day comment period. About 95 percent supported the request.
The assessment is narrow. It says it does not evaluate whether federal law allows American Prairie’s proposal on federal land, or whether the state Board of Land Commissioners should approve bison on State Lease 6732. That decision belongs to the Land Board, made up of the state’s top five elected officials, including Gianforte. In September, the board amended an earlier motion that had told DNRC not to approve any new or pending bison grazing requests while it writes rules on stocking rates.
Beth Saboe, American Prairie’s director of public affairs, welcomed the finding. “The agency looked at soils, water, vegetation, and many more environmental factors and concluded what science has confirmed all along: that American Prairie’s bison will have no significant impact on the environment if they are permitted to graze on this state parcel,” she wrote in an email.
What’s next
American Prairie will file its response brief with the Ninth Circuit, and a ruling on the appeal is likely months away. Until then, the injunction holds and the bison stay on the three allotments. The Land Board’s handling of the state lease, and the stocking-rate rules DNRC is drafting, will decide whether the herd’s footprint on state land grows in the meantime.
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