Trump Administration Targets Bison on Federal Grazing Lands (Media Share)

PHILLIPS COUNTY, Mont.—The American buffalo—those ornery, hairy prairie beasts that reign as the official mammal of the United States—have joined wind turbines, electric cars and climate researchers in the cross hairs of the Trump administration.

Acceding to anti-bison grumbling from cattle ranchers and Republican politicians in Montana, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in January proposed canceling leases for buffalo grazing on federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM is part of the Department of the Interior, which, for more than a century, has celebrated its role in heading off the extinction of buffalo, which were killed by the tens of millions during white settlement in the West. The Interior Department still sports a buffalo on its official seal.

But the BLM, long nicknamed the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining,” has traditionally prioritized leasing the rangelands it oversees for cattle grazing.

Now, in the MAGA era, with Interior reversing the Biden administration’s determination that conservation is a use of BLM land on par with grazing and resource extraction, Burgum has ruled that since bison here in north-central Montana are not being raised for “production-oriented purposes,” they have no legal right to roam, wallow or munch grass on land leased from the bureau.