Prairie reserve still attracting fans, foes

PHILLIPS COUNTY – Dust floats off the backs of brown and black bison like mist as they stampede through a broad channel and up an incline. It's May, and 150 calves were born just a few weeks ago.

After the protective cows and their calves pass, quiet returns, except for whistling meadowlarks, cooing mourning doves and "cre — eee — king" chorus frogs. The sun is beginning to set in remote northeastern Montana.

"I like the sound of the prairie," says Dennis Lingohr.

Lingohr works for the American Prairie Foundation, a not-for-profit that's quietly creating a 3.5 million-acre wildlife reserve on the Montana prairie that National Geographic has called "one of the most ambitious conservation projects in American history."

It's 50 miles south of Malta and north of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and called the American Prairie Reserve.

Almost 15 years after assembly of the giant private park began, it's grown to 305,000 acres and drawn worldwide interest and $72 million in donations, much of it from well-heeled investors such as members of the Mars family, the owner of the confectionery company.

In Phillips County, where APR has most of its land holdings and 86,000 head of cattle graze the land, many neighbors remain skeptical of the ambitious and groundbreaking conservation effort to save unbroken native prairie, viewing the growing reserve as a threat to a way of life and productive agricultural ground that fuels rural economies.

One sign near the entrance says "Don't Buffalo Me." On its opposite side, a line crosses through the word "wild lands," "reserve" and "monument."

"I can't believe that people would support what they're trying to do," says Bill French, an 81-year-old rancher who owns property abutting the reserve. "They're trying to ruin what I've worked the last 60 years of my life to build up. They don't say that, but that's what they're doing."

The signs were constructed by the Montana Community Preservation Alliance, whose mission is to preserve working landscapes and lifestyles of Montana and production agriculture. The group originally formed to fight government imposed monuments and free-roaming bison. The group says ranchers have kept land that APR is trying to conserve in pristine condition.

"We've done such a good job apparently we've drawn a big target on ourselves," said Nancy Ereaux, a rancher and secretary of the group.

For its part, APF contends the reserve, once completed, will be a relatively small island in a sea of agriculture.

APR's mission is to save mixed-grass prairie, which is on the decline, while managing the land for wildlife and providing the public access to wide-open land that remains almost the same as what explorers Lewis and Clark saw when they passed through Montana in the early 1800s.

"We just have a different value system for the land," says Pete Geddes, one of three managing directors of the reserve. "We don't think it's better. We don't think it's worse. It's just different."

The region's population has been declining for decades, with or without the reserve, he says. If the reserve would go away tomorrow, he adds, the area would continue to change in part because of global factors, including trade policies.

Over two days in May, Lingohr led a safari of sorts for visitors who traveled from the state's cities to the remote prairie country to catch a glimpse of bison, prairie dogs, elk and antelope and views of a vast landscape they couldn't find in the state's mountainous and forested regions.

"I really believe in the project," says Lingohr, who retired from the Bureau of Land Management in 2007 and began working for the reserve two weeks later, checking electric fences that keep the bison from getting loose onto neighboring properties and taking wildlife and weather photos used to promote the reserve.

Randy Gray, a retired attorney and the former mayor of Great Falls, says the reserve is protecting a disappearing ecosystem, the mixed-grass prairie of the northern Great Plains.

"Where we are is a very underappreciated landscape," says Gray, standing on a cliff overlooking a creek where Native Americans once hunted bison by funneling them over the edge. "We're on untrammeled prairie. We are on a landscape that is as it was a hundred years ago. There's really been no change."

Numerous scientific studies have identified the region as having some of the greatest plant and animal diversity anywhere in the Great Plains, APR says. Most animal species that existed here 200 years ago are still here, and the region is known for its diversity of prairie birds, including golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, Sprague's pipit and Baird's sparrow.

French's grandparents homesteaded in the area in 1917, his wife's, in 1910. They manage more than 1,000 cows.

The land in northeastern Montana, he says, should be used for industry and producing food.

"Our country is real," says French, whose biggest fear is the land being set aside by the reserve will eventually be turned over to government so President Barack Obama can declare it a national monument, a highly controversial proposition in these parts. "These people at American Prairie think they've discovered it."

French has served on the local soil and conservation district for 55 years.

APR says it intends to hold title to its private land, eventually as much as 500,000 acres, forever, and takes no position on national monuments.

Gray is on the American Prairie Reserve's National Council. That includes leaders in business, science, conservation, philanthropy and the arts who serve as APR's ambassadors.

Gray said he wants more Montanans to see what he describes as a stunning landscape.

"It's the openness," Lingohr says of the appeal of the area to him. "I mean, there's a lot of times when I'm out riding fence and I'm 10 to 15 miles from the nearest ranch headquarters. It's almost like being in a wilderness area."

During their visit, some of the visitors slept in tents set up below a sky brilliant with stars on the dark prairie when temperatures reached freezing at night.

Others stayed in the newly constructed Enrico Education and Science Center, which sleeps 14 and provides a space for visiting researchers, scientists and volunteers. It's named after the grandchildren of Roger and Rosemary Enrico, who have contributed more than $2.5 million to the reserve. Roger Enrico is former chairman of DreamWorks Animation SKG and PepsiCo Inc.

One day last month, there was bison slobber on the center's windows. The animals tend to wallow around the center and a house for employees at the reserve headquarters.

"It's a very unusual model in the world," Gray says of the concept of conserving land by connecting private and public lands to benefit wildlife.

The American Prairie Foundation is a not-for-profit based in Bozeman.

To assemble the prairie reserve, it's purchasing private cattle ranches from willing sellers and securing grazing rights on public land. To date, the reserve is 305,000 acres.

Its latest purchase came last summer with the acquisition of the Holzey family ranch in south Phillips County. It will open up another 22,000 acres of pasture to bison, bringing the total bison pasture to more than 50,000 acres. Bison currently roam free on 31,000 acres with electric fencing keeping them from straying.

"You're really seeing them in the habitat they're meant to be in," says the reserve's Katy Teson, as bison graze on the green landscape in the distance.

She's driving a small bus with especially large windows that makes it easy for the passengers to watch bison from the vehicle. Four of the animals have radio collars so they can be tracked.

A public, 13,075-acre grazing allotment owned by the Bureau of Land Management, called Flat Creek, was tied to the Holzey ranch purchase and is now leased by APR. APR has applied to change the class of livestock so bison can graze on the Flat Creek Allotment. It's also seeking a change to year-round grazing from the current May 1-to-Nov. 15 season. The requests have spurred comments from 140 people, with 95 opposed to the changes, which is an unusually high number of comments for a grazing allotment change, BLM spokesman Jonathan Moor said.

APR's end goal is to acquire 500,000 acres, then link that land with 3 million acres already publicly managed, creating a 3.5 million-acre wildlife reserve spanning six counties. It would be 50 percent larger than Yellowstone National Park.

"It's very audacious, but it's really exciting because there are so many different parts to the ecosystem," says Ellen Anderson, a reserve assistant whose job is returning 700 acres of former cropland to native grasses and shrubs. "You have trees and you have grasslands and you have water streams. I think the variety of the landscape is one of my most favorite parts of working out here."

Reaching the reserve is a four-hour drive from Great Falls and Billings, the two closest large cities. Roads turn to gumbo when it rains. Winter temperatures fall well below zero.

"It's quite the adventure," says Anderson, a self-described plant nerd.

APR relies primarily on private donations, which have come from all 50 states and 12 countries.

Greg Oxarart, a 60-year-old rancher who has lived in Phillips County his entire life, says the outside money financing the project bothers him.

"I just don't believe in their mission," Oxarart said. "They plan on taking this whole county over. Malta would be off the map if they have their way."

If four or five people banded together to buy land in order to make a living, he'd support that, he said. He has three sons who would like to come home to Phillips County to ranch, but land prices, which he says have increased since APF began buying property, are making that difficult.

The land is beautiful, he says, but it's trying because it's not real productive with cattle ranching its best use, Oxarart says.

"That's why not many of them will live here," he says of APR supporters. "When it's 40 below in December, it becomes a challenge to get things done. Then you depend on your neighbors when you have breakdowns."

People who make a living here take good care of the land because if they don't they're soon gone, and they also help feed the nation, he said.

Oxarart shares about six miles of border with the reserve. He has nothing against bison, he says. But the future doesn't look good for ranchers, he says.

Misinformation about the reserve is common, Geddes says.

APR's analysis of real estate trends shows the reserve's presence has had no effect on the regional market. Land prices generally correspond with cattle prices, which recently reached historic highs, APR notes.

APR is taking an entrepreneurial approach to conservation that could serve as a template for others to do ecologically significant conservation without having to wait for the federal government to give them money or a special designation, says Geddes, who once worked for the Property Environment Reserve Center, an environmental think tank in Bozeman that seeks market solutions to environmental problems.

"This, I think it's fair to say, is the on-the-ground embodiment of those ideas," he said.

Compared to others who are purchasing land in Montana, APR is not putting up gates or fences, he says. Rather, it's opening up the land to the public, including hunters. "We're all about public access," Geddes said.

Sometimes, potential donors stay at the Kestrel Camp, which features five round tents called yurts with electricity and plumbing. Electrical lines to the camp were buried so power poles wouldn't mar the view. It opened in 2013.

"The chains are so bison don't get on the porch, in case you are wondering," the reserve's Teson says as a touring group arrives.

The world-class, safari-style camp consists of five yurts with a central yurt featuring a social lounge and dining room. Potential donors interested in learning about the project are brought to the high-class camping area, where they can see bison grazing from their decks.

"So we really try to connect people to the landscape and the vision, but also give them climate-controlled rooms to come home to and Montana chefs to make their experience delicious," Teson said.

Kestrel Camp also is open to the public for $1,200 per person a night, but most visitors choose to stay at the Buffalo Camp, a public campground that opened in 2011 and costs $10 per night.

At the Enrico Science and Education Center, Gray talked about why wildlife needs habitat like the prairie, which provides migration corridors for species such as the curlew, a prairie bird with a long-curved bill that's in decline.

The reserve is important, he said, "So more of the species don't 'wink out' over the next decades." Montana's prairie, Gray added, is no less important than two other iconic destinations in Montana, Glacier and Yellowstone national parks.

Geddes says the reserve is the largest conservation project underway in the Lower 48, and restoring genetically pure bison to the landscape is part of the work.

After calving, the herd grew from 442 to 600 animals this year. Lingohr says distinct family groups are now starting to form. Eventually, the herd is expected to grow to a size of 10,000.

At Yellowstone, the number of bison fluctuates between 2,300 and 5,000.

"Oh, there's some right there," says Lingohr, spotting a small group of cows with four calves. A few big bulls, who roam in bachelor groups and weigh up to 2,200 pounds, stood about 100 yards away.

As a kid growing up in North Dakota, Lingohr and his brother imagined stampeding buffalo in the wheat fields. Working at APR, he says, is a dream come true.

He takes a right onto a two-track with ruts filled with water from recent rains.

He arrives at a sea of mounds. It's a prairie dog colony.

Like a jack-in-the-box, they pop up, out of their burrows, standing on their hind feet, heads scanning the flat countryside, stubby front paws at their chest, before disappearing in the holes again. The colony is 60 to 80 acres.

A bullet hole adorns the interpretive sign explaining that billions of prairie dogs once were found on the plains from Canada to Mexico.

Lingohr's will stipulates that his ashes will be scattered at the reserve after his death.

"You don't hear any outside sounds, other than an occasional Air Force jet coming over, or a crop duster," he says of the peaceful prairie.

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Karl Puckett at 1-800-438-6600 or 406-791-1471. Twitter: GFTrib_KPuckett.

Reserve's origins began with effort to save grasslands

The American Prairie Reserve's origins came from the realization in the conservation community as a whole that conserving grasslands had been missed, said Hilary Parker, an APF spokeswoman in Bozeman.

World Wildlife Fund, a conservation organization, initiated the effort to create the reserve in northeast Montana, and it was no accident.

APR says northeastern Montana holds one of the largest areas of intact prairie in the country due to stewardship by ranchers. And that land is surrounded by millions of acres of public land that's already protected. Both factors made northeastern Montana ideal for the reserve.

After the American Prairie Foundation was created, Sean Gerrity, who grew up in Great Falls, was hired as the president. Prior to joining American Prairie Reserve, Gerrity co-founded Catalyst Consulting, a Silicon Valley-based company specializing in organization alignment and strategy development.

He's used that experience to attract donations and expertise from the world of science and business to reserve operations.

The current board of directors includes George E. Matelich, a managing director with New York-based Kelso & Company, a private equity company; Elizabeth Ruml, a retired managing director of Salomon Brothers, a former Wall Street investment bank; Clyde Aspevig, a Montana artist; Helga Haub chairwoman of the Elizabeth Haub Foundation for Environmental Law and Policy in Germany, Canada and the United States; Tim Kelly past president of National Geographic; and Jacqueline Badger Mars, the retired vice president of Mars Inc., where she was responsible for development of new food products and marketing.

— Karl Puckett

The green behind grasslands conservation

The American Prairie Reserve is the largest conservation project in the Lower 48 and involves saving Montana's native mixed-grass prairie. It's run by the American Prairie Foundation (APF), a not-for-profit.

Private contributors providing the majority of the funding, and APF's list of benefactors, which are publicly listed on its website, is eye-catching.

Well-known business people from across the country have bought into the vision of saving America's prairie and are backing it with big donations with contributions coming from individuals and foundations in all 50 states, including Montana, in addition to 12 countries.