Change on the plains - grasslands reserve buys land

A U.S. conservation group said Tuesday it has bought a 150,000-acre (60,704-hectare) Montana ranch in a major step in its plans for a privately funded, national park-caliber wildlife preserve that has brought fears of change in the heart of cattle country. Some local ranchers see the American Prairie Reserve's plans as an assault on their way of life as families that stuck with the cattle business through generations of blizzard and drought are bought out. Steve Page with Page Whitham Land and Cattle said the century-old ranch was sold for an undisclosed sum to the reserve. The purchase more than doubles the amount of land under the reserve's control. American Prairie aims to create a vast grasslands wildlife complex, roamed by up to 10,000 bison, bordering the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. Critics lump the reserve's goals with a contentious federal proposal to convert a vast swath of eastern Montana into a new national monument an idea that continues to echo more than two years after U.S. Interior Sec. Ken Salazar repudiated it. The sprawling South Ranch traces its history to a pair of Civil War veterans and professional bison hunters who moved into ranching after bison were wiped out of the area. But Page said restrictions on public grazing and higher government fees combined with the prospects of a national monument made ranching on the land no longer viable. "We have concluded that traditional ranching operations in south Valley and south Phillips counties are in jeopardy of becoming history in the not so distant future," Page said. American Prairie already has started pulling fences on other properties it has acquired in the area...more