{"id":257635,"date":"2025-11-28T14:55:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T21:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/montanafreepress.org\/?p=257635"},"modified":"2025-12-01T16:43:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T23:43:37","slug":"fort-pecks-vision-for-endless-buffalo-prairie-could-move-bison-management-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montanafreepress.org\/2025\/11\/28\/fort-pecks-vision-for-endless-buffalo-prairie-could-move-bison-management-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Peck\u2019s vision for \u2018endless\u2019 buffalo prairie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Bison in the Fort Peck cultural herd graze on a foggy winter morning in February 2024. More than 800 animals spread across 33,000 acres make up the reservation’s current herd. Credit:<\/span> Isabel Hicks<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fifty miles south of the Canadian border on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, which spans over 3,200 square miles of rolling vistas and sagebrush across northeastern Montana, buffalo manager Robbie Magnan is watching a grassland ecosystem come back to life. <\/p>\t\t

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With just one other employee, Magnan spends his days managing more than 800 buffalo on 33,000 grassland acres at Fort Peck, home of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. The resurgence of bison after near total annihilation in the late 1800s is a blessing for Magnan. For nearly a century, Native tribes had no buffalo on their lands, but efforts to restore the keystone species have gained traction in recent years<\/a>. As buffalo return to their native ecosystem that symbiotically evolved with their grazing<\/a>, Magnan has noticed new species of native grasses crop up and is spotting more wildlife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of our bird population has come back alongside the buffalo,\u201d said Magnan, 70, who grew up on the reservation. \u201cI really like seeing the sprague\u2019s pipit. It\u2019s a tiny brown songbird and I watch it perch and sing on top of the buffalo\u2019s back \u2026 We have a lot more burrowing owls too. They find abandoned badger holes and that\u2019s where they live.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But restoring buffalo, or bison if you prefer<\/a>, and other biodiversity to this landscape doesn\u2019t come without cost. Numerous expenses accompany the venture, including hay for feed during drought years and heavy winters, and habitat-improvement projects such as removing internal fencing. Magnan also manages a quarantine facility where wild bison from Yellowstone National Park stay<\/a> until they are certified brucellosis-free and sent to start herds on other tribal lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With long-time nonprofit partner Defenders of Wildlife, the reservation has been working to grow its cultural herd to over 1,000 animals spread across 100,000 acres, a goal that will require the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes to purchase or lease privately held land adjacent to the current bison range. But with dwindling federal grant dollars<\/a>, the partners have been forced  to get creative to tap into different funding sources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the impetus of the new project called the Endless Prairie Buffalo Project<\/a>. In July, the Fort Peck Tribal Council approved a resolution to work with Defenders of Wildlife, the Environmental Policy Innovation Center and Kingfisher Parker to launch the new funding mechanism, a first of its kind. It\u2019s currently in the planning stages and the pilot program will be tested for feasibility over the next two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt will be further supportive of what we\u2019re already doing with the tribes, which is helping them buy back lands or acquire grazing leases for growing the buffalo herd, taking down the interior fencing, and opening up access to calving grounds and additional water sources,\u201d said Chamois Andersen, a Defenders of Wildlife senior field representative who coordinates the group\u2019s conversation priorities for the Northern Great Plains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project is a biodiversity credit program, meaning it will create credits that companies can purchase to boost biodiversity in a specific area. The program will essentially quantify the biodiversity boost seen on the landscape as bison are reintroduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of our bird population has come back alongside the buffalo. I really like seeing the sprague\u2019s pipit. It\u2019s a tiny brown songbird and I watch it perch and sing on top of the buffalo\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>Robbie Magnan, Fort peck buffalo herd manager<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/span>\n\n\n

Ryan Sarsfield, senior advisor for biodiversity markets for the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, compared the idea to carbon credits companies can use to offset carbon emissions by investing in projects that sequester carbon elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCarbon credits, sometimes they are too abstract. A ton of carbon is a very hard thing to imagine,\u201d Sarsfield said. \u201cBut people know what buffalo are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, Sarsfield said, the idea is different from biodiversity offsets, which companies are sometimes required to buy in order to offset any environmental damages by improving biodiversity elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are voluntary credits companies might buy as part of their corporate social responsibility goals to invest in the ecosystems where they\u2019re located, Sarsfield said. Because the project is still in its early stages, he did not name any specific investors but described the kinds of companies they\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt could be companies that are located in Montana. Maybe they have operations there, maybe their headquarters are there,\u201d Sarsfield said. \u201cAnother idea we were thinking of is companies for whom the buffalo is a symbol.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A bull bison sits in front of its herd on a private bison ranch outside of Wilsall, Montana, in June 2024. The grassland ecosystem is similar to that of the bison range on the Fort Peck Reservation. Credit: Isabel Hicks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sarsfield, Magnan and other partners traveled to San Jose, California\u2019s Bloom Biodiversity and Climate Conference in October to share the idea and find investors. Sarsfield said several conversations with interested partners are now ongoing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the Endless Prairie Buffalo Project is a pilot program, the organizers are still trying to figure out how to quantify the value of biodiversity and the amount one credit should cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each credit purchase will give Fort Peck\u2019s buffalo program money to use at their discretion for activities such as land acquisition or management costs. In this early stage, Sarsfield said he does not yet have an estimate for the cost per credit. According to the Biodiversity Credit Alliance<\/a>, the global credit market is volatile \u2014 credit costs depend on the program and have ranged from $200 to as high as $500,000 per unit. In Montana, an offset project called the Montana Sage Grouse Habitat Conservation Program records the average contribution from developers per project at $19,136, according to the program\u2019s 2024 annual report<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To hone the cost per credit, the first step is identifying what is already on the landscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andersen, with Defenders of Wildlife, said several biologists with Defenders, the Smithsonian Institute and Montana\u2019s Natural Resource Conservation Service have conducted vegetation surveys on the range to establish a baseline of the habitat and are now rolling out methods to monitor changes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, surveys have identified native grasses growing on the range that had not been seen for years. Both the density and diversity of plant species has increased, Andersen said, and the range is seeing more wildlife too, from grazing cervids to birds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Yellowstone National Park, the Blackfeet Reservation and elsewhere, scientists have found<\/a> that when bison graze, their trampling hooves break up soil, incorporating grass seeds and creating divots that hold moisture while their excrement fertilizes the soil, providing nitrogen. Because buffalo are migratory animals, their selective grazing also helps prevent plant species from outcompeting each other, creating a mosaic of diverse grasses that attract other wildlife<\/a> while avoiding overgrazing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bison walk alongside a road on a winter morning in Yellowstone National Park in January 2023. Credit: Isabel Hicks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At Fort Peck, Anderson says, scientists have completed vegetation survey analyses and mapped water resources to create layered maps showing what happens ecologically to grasslands when keystone species such as buffalo return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have satellite imagery to show this green-up effect that happens on the landscape,\u201d Andersen said. \u201cWe’re able to really see a diverse, changed environment with weed reductions \u2026 We can document the diversity of animals that also utilize that same prairie ecosystem: pronghorn, mule deer, whitetail deer, beavers, all the animals. We’re seeing more of them as a direct result of having a healthy grassland system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But figuring out how to assign a monetary value to those changes while continuing to monitor them is not an easy task. Indeed, that\u2019s often the pitfall of biodiversity credit programs, says Florencia Montagnini, a senior research scientist with the Yale School of the Environment who runs its Biodiversity Credits research program<\/a> and is writing a book on the subject.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the biodiversity credit market took off in 2022 after the establishment of the global Biodiversity Credit Alliance, an initial boom was followed by stabilized demand, Montagnini said. That\u2019s because people started to question how stable these programs will be in the long term. For the most part, she said, projects fail if there\u2019s insufficient monitoring to show companies exactly what their return on investment will be.. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked if government regulation is more effective for conservation, Montagnini said voluntary and government programs can coexist. She pointed out that regulations may change with different administrations, and the government can throw out regulations they don\u2019t like, or withhold the money or resources to enforce them. Voluntary programs can be an alternative way to meet long-term goals, she said. They can be appealing to companies with sustainability goals seeking tax write-offs or those who have an incentive to appease investors concerned about corporate optics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCarbon credits, sometimes they are too abstract. A ton of carbon is a very hard thing to imagine. But people know what buffalo are.\u201d<\/p>Ryan Sarsfield, senior advisor for biodiversity markets, Environmental Policy Innovation Center<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/span>\n\n\n

Back on the Fort Peck Reservation, while scientists are gathering data to ensure investors know what they are buying, Magnan is preparing to welcome more bison from Yellowstone National Park into their quarantine program this winter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort Peck\u2019s status as a key partner in bison restoration made them a clear choice for the biodiversity credit program, said Nicole Stiffarm, tribal partnership manager for the Environmental Policy Innovation Center. Eventually, if the program works well, the nonprofits hope to replicate it in other ecosystems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe impact that Fort Peck has been able to have across Indian country with the reintroduction of buffalo has been really strong and talked about quite a bit,\u201d Stiffarm said. \u201cHaving that revitalization be led by the original stewards of this land is very much a key aspect to this project. And potentially creating a new revenue source for tribes is one thing I’m really, really excited about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CORRECTION:<\/strong>\u00a0An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Florencia Montagnini as a senior research scientist with the Yale School of Forestry. Montagnini is a senior research scientist with the Yale School of the Environment.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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