Bison are political animals. A federal decision to on the rolling plains of eastern Montana is the latest manifestation of long-standing contention. The largest land animal in North America, bison are considered a “keystone” species, meaning they have high ecological and cultural importance.
The May 2026 decision represents a significant setback for a , a private conservation organization, to restore wild bison to the Great Plains. Those in favor of the decision are describing the move because it would reduce competition for grazing lands.
The legal question at the heart of the federal decision is a seemingly simple one: Are bison wildlife or are they domestic livestock? the North American landscape today, of which nearly 90% are considered livestock.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management argues that is intended as wildlife conservation, so it and is therefore ineligible to hold federal permits to graze on public lands.
American Prairie plans to , countering that it for livestock management – including containment and annual testing for diseases. Despite the organization’s vision of recreating an “,” these bison are privately owned and managed as livestock: wild in rhetoric only.
As who study the , we are interested in how environmental decisions – such as how people legally define and manage animals – reflect power dynamics and how people understand the value of wildlife.
Our own research focuses on how tribal nations are navigating complex legacies of colonial settlement to as keystone relatives in a shared ecosystem. Collaborating closely with advisers from across the four nations of the , including the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, we have learned that this perspective on bison, also known as buffalo – and “iinnii” to our Blackfoot partners – complicates, and enriches, this distinction between wildlife and livestock.
A human and ecological tragedy
Less than 200 years ago, an roamed the North American grasslands, vital to plains ecosystems and Indigenous ways of life.
By the late 1880s that number dropped to . Bison were brought to near-extinction by a combination of commercial hunting, disease, drought and deliberate persecution as part of a broader effort to assimilate tribal nations into reservation life.
The through Plains Indigenous communities today. But increasingly, so does a sense of hope for recovery and repair.
Bringing the bison back
Bison restoration efforts have been underway for . Since the beginning, a motley crew of advocates have each seen something different in returning bison: a , an or, since 2016, the . For the Blackfoot Nations and other tribes, the buffalo is a .
This symbolic ambiguity has brought together a broad coalition of “bison cheerleaders,” as one of the people we interviewed put it.
This diverse base of support may also help explain the mixed system of legal classification that now governs this controversial species. On federal lands, . Most states, however, . In a few states, including Montana and Colorado, bison are dual-listed as , which bison advocates say .
Meanwhile, many Native American tribes, including the Blackfeet Nation, formally recognize bison as wildlife. Yet they also , arguing that categorizing the animals as livestock or wildlife fails to reflect Indigenous worldviews that .
A question of management
In a practical sense, the distinction between wildlife and livestock matters because how bison are listed determines how they are managed and under whose jurisdiction they fall.
Imagine a bison in Yellowstone National Park. Managed as a wild animal by the National Park Service, she roams freely – watched by curious tourists – as she forages, breeds and protects her calf from large predators, such as wolves and grizzly bears. Come one harsh winter, she migrates north across the park boundary into the state of Montana.
Because that can infect cattle, when she leaves the park she becomes a “species in need of disease management,” subject to . She is allowed to roam only within a limited tolerance zone to .
Also, outside the park she may be hunted, both by and by state-licensed hunters.
Less than 50 miles away, another bison lives an ostensibly similar life, also moving with the seasons and calving among the sagebrush, vigilant for predators. Yet according to the state of Montana, this bison is a privately owned, domestic animal.
She counts among the more than 45,000 bison that are owned by one specific “bison cheerleader”: media mogul and , who died May 6, 2026. Turner’s flagship , a 113,600-acre property near Big Sky, Montana, is – as live in Yellowstone National Park, the largest wild herd on the continent.
Bison managers and ecologists explain that animals managed as livestock are selectively bred and handled. Yet “wildness” isn’t always cut and dry. While managed for meat production, the bison at the Flying D Ranch are still a big herd occupying a large land base with wild predators. This makes them, in some senses, wilder than most , which average only 300 animals.
Like American Prairie’s bison, their management also reflects a vision of restoring wildness to the landscape through private land conservation.
Shifting definitions
When we began interviewing people about buffalo restoration in 2022, momentum for restoring free-roaming bison was at an all-time high, elevated as a . In that year, the the now-contested grazing leases, following extensive environmental review.
In a profound culmination of decades of grassroots advocacy, in 2023 the Blackfeet Nation , the first to roam freely on Blackfoot territory in over 150 years. In 2024, Yellowstone National Park to manage a larger, more migratory population.
Yet these developments were not without detractors. In places like Montana, bison have been received by some as a symbol not of hope but of over rural futures in a changing West.
One way people are seeking to change the discussion is by changing the definitions, underscoring once more why they matter. In 2021, the Montana State Legislature gave county commissioners authority to in their county and as only those bison that have not been handled or descended from handled animals.
In passing these laws, state lawmakers effectively “defined wild bison out of existence,” as a former Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks official told us.
Ironically, those changes were intended to make it impossible for private entities to reintroduce bison as wildlife. Yet now the federal government is saying the animals are too wild to be classified as a productive use of the landscape.
This contradiction makes more sense when seemingly technical debates over listing are understood as conflicts over competing visions for the landscape: Are public lands – and even large private holdings – places to produce food or preserve pristine wilderness? Or something else? One Blackfeet community leader we interviewed reminded us that for Indigenous people, these lands remain .
The effects of the BLM decision to revoke grazing leases could ripple well beyond American Prairie. An organization representing more than 50 tribes has against the decision, arguing that it threatens not only buffalo restoration but growing tribal-federal co-stewardship efforts.
An unlikely coalition brought the buffalo back from the brink. In a moment of growing , our research tells us that the long-term success of bison restoration will require finding common ground – and compromise – across diverse visions for the North American landscape.
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