The Trump administration just undermined property rights — and ranchers should be worried.
The Trump administration just undermined property rights — and ranchers should be worried.
F or years, Republicans have urged environmentalists to put their money where their mouths are. Stop suing. Stop lobbying for new regulations. Respect property rights and buy the land you want to protect. Well, one conservation group took that advice — and the Trump administration just punished them for it.
This month, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) revoked conservation organization American Prairie’s permits to graze bison on federal lands in Montana, overturning 20 years of approved operations. The message to conservationists is clear: Voluntary conservation isn’t actually welcome. But ranchers should also be concerned, because the tactics used here could just as easily be turned against them.
American Prairie is a nonprofit that has purchased land in northeastern Montana since 2004, attempting to assemble a 3 million-acre reserve open to the public. The group’s ambitious scale has made it a political target among Montana’s Republican leadership and some ranchers, who view it as a threat to traditional ranching communities. Yet the group uses an entirely market-based approach: buying land from willing sellers at market prices and using private donations rather than government funds.
Unlike in the East, where most land is privately owned, much of the rural West is a patchwork of federal and private landholdings. Ranchers typically own small “base properties” but depend on grazing permits for access to adjacent federal lands. When American Prairie purchases a ranch, they acquire the associated grazing permits, just as any rancher would.
This is precisely the kind of voluntary, property-rights-respecting approach for which Republicans have long advocated. No regulations, designations, or litigation — just private parties using their own money to pursue their vision for the land.
Indeed, the Trump administration itself has endorsed this approach. President Trump signed an executive order last year directing all federal land agencies to “encourage responsible, voluntary conservation efforts.” Yet the same administration is now yanking permits from a group whose entire model is built on voluntary exchange and respect for property rights.
The BLM’s rationale is that American Prairie’s bison don’t qualify as “livestock” under the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act because the group isn’t using them for “production-oriented purposes.” This is legal sophistry. The BLM has approved more than 40 grazing permits for bison across the West. Montana law classifies bison as livestock. American Prairie’s bison are privately owned, disease-tested, vaccinated, and actively managed — including through annual harvests. Some of the group’s permits had been approved since 2005.
Ranchers’ concerns about American Prairie are understandable. Rural communities rightly worry about the broader economic effects of ranches transitioning out of traditional agriculture. Some ranchers fear that wildlife expansion could threaten their operations. These are real issues that deserve serious discussion.
Undermining property rights, however, is not the answer. Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican, praised the BLM’s decision as protecting ranchers “from the elitists trying to push them out.” But American Prairie isn’t pushing anyone out. It’s buying land from willing sellers. The real threat comes from an administrative state that can arbitrarily redefine the rules after the fact.
The irony is that calling American Prairie’s bison “wildlife” rather than “livestock” could create more problems for neighboring ranchers. As livestock, the bison are subject to disease-testing requirements, American Prairie is liable for any damages they cause, and the animals must be fenced in. Strip away the “livestock” designation, and you strip away those protections and responsibilities.
More troubling, this is the same tactic that Democrat-led administrations have used for decades to weaken ranchers’ grazing privileges — reinterpreting laws to restrict or eliminate grazing without compensation. Since the 1950s, grazing on federal lands has declined by 50 percent, often through such bureaucratic maneuvering. Ranchers have rightly decried this erosion of their permit security, arguing that the permits they’ve relied on for generations shouldn’t be subject to arbitrary administrative whims or political grievances.
Now the other party is in charge — but the same bad moves are still being made. If the BLM can reinterpret the meaning of “livestock” to exclude bison, what prevents a future Democratic administration from reinterpreting other terms to target cattle ranchers? If permit holders can have their authorizations revoked simply because political winds shift, no one’s permits are secure.
If the Trump administration is serious about promoting voluntary conservation and respecting property rights, it should reverse this decision. More importantly, every rancher who depends on federal permits should be paying attention. The precedent being set here is that federal grazing permits aren’t secure at all — they can disappear whenever politics demands it.
Shawn Regan is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. P. J. Hill is a professor of economics emeritus at Wheaton College and a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center.