Montana Land Board battles American Prairie in new bison lands lawsuit

 Bowen West | April 1, 2026

Image by: Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon

A new lawsuit over American Prairie’s bison herd is becoming a fight over the future of Montana’s public lands.

The American Prairie nonprofit has sued the Montana state Land Board and the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation over a decision to block its wild bison from grazing on state trust lands, the group and its attorney, Mary Cochenour, said. The lawsuit was filed March 17 in state district court in Lewis and Clark County, just days after the Land Board passed two resolutions aimed squarely at how bison use those lands.

Montana State Auditor James Brown, who serves on the five-member state Land Board, framed the dispute as both a legal and a cultural battle.

“This is a new front on a long-term dialogue in Montana about the future of Montana the future of the agriculture industry in Montana, and what’s appropriate use of state lands,” Brown said in an interview with NBC Montana.

Brown explained that state trust lands were set aside in Montana’s 1889 constitutional compact with Congress to raise revenue for public education.

“This obligation to manage these lands for the benefit of schools is an agreement between the people of Montana and Congress when we became a state,” Brown said.

He said the board has an obligation not only to raise money for schools but also to protect the long-term health of the land. The board oversees roughly 5.2 million acres of state trust lands, and principals from leases and other uses generated more than $80 million for Montana’s public schools in 2025, Brown said.

The American Prairie bison case tightened after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, under the Trump administration, moved in January to revoke the group’s bison grazing permits on federal land in Phillips County. That decision followed years of legal challenges by Montana’s governor and attorney general, who argued the earlier permits violated the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act because bison are wildlife, not production livestock.

American Prairie, meanwhile, has said it has grazed bison on public and state trust lands for more than two decades, insisting it follows all federal and state rules. The group argues that treating bison the same way it manages other production livestock should be enough to satisfy grazing law.

The herd has supplied hundreds of public harvests, and local nonprofits have raised more than $150,000 over the past decade by raffling donated bison, money that organizers say stays in rural communities.

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