American Prairie, Part Two - A Wilder Future

I'm Doug Tolman from Salt Lake City, Utah, and you're listening to the wild idea. Bill Hodge 0:01 Welcome to our stories for a wild and connected world what we call the wild idea podcast. I am one of your hosts, Bill Hodge, along with my co host, Anders Reynolds, we bring a passion for wild places and wild ideas at that intersection of wild nature and human nature together, we bring a combined 30 plus year track record of fighting for land protections and land stewardship today, part two of a exploration of the prairie, specifically American prairie, with members of the leadership team for this massive project in north central Montana. Anders, I think you will really love this conversation. Anders Reynolds 0:41 Oh, hi, Bill. I am really excited about today's guests. It's going to be a great conversation. But before we dive in, we've both been on the road lately, and I want to hear how your travels went. Bill Hodge 0:55 For the most part, uneventful and wonderful. Highlight was spending a couple of weeks among the Giants there on the California coast, with the redwoods. We also got to have an incredibly blustery three days on the Oregon coast. I mean, it was a true fall Oregon Coast week where we were dealing with sort of continuous 60 mile an hour gusts, and we certainly did stress test our camper for sure. But we also had some beautiful days in Moab and but I'm glad to be back home in Montana and back in the old home studio here. I know I saw a picture of you. Your travels involved a tux looking rather dapper there, buddy. Anders Reynolds 1:35 Thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah, I flew home to Arkansas last weekend to attend the wedding of my friends Katie and Marshall. Congrats, guys. I think by now, probably everyone listening knows that Bentonville, Arkansas has turned into this total mountain bike Mecca. I go there a lot, but this time was was a little different. As you mentioned, no helmet, no bib, just me and a tux. At Crystal Bridges, Museum of American Art, which is a world renowned art museum founded by Walmart heiress Alice Walton in 2011 bill, I don't think you've been there yet. Maybe you have, but if not, you've got to go. It challenges any collection of art you'd find at the Whitney or at LACMA. And it's all in this stunning nature, integrated architecture Moshe Safdie that almost brings the outside world inside the gallery. It's just remarkable. That's Bentonville for you these days, you can ride world class single track in the morning and be standing under the big glass pavilions at Crystal Bridges by evening. It's such a wild mix of outdoor grit and cultural polish, and somehow it just all works. But I'll say like you, had, you had the blustery weather. But my my trip back to DC, my flight was canceled, so I drove and I got to experience snow in early November as I as I climbed up the Cumberland Plateau on my way home. So Well, Bill Hodge 3:13 I'm glad you made it back safe. And again, you look rather dapper in your tuxedo there. As one of our friends pointed out, you look like you needed a monocle. I don't know. There was just something about the picture I saw that you definitely look like somebody who would have a monocle. And Bree speaking like this, I don't know you just you brought you brought to mind the Gilded Age, for sure. So Well, let's, let's move along to this great conversation about American prairie, an amazing place, an amazing set of ideas, certainly one giant idea of rewilding the prairie set there in north central Northeastern Montana. And I want to welcome to the show Allie Fox, who's the CEO of American prairie, and Danny Kinka, the director of rewilding. So first of all, Allie Danny, welcome to the wild idea podcast. Such an honor to talk about the work of American prairie. Danny Kinka 4:02 Thanks for having us pleasure to be here. Bill Hodge 4:05 Yeah, as a as a resident of Montana, I'm familiar with the place and and the work. Heck, I've even camped at Antelope Creek. But for our audience across the country, some who may not have come across the name Ali, would you outline what American prairie is as a place on the map, and maybe more, what the concept the organization represents? Sure. Alie Fox 4:26 Thanks. Bill Danny and I work for an organization that started nearly 25 years ago as a wild idea that is now a wild reality, and that was to protect a big swath of our grasslands and to build the Great grassland park that this country never built, to restore some semblance of the American Serengeti that we had across our temperate grasslands in the United States. And so when we now are a, as I mentioned, nearly quarter century old nonprofit or. Organization. And what we're doing is assembling a protected area, assembling a park, assembling a place that is open to the public, open for education and recreation, and where some day all the native wildlife that once was there will be back in abundance. And the model, it's a private lands conservation project. It's a public, private collaboration. So American prairie now manages about 600,000 acres of deeded, private land and public associated public lands. And if you were to stack that against the national parks in the lower 48 we would be 10th. So that's a heck of a lot of land, but the model is to buy private land linked together public existing public lands. There's a lot of existing public lands where we work, in north central Montana, roll out the welcome mat to the public for a variety of recreational opportunities we can talk about and and and to restore it, restore the habitat, make room for the restored species. But that's that's what American prairie does in a nutshell, Bill Hodge 6:08 what we love is wild ideas that become wild places, wild realities. And that's so exciting to hear. You know, in part one of the series on American prairie, we dug into the past of the organization with with Sean Garrity, the sort of leading founder of the organization, if you will. But, but in the present the organization has grown, like you mentioned, the size of the landscape and the in the 600,000 plus acres that you're managing, but it's also grown into quite the juggernaut. I wonder, Ally, if you could also give us an idea of sort of the scope of the organization that is engaged in all of this work, like the the education, the science, all the different things you guys are doing now. Alie Fox 6:44 Yeah, absolutely. So we are a mostly Montana based staff of about 50 people. We have a national board of directors. We have donors in literally all 50 states who support this initiative. And as you said, you know, land acquisition is just one part of what we do. It's certainly the foundation of what we do, but it's just one part of what we do. So we also run a program called the American prairie field school, where we have about 1000 students, all Montana students, coming out to experience American prairie, whether that's an overnight program where you camped at Antelope Creek, or a day program at our national Discovery Center, or a prairie ecology program that is delivered in classrooms. We have a whole visitation component to our business now. So we run a system of huts, back country, huts and campgrounds, and we have about about 6000 overnight visitors every year coming out and renting those facilities, using those facilities, whether they're coming in a camper like yours, or with a tent, or staying in these huts that can sleep eight to nine people, they're like nice Forest Service cabins, I kind of describe them. So we have lots of overnight visitors coming out to to experience a landscape. Sometimes those are active activities like horseback riding or riding bikes or hiking, floating the rivers that that flow through the region, or it's just standing outside and observing the darkest of night skies and waking up to the Meadowlarks and observing these huge, huge sending vistas. We also have a the largest team, of course, on American prairie's team is a conservation division, and they manage our conservation herd of nearly 1000 bison. This past month, we celebrated two decades of having bison on American prairie, and I certainly hope Sean told that story of bringing the first bison back, because that was one of the bravest conservation moves to do that less than a year into owning land those 16 intrepid animals and four intrepid gentlemen bringing those bison back to South Phillips County. So we have a world class bison management team. Danny leads our rewilding efforts. And those are lots of activities that he will he can elaborate on, but that is, you know, how do we, how do we improve the health of this landscape, and how do we restore natural systems and processes to the landscape, and then, you know, we are. We're building a national brand we need. We it's by necessity. We want Americans to know this place, to feel a sense of belonging and to want to support it and visit it, and want it to exist, whether they never support it or visit it. So a lot of what we're doing is building for the future, building a future donor base, building a future constituency of support in all the activities that we do on the ground. We desire to impact local livelihoods, and so we have community outreach teams that are you. Developing good relationships with with local communities and local business people and entrepreneurs, with the ranching community. We could talk about some of the programs we have working with with other landowners, but it's a multifaceted business. Now let it lead, as I said, by a group of about 50 staff. Anders Reynolds 10:18 You explicitly mentioned that RVs are welcome, but I think it's understood that tuxedos are also welcome on the prairie, yes, Bill Hodge 10:27 uncommon, but welcome. I'm picturing the mix of tuxedos and gumbo. We'll talk about gumbo a little bit later. Alie Fox 10:34 As long as you've appropriate footwear, something I read, don't wear your flip flops. Don't get bitten by a rattlesnake, but we care less. You know about what you're what you're actually wearing, pack layers, sunglasses, hat, you know, but, but, but tuxedo with with hiking boots and a raincoat, you could make it happen. Anders Reynolds 10:56 Danny, as Ali mentioned, your title is director of rewilding. What a cool, evocative phrase. I wish that were my title. But rewilding can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Bill and I had a conversation on this podcast back in April with Greg applet from The Wilderness Society on different ways of defining wildness in quotes that range from ecological restoration to letting nature take its own course. How do you define rewilding in the context of American prairie's work, and what does that look like on the ground in Montana? Danny Kinka 11:34 Thank you for that question. That's a great place to start, because, as you mentioned, rewilding is this really exciting phrase, this lightning rod for action, messages of hope in conservation, which there's far too few of. I'm very lucky and fortunate to have that in my title. I agree with you, but it's really confusing title, and it doesn't have a hard definition, and a lot of scientists don't like it, because scientists like hard definitions. What does it mean for us? Well, rewilding, I would posit, in North America, certainly for American prairie, is about creating the conditions to restore ecological functionality. Jargon, what does that mean? Ecological functionality is how this whole thing fits together. It's what allows the prairie to not fall apart when there's a drought or five years of drought in a row, what allows it to not fall apart when the cold wind comes in and knocks back a lot of the non indigenous wildlife that aren't necessarily built for that kind of cold what are the processes, the building blocks that support that functionality at an ecological level? And rewilding basically says, well, it's animals. It's animals that do that, and a lot of animals, meaningful abundance of animals. So that's kind of rewilding at its core is restoring ecological processes, primarily through the restoration of species and species abundance for us in North America, for American prairie, and for most people operating in North America or South America for that matter, rewilding is done largely indirectly. We're a nonprofit, non governmental organization. We're not a wildlife agency in the United States of America. Wildlife belong to all of us. They are a public trust resources. They belong to me as much as you, as much as all the listeners, right. They're managed for us in perpetuity by wildlife managers. In the case of non endangered species that state wildlife. State wildlife agencies in Montana. That's Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks. In the case of endangered or threatened species, that's the US Fish and Wildlife Service. So we don't have authority, nor do we seek to actually manage the public's wildlife. What we're seeking to do is create the conditions to allow wildlife to restore themselves. Two primary ways that we do that, from the bottom up and from the top down, bottom up, habitat restoration Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come a more robust, more intact prairie habitat has a capacity to support more wildlife. The wildlife restore themselves, and then the ecological processes come along with them. This is classic ecological restoration, in a way that I think a lot of people understand, right replanting the prairie, doing weed mitigation, doing beaver mimicry in the streams and the creeks to, you know, create the conditions that would bait beavers back in, so the beavers can manage those rivers and streams the way that they have since time immemorial. The other way we do that is top down, right? How do you raise the ceiling for wildlife? And that's a human game. That's human dimensions, that's sociology, that's cultural anthropology, that's how do you make a world in which coexistence with a wilder landscape, a wilder frontier, is not only permissible, is not only tolerable, but desired by the people that live in those communities. Because ultimately, we will have as much wildlife in our backyards, in our neighborhoods, in our states as we are willing to support. So American prairie is actively involved in providing economic incentives for tolerating wildlife and creating other types of programs that make it easier to and even desirable to live in a wilder world, a wilder frontier, if you will, through human wildlife coexistence tools, other things like that. Anders Reynolds 14:57 Believe it or not, that's not the first time ecological function has made an appearance on our show, Bill and I, at one point, spoke with the ethicist Christopher Preston about the debate over genetic purity versus ecological function. I guess you know him, Danny Kinka 15:13 and we're featured in his book. He just spoke at the Discovery Center, yeah. Oh, that's great. Anders Reynolds 15:17 The idea that, like, what really matters is, not whether an animal is, quote, unquote, pure bison, for example, but whether it fulfills an ecological role on the landscape. It feels like that's what you're you're talking about, and it might be how American prairie sort of thinks about that question when it comes to bison herds and broader restoration goals, Danny Kinka 15:35 it's worth adding here. I suspect your listeners are somewhat aware of this, right? Rewilding exists on kind of a continuum, right? The story I told about rewilding, and this is American prairie's model, and I think this is as good of a single definition as you will find for rewilding amongst practitioners, involves ecological processes restored through abundant wildlife, right, in North America, and, for the most part, in South America, so in the New World, the last time this place was wild was, like a couple 100 years ago, maybe less in some places, right? We have the luxury in the western hemisphere of doing rewilding with just native species, non extinct animals that already exist in place in too low of an abundance. That is very much a classic model of rewilding, and I would argue, a very Western Hemisphere centric model of rewilding. Does that mean what they're doing over at the NEPA state or at the assortus place and in the Netherlands, is not rewilding? No, it is. But those places haven't been wild in 1000s of years, and most of the animal engine that drives that ecological functionality there is long, long gone. So they're experimenting with novel ecosystems and novel species, yada yada, yada. It's interesting. It is not what we do. We don't have to. We're lucky and very fortunate to not have to think about that kind of rewilding. Anders Reynolds 16:48 So Danny, let's switch gears just a little bit. American Prairie's lands are surrounded by major federal holdings like the Charles M Russell National Wildlife Refuge and some other public lands. Could you talk a little about how your team collaborates or coordinates with federal partners? Like, what's that relationship like, both day to day and in terms of, like, the long term vision you guys have? Danny Kinka 17:13 Yeah, I mean, a short way of thinking about this is American prairie is kind of, in a way, seeking to, at least, where I'm sitting, make the Charles and Russell National Wildlife Refuge bigger than it is. You have, I think, the second largest national wildlife refuge in the lower 48 that exists in the grasslands. Ali mentioned that if we were a national park, we'd be the 10th largest national park. Well, the Charles Russell National Wildlife Refuge alone is the largest protected area in the temperate grasslands of North America in the Great Plains, you add 600,000 plus acres of American prairie deeded in leased lands, and now it's even bigger, and still the largest protected area in the northern Great Plains. And so working with the CMR is largely about just like, how do we build a buffer around the CMR, a place where like wildlife can be tolerated, accepted, ecological processes can be stored, restored beyond the boundaries of the refuge itself. Now, that's a National Wildlife Refuge, right? That's the Charles and Russell National Wildlife Refuge. It is, more or less explicitly there to protect wildlife, as the name suggests. Beyond that, there's a lot of other public lands in the region as well, and part of why American prairie exists where it does today is because of the preponderance of public lands, basically, most of the landscape is public. It's not all a National Wildlife Refuge. Outside of the refuge, it's mostly Bureau of Land Management, land which we have working relationships as well. In particular, we hold the grazing lease to quite hundreds of 1000s of public lands acres in the form of the Bureau of Land Management, and to a lesser extent, Montana DNRC lands as well. And so our working relationship with the Bureau of Land Management Agency is mostly as a lessee of the public's lands. We when we can graze bison on those public lands as the our preferred indigenous large bodied grazing animal that evolved with the Great Plains and therefore is very suitable for helping to restore it, and in the cases where we can't or it doesn't make sense to at least for now, we sublease those lands to cattle producers, basically. So we're using cattle, again, as a restoration tool on the lands that don't have bison on them, either deeded lands or the public lands, mostly Bureau of Land Management lands Bill Hodge 19:19 Ali hearing Danny talk about that relationship with government neighbors. I'm curious about the state of the relationship with the private landowners out in the breaks. Like, if you have lived in Montana for any length of time, you've probably seen the billboards, you know, save a cowboy stop American prairie. I watched the segment on American prairie where you sort of own the language that we use in conservation can matter, and sometimes can come back at you at 100 miles an hour. So, Ali, I'm kind of curious. Can you describe the current state of play with landowners, and I guess, with the state as well out there? Alie Fox 19:54 Yeah, so you're referring to a question I think that I got on a 60 Minutes segment that. Aired in 2022 and 2023 which I encourage your listeners to watch. It was great to work with that crew. And in it, the question was about, did that kind of save the cowboy language come out of language that American prairie had used, and we had used language of save an ecosystem? What we meant was this place is valuable that, you know, temperate grasslands around the world are the least protected, the least protected and most threatened biome, less than 5% of temperate grasslands worldwide, or any sort of, any form of permanent protection. We have this treasure, right? We have this treasure of native prairie in north central Montana, and it is worth it is worth preserving. It's worth protecting. It's worth keeping intact. One of the reasons American prairie works in this area is because it is almost entirely native prairie that has been well stewarded by by the landowners who have been stewarding it for, you know, the past 100, 150, years. So save an ecosystem was it was with shorthand, but it was perceived by some of our neighbors as you save, say from what? Say from me, say from my management, say from my communities. That was not at all what what we meant. And I think, you know, I think what we all want in this area is ecological and social resilience. And there have been a lot of change on this, on this landscape, and we have a lot in common, honestly with our neighbors about what we want. We want strong and healthy and diverse, small communities. We want this native prairie that the prairie right side down. We want wildlife. We may differ about the degree of wildlife we want, but we want. We want wildlife. We treasure the quiet, we treasure the openness. We treasure, the this, this ecosystem. So I would say that, you know, building being transparent in our in our communications, being transparent about how we about our goals, about how we manage our bison herd, being open, being present in the local communities where we work. That's a that's something we're committed to, that's something we have been been doing from varying degrees since day one, but we've certainly made a lot more investments in the last, I'd say, six or seven years, in our community outreach and programs like the American prairie field school, programs like our national Discovery Center, which is a just basically our headquarters in Lewistown, Montana, as our main gateway community, that we took 120 year old building right on Main Street and turned it into our national Discovery Center, which is really visit Visitor Center, Community Center staff headquarters. We have 14 people based out of that, that office. Now we have programming that happens every single month there. It's open to public it's a place you can come and get a map and get some advice when you drag your camper over there, Bill from the western part of the state. We're listening. We're communicating more. We're aiming to be more present at public meetings. We're aiming to demonstrate that we want the existence of this place to have a positive impact on local communities and local livelihoods, a social and economic impact. And it's not smooth sailing. It's not without its its challenges still, but I think we're on the right trajectory in building stronger relationships with our neighbors. Bill Hodge 23:39 I mean, it sure feels like it it also it's it's a given that if you're going to do something ambitious, you're going to make people uncomfortable and and yet, it does feel like, from our conversations with Sean, from the early years to the work that you guys are doing today, as you've expanded your scope and scale, and I don't necessarily mean an acreage, but like your engagement in the community that you just outlined, I think, of course, that's going to always say, sometimes can pull out the crazy. You know, I look at the letter that the governor and the federal delegation recently sent, and I think it's not reflective of the actual day to day interactions it seems like you guys have with the working ranchers in north central Montana. Alie Fox 24:18 Yeah, I don't think it is either I'm gonna leave it there. But I think the other thing that American prairie is increasingly recognized and acknowledged for is a public access that we provide. You live in the state, you know that public access is treasured, and we're getting there's less and less of it, right? There's less access to private lands. There's less access through private lands to public lands. And American prairie is one of the top participants in block management. The state top 10 participant, 80,000 acres enrolled. We bought the anchor Ranch, 67,000 acre property in late summer, opening up a stretch of whole. Long, long contested road, the bull whacker Road, three and a half miles, that blocked access to 50,000 acres American prairie. Firmly believes in public access. We welcome the public. We don't charge we well, we roll out the welcome mat. And I think that that core value of Montanans in people see us living that value, and I think that's part of the narrative that isn't captured in some of that resistance you talked about. Bill Hodge 25:35 Yeah, thanks for sharing that context. Because I think, I think if somebody heard a 60 second news story about that letter about the bison herd, or about the lease, the leases to public lands would not have a full picture of the work that you guys have done in the communities, for the land, for the people. I keep hearing community over and over and over again from both of you and with the partners like the state and the federal agencies that surround you. And so thank you for sort of clarifying that I want to talk about other neighbors, to include the original stewards of the land, the indigenous tribes that have been a part of the function of the prairie for eternal generations. And in what form Ali does the relationship between the tribal nations and American prairie take these days? Alie Fox 26:20 Yeah, I'm happy to take this one. I'm happy to have Danny add his perspective as you know, as literally, a neighbor now to the ANI Nakota community, but we work with a number of indigenous nations along along the High Line. There primarily our oldest relationships since really day one, are with Ani and Nakota community at Fort Belknap. We are now across the fence, fence line, neighbors with them. And you know those relationships began as as neighbors. They began with recognizing our shared desire to see wildlife back, our shared desire to restore species like bison and swift fox and black footed ferrets, and our shared desire to see, you know, humans and wildlife thriving on the landscape. So we've had a long standing relationship with ani Nakota tours and a variety of programs under that umbrella that create job opportunities for for local guides in their in the region, so that we share a lot of the same values. They're really productive and positive relationships. We work with Rocky Boy, we work with Fort Peck. We've distributed about 600 bison now, I believe, to other conservation herds. We've got, as I mentioned, about 950 bison on our properties. But when we have excess bison, we look for other conservation herds to contribute them to, and that's primarily through tribal herds. We've helped start a number of tribal herds. We've augmented. You know, augmented populations exchange in that genetics as part of being part of a larger bison conservation community in North America. So that's a couple of examples of how we work together. But happy to have Danny jump in as well. Danny Kinka 28:15 Yeah. Oh, man, so many stories to share, but most of which are not mine to share. But yeah, as Ali pointed out, I mean, my like, closest grocery store and gas station now are in the town of Hayes on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. So very much, a neighbor to that community. Now my my daughter's in daycare there as we speak. It's a just sticking to what I know here in terms of rewilding. I think, to add on to what Ali was saying about the relationships. I mean, it's like, I think sometimes what gets lost. They're an excellent partner in many, many ways, and have been for a long time just talking about Fort Belknap, but that to some extent, expands to Fort Peck and Rocky Boy and even Blackfeet, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But in my line of work, and in terms of rewilding. Yes, American prairie is this big, exciting rewilding project in central Montana, but we actually exist in a context where that is not necessarily a new idea. Indigenous peoples don't call it rewilding. Typically, they have different words for it. But if we just focus on the Fort Belknap community, again, they restored bison in the late 70s, in the early 80s, ages ago, I wasn't born yet, when they started rewilding or rematriating. Oftentimes, they prefer bison. In the 90s, they reintroduced black footed ferrets. In the last several years, they've been reintroducing swift fox. These peoples, these communities, have been quietly restoring prairie wildlife, Prairie ecology doing a version, their version of rewilding for a very long time, and since long before American prairie got here. So we have fruitful collaborations when it comes to ecological restoration, sharing bison from one herd to another, ensuring, you know, genetic robustness amongst all of the herds, finding places to put conservation animals when there's not. Enough room for them in one place or another, helping to start new conservation herds in the case of the Rocky Boy tribe. But also it's worth mentioning that I learned as much or more about rewilding from my tribal neighbors as well. I certainly learned more from them than they do from us. And going back to your original question, Anders about what rewilding means at American prairie, without going into too much detail, I would say that we learn and have structured our model of rewilding very closely to what we feel is kind of an indigenous perspective along towards ecological restoration. Anders Reynolds 30:31 Allie, I had it in my notes bring up something that you brought up yourself a little bit earlier, and that's the announcement this fall that American prairie had purchased the anchor ranch and several other properties in Blaine County. The headlines at the time mentioned both restored public access to public lands, as you just mentioned, and a continued commitment to agricultural production, which I find really interesting, like I said. I know you talked about this a little bit already, but could you tell our audience just a little bit more about that acquisition, what it means for the community and how it fits into your broader vision of restoration? Alie Fox 31:09 Yeah, absolutely. It's been a banner year for American prairie. It hasn't been a banner year for a lot of organizations, and so I say that humbly and gratefully and in recognition of all the support that we get from around the country. But we've closed five properties already this year, and we've we've added about 75,000 acres to American prairie's habitat base in 2025 so we crossed the 500,000 acre threshold in late in December of last year, and then crossed a 600,000 acre threshold in in August, September of this year. So really huge kudos to our team, because they were incredibly busy. Three transactions closed in three months this summer and and sometimes summer can be a quieter a quieter time, so a lot of work went into that. But the ranch you're referring to is called the anchor ranch. It's in the Missouri River breaks. So it is north of the river, kind of off the southeastern corner of Fort Belknap. And it is, it's, it's breaks and prairie that sort of rolls into the foothills of the bearspaw mountains. It is 67,000 acres, about 22,000 I believe, of that is deeded land, and 45,000 acres of leased land. So American prairie, second largest purchase in our history of 48 purchases. This particular, this particular Ranch, as I mentioned, was there was was closed off to the to the public, and there was a stretch of private land along a road called the bullwhacker road that accessed about 50,000 acres of land in the upper Missouri Breaks National Monument. So this has been decade and a half couple decade long fight about the status of that road, but we closed that property, and the first thing our team went and did was open the gate and take down the No Trespassing signs. Take down lots and lots and lots of No Trespassing signs, actually. And so that sort of commitment to opening up the access to the public land was something that we did right away, as we do with all of our properties, in terms of what activities will be allowed on the private lands. We take a little time to just get to know the property. These properties often close really quickly. And so we, we have a group within the organization, park at the Public Access and Recreation Committee, and they are the ones who, who, who come out, go out and study these properties and figure out, figure out our public access policies for them. So they will, they're hard at work at that and and that will be that will be coming out in in the next in the next year, I would say we are continuing to lease this property to the former lessees, to local brothers who agreed to continue to work with us, and we look forward to to working with them there. They'll continue to run run their cattle on this property. I think back to the letter that you mentioned from the governor and the delegation. I think one thing I really want to point out is that American Prairie has 950 bison on our properties, on two of our properties, while we hope that those herds grow over time. The reality is that we have 950 bison on less than 100,000 acres. On more than 500,000 acres. We have 7000 head of care. Cattle that are grazing from 25 local ranching families. So American Prairie has a lot of partners, business partners, in in the agricultural community, and we are absolutely supporting local agriculture, not only through and the agricultural ecosystem, economic ecosystem, I would say, not only through our activities, but through those of our lessees. So whether it's, you know, fencing contractors or pickup trucks or other equipment that's all bought locally, we are an economic contributor to, to the region. The sky is not falling. Bill, Bill Hodge 35:37 yeah, exactly in a very large way, you're a contributor to the contributor to that economy of north central Montana. I want to come back to celebrating 20 years of the herd. But Danny, can can you tell us about the myriad of species that live out on the prairie, and how the work of American prairie feeds into thriving ecosystems, like there's, there's way more than bison, even though that seems to be, obviously, we all have an interest in it, right? It's a charismatic species. For the lack of a better term, I think I'm getting tired of the term charismatic, but it's, it's a, it's a species that carries a lot of symbolism with it, but there's so many other you know, you talked about the black footed ferrets or but like, can you talk about that and Danny? Maybe even talk about the relationships? Back to Ali's point, about working with these ranchers, the ways in which you're contributing to those working ranches that have a wildlife component to it. Would you? Could you talk about that? Danny, Danny Kinka 36:27 yes, where to start? So many animals to name? Yeah, bison are the obvious one. I don't think we've mentioned it yet, but bison are classified as livestock in the state of Montana. So all that stuff I said before about rewilding, how it's done indirectly. The exception, the big exception, is bison. We own our bison. They're private property. We don't really think of them that way, but that is technically the case. They're not managed by wildlife agency. They're managed by the Department of livestock. We are a private owner of bison, and can put them to work as the ecosystem engineer that they are in, the cultural touchstone that they are in terms of rewilding the prairie. In many ways, the bison do more towards for rewilding the prairie than me or my team can in addition to bison. And maybe the best way to kind of work through this is to think about those other kind of keystone species, or ecosystem engineers. In our case, these these animals that kind of punch above their weight, particularly for a right rewilder The animals that are really your you know best employees from our from a rewilding department perspective, right? The bison are one of those. The black tailed prairie dog is another. This kind of very much an unsung hero of the prairies. Everybody knows about bison. Not nearly as many people have the affection for Prairie dogs that they do for bison, but this communal rodent is doing an incredible amount to support prairie biodiversity, supporting more than 100 other species, everything from badgers and coyotes down to black widow spiders and Prairie rattlesnakes and burrowing owls and yada yada yada, on and on and on, directly or indirectly, they are the only food source for black footed ferrets. If you ever want to live in a world that has real, actual black footed ferrets living in the wild and not dying out, you need a lot more prairie dogs, but it also supports things like ferruginous hawks, which eat all kinds of other stuff, but really like to eat prairie dogs. And in a world where prairie dogs occupy probably 2% of their historic range in North America, it's easy to imagine that we probably have many, many, multiple orders of magnitude fewer ferruginous hawks than we would have 200 years ago. And I think that's a tragedy. So Prairie dogs are another animal that we think about a lot in a key component of our rewilding plan. The other ecosystem engineer that everybody knows about, because they're the first ones you learn about, if you've ever learned about ecosystem engineers, is beavers. Nature's hydrologists, the reconstructors and the maintainers of all the prairie streams. Again, the best employees on my team, no, no disrespect guys, but like, the ones that we are really trying to get out there, because they don't clock in and clock out, right? You know, like my team goes to bed at some point. They have lives outside of work. The beavers don't, the bison don't. The prairie dogs don't. They are constantly, day and night, working to restore the prairie in meaningful ways. So Beaver, what more can be said about beaver. I think everybody kind of knows what beaver do and why they're important out there. But beyond just those kind of ecosystem engineers like our co workers and rewilding out there, in terms of just spectacle species, I'm trying to avoid the word charismatic bill for your sake, but like in terms of that, like charismatic megafauna, mini fauna, whatever, Ava fauna, there's all kinds of cool stuff that's running around on the prairie. There's just too little of everything. Pronghorn are an incredible species that has basically survived the last big extinction die off that happened in North America. That is an ancient animal that, like a shark in the ocean, has remained unchanged on the landscape for way longer than the last day. Sage, they are truly an American species. You won't find them anywhere else. There used to be like 14 species of pronghorn. Now there's one their nearest living relatives are, like giraffes and tapirs, which gives you an idea of like, how disconnected they are from the rest of the like, biodiversity on the planet. Pronghorn are really unique and special and interesting animals that you can come see today or tomorrow or. For next month or next year at American prairie, just about any time. We wish there was more, but there's a lot here now, mule deer, whitetail deer are also abundant. There's far too few elk in the region, but they're recovering. It's one of the few places where there's it's kind of a stronghold for sage grouse. It's an excellent place to come see this beautiful, incredible wildlife spectacle of lecking around March. Both sharp tail and sage grouse exist out here. That's an incredible thing to see, if you've never seen it. And for a species that's declining across its range in North America, this is one of the places where they actually have a bit of a stronghold. I'd also be remiss I talk so much about these big, charismatic megafauna, and for good reason, I love them. They're interesting to see. And yes, you know grizzly bears are walking back onto the prairie, and that's incredible. But for you, for your listener, for their children, I'm the dad of a four year old girl, there is so much cool wildlife that exists now in probably slightly close to meaningful abundance that we just gloss over all the time when we're talking about bison and grizzly bears. Tiger salamanders exist out here. You can find them. Greater shorthorned Lizards exist out here. You can find them. They're hard to see because they're out at night, but bat diversity is actually really high out here. Download the app that, like, you know, records the frequencies as they're flying around. You can see all of that at night. If you come camp at the campground, you will see the shift change right between, like, you know, barn swallows out during the daytime eating the mosquitoes to the night jars coming out at like, the like, you know, Twilight hours to do the same thing, and then they clock out and the bats come in and start doing the same thing. There's incredible wildlife spectacles that exist today, while we do the rewilding of the kind of, like, biggest, most, maybe showy, missing species that are out there. I got on a tear. You had some other part of the question, and now I've completely forgotten it, because I just kept talking about animals. Bill Hodge 41:40 No, I love it. I just, I'm like, coming out of my seat. I'm so excited with your energy and your excitement for it. And I will say a shameless you set up a shameless plug for me because you talk about your strongest, hardest working employees, the beavers. We have an episode coming up in just a couple of weeks with Ben Goldfarb, who wrote the book eager. So we're gonna do a deep dive on Beaver. So if you want to know more about those hard workers, folks, make sure you you download the episode with Ben that's coming out in a couple of weeks. The thing Danny that I did ask about you hadn't touched on yet is the, I'll call it, the wildlife capture relationship you have with the local ranchers. I mean, this goes back to the way you guys are working with those on the land, and that's, and that's that work you're doing. Could you, could you describe out what that is? Danny Kinka 42:28 Yeah, so one of the ways I talked about kind of top down rewilding or increasing, you know, raising the ceiling for wildlife, one of the ways you do that, one of the easy, well understandable ways to do that, is providing economic incentives for wildlife tolerance. So through a program we have at American prairie called Wild sky, we partner with a number of active working landscapes. In fact, not all of them are ranchers, but most of them are ranchers. I think the program has something like 21 participants on 85,000 acres now, some on tribal land, much off of tribal land in the surrounding area, around the prairie. We're trying to do is create, incentivize, a way for producers to think differently about the habitat that their lands provide. I've never met a rancher in all my years of working at American prairie and before that, working in, you know, working landscapes during my PhD, I've never met a rancher that didn't like animals. It's largely more about like, how what compatibility looks like, and oftentimes, unfortunately, whether real or perceived wildlife, thriving wildlife, is seen as impacting the bottom line of these ranching operations. So the wild sky thesis, very simply says like, well, what if we just, as a nonprofit organization, said we will pay you for wildlife tolerance. We'll set up camera traps on your land, and every time you get a picture of a coyote, we'll just give you $25 if you get a picture of a black bear, we'll give you 300 if a wolf or a grizzly bear actually shows up on your ranch, we'll give you $500 every single time you get a picture of one of those animals. And the list goes on and on and on. There's all kinds of species that we pay for there, right? And the idea is we're not telling people how to manage their land. They can do whatever they want. They can shoot those coyotes if they choose to, and presumably, if it is legal for them to do so at the time, but the implicit understanding is, you get less pictures of coyotes if you shoot the coyotes are on your property, and therefore get fewer payments. Right? So it's, it's all upside, just to say that, like we want to show, basically prove to these landowners that the wildlife that they love, that they enjoy, which gives meaning to their lives on the prairie comes with value, not just at cost. It's not something that they have to tolerate to enjoy. It's something that they can actually think about being a component of their operation. One of the ways that I think we try to bridge the gap here, and interesting examples of how this works, right, is that, yes, you can pay people to say, like, we would like to just pay you for presence of wildlife on your property. And we think that that goes somewhere. What we've actually seen some of our participants do in the past is maybe partially through the incentives that we're able to provide through wild sky, but also in terms of, like, maybe relieving a little bit of the anxiety, the pressure that, like, a producer. Might have, like during calving season, staying up all night, wondering if the calves are, like, safe out on the range or something like that, if there's predators in the past, or yada yada yada. By removing some of that anxiety, hopefully, through these like, small but meaningful economic incentives, we've allowed some creativity to crop up. And so these are ideas that come from our producers, our partners, not us, not American prairie. These not my ideas, are not the staff's ideas, but we've had producers say, Well, hey, I outfit my property during hunting season, and that in some years, is a big source of income for me, right? I mean, I might make as much money from outfitting for six weeks as I do for, you know, 52 weeks a year being a cattle producer. But that bed and breakfast, that operation, those tents that I house my, you know, my hunting guests in or whatever they are dormant for most of the year. We had a producer that's a member of a long term partner through wild sky. Say, what if we operated those all year long, and it's outside of the hunting season? What if we actually supported wildlife tourism on our property as a way to diversify the economic income of our ranch? Right? People come to hunt here, wild sky, American prairie, these people tell us that there's, there's value to having this wildlife on the landscape. I've always liked seeing those animals on the landscape. Would people come and stay in our little Airbnb wall tent outside of hunting season if I drive them up to like the mountain pasture to go see the black bears and the mountain lions that are up there? And the answer seems to be yes, because they because they've been doing this for a while now, and so this is really the goal of programs like wild sky, is to use economics, economic incentives, cash incentives, to kind of bridge a gap between, you know, what is tolerated and then what is embraced. Anders Reynolds 46:38 Ali, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you a question that I also asked Sean Garrity when he appeared on the podcast, and that has to do with like the moment in time we're in and whether or not you believe that we're approaching a moment when conservation efforts might finally be matching the ecological scale of the challenges that we're facing, or does a significant gap still remain between our ambitions and the resources we have to achieve them? And you know, in your view, is, is American prairie pushing the field forward by prioritizing the creation of one large connected ecosystem, or is it? Is it maybe reflecting a direction that conservation groups were already thinking about moving toward? Alie Fox 47:32 That was a great multi part question. So I have been with American prairie for 18 years now, Sean hired me 18 years ago, and I've been CEO for nearly eight and on the good news side of that ledger, I would say that I think grasslands are more appreciated. I felt like for years and years and years, we were marketing grasslands as much as we were American prairie, and whether that's for the carbon they sequester, or the wildlife or their their value as an ecosystem is increasingly seen and I think that's a good thing. I think more philanthropic dollars are flowing to the environment into conservation than they were two decades ago. I think that's a good thing as well. I don't think at all the number of efforts, whether they're public or private or public and private collaborations around the world, match the need at all. No, I don't. And I think that efforts like American prairie, we have peers around the world, and we have other organizations that are smaller and newer, that are looking to us, not just to us, but some of our more, longer tenured peers. We, Danny and I are privileged to be, to be part of a group of sort of large landscape conservationist rewilders globally, we have colleagues that we work with in Argentina and Chile, from the organization through wilding Argentina and Chile, colleagues in Kazakhstan, working on a huge grassland project there. And what we are increasingly seeing is you know that the models differ, of course, depending on the geography and and the biome, but the there this emphasis on larger landscapes for wildlife and building those constructing these models such that they're benefiting human communities too. That conservation idea, I think, is having a moment, and it's not because of us, but we're proud to be we're proud to be part of it. Bill Hodge 49:52 I think that is an absolutely wonderful place for us to kind of put a nice exclamation mark on this conversation and Ali and Danny, I just want to say thanks to both of you for coming on, for inspiring us with the work of American prairie, for having me dreaming of the day that we can have a safari where Anders is in his tuxedo and his and his patent leather shoes, but it has to be a really good gumbo day. And for those listening that don't know, the soils out on the prairie after a lot of rain, literally turned into a material that will suck the shoes right off your feet. I'll just put it that way. And I just, I'm excited about getting Anders out onto the ground eventually, and I just want to say thanks to both of you for coming on. It's just been a great conversation with both of you. Yeah. Anders Reynolds 50:42 Allie Danny, this has been really exciting and really informative and really, really fun. And personally, I take joy in any podcast that begins with my being labeled dapper but ends with Bill Hodge and charismatic being pulled out of the same sentence. So this feels like a big win for me. Thanks for that. Bill Hodge 51:06 Yes. Thanks guys. Danny Kinka Thank you so much pleasure to be with you. Alie Fox Thanks very much for having us, guys, thank you. Bill Hodge Coming up on the wild idea podcast, as we shift through the seasons to a time of reflection and traditions, we'll bring you a collection of stories from the natural world, stories of connection tradition and something deeper. We also G and ha with mule dragger, a wilderness thinker, as much as he is a wilderness Packer. And we talk about wildlife connectivity with the journalist Ben Goldfarb. If you like the podcast, we hope you'll do two things besides subscribing. And do please subscribe on the podcast player of your choice, but give us a review in your favorite podcast app, and we hope you'll take a minute to recommend this to a friend or a colleague. Heck, send them. Send them a link, if you don't mind, and if you want to go deeper, and all we've talked about here today with Ali and Danny, you can find all of that in our newsletter and on our website, and you can sign up for that newsletter at the wild idea.com and we look forward to seeing all of you on down the trail. Speaker 3 52:01 The wild idea is a production of wild idea media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bren Russell at podlad Digital, support by Holly wilkeshevsky at daypack digital. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John skihan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find the wild idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai