If you've been travelling across Central and Eastern Montana recently, you may have noticed the signs dotting the horizon which read, "Save the Cowboy, Stop the American Prairie Reserve."

What's that all about, some of you may be asking?

“This is everybody’s fight, not just ranchers. There’s a growing realization that they don’t want any of us living out here at all,” observes Dana Darlington. “They want the Big Open, a Big Empty.”

That's one of the lines in a must-read piece by Dave Skinner in RANGE Magazine's Fall 2019 issue. Skinner details what he describes as the financial difficulties facing the American Prairie Reserve (APR).

The APR is an organization funded by foreign billionaires that is looking to remove Montana farmers and ranchers off of the land, so they can have one large bison reserve stretching across a wide swath of the state.

Here's another line that sums up the threat posed by the American Prairie Reserve to Central and Eastern Montana:

“I’m concerned for my community as a whole, because I understand the impacts on the economy APR could have if its vision becomes reality,” Leah La Tray explains. “I’m also really concerned for my kids. If we lose that much land from our economy, we’ll lose their future, not just mine. These businesses, these towns within the influence of the reserve could dry up faster than anyone can now guess.”

Click here to read the full piece.

 

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