Bison-Loving Billionaires Rile Ranchers With Land Grab in American West

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-22/bison-loving-billionaires-rile-ranchers-with-land-grab.html

Linda Poole can’t restrain herself when it comes to the most-polarizing topic in Montana: the reintroduction of purebred bison. As Poole sees it, the bison aren’t a cause. They’re cuddly fundraising mascots helping the American Prairie Reserve to raise money to advance its mission of land accumulation under the auspices of species preservation.

“If you can ignite people’s imaginations with free-roaming bison,” she says, “you get the bison to make your money.”

The bison in question are grazing about 20 miles (30 kilometers) away on ranch land owned by the nonprofit Prairie Reserve, which has attracted some $60 million from well-known Wall Street and Silicon Valley financiers, Bloomberg Pursuits will report in its Summer 2013 issue.

Its plan is to buy out Poole’s neighbors and assemble as much as 3.5 million acres (1.4 million hectares) of contiguous private and public land -- about a million acres more than Yellowstone National Park to the south -- in a bid to build an American Serengeti, where the deer and the antelope can again play free.


Matthew Brown/AP Photo
A heard of bison on the Fort Peck Reservation near Polar, Montana.

[demwing]

1. not a lind grab at all /nt

[TwilightGardener]

2. An attempt to turn the land back to the way it was, AND eventually open to the public?

I'm all for it. Having lived around ranchers for a while, I pretty much have no respect left for them--everything that isn't cattle is a nuisance to be eradicated. You can't be a good steward of the land with that mindset.