national bison range

The National Bison Range near Charlo has a way of anchoring itself in local’s sense of where they come from and who they are now.

Dave Stipe remembers as a kid taking visitors out to the range to see the herd.

"We grew up in our hot lunches eating the buffalo, the deer and the elk from the bison range," Stipe says.

Now, as a Lake County Commissioner, Stipe is part of a group working alongside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to outline how the Range and a few nearby wildlife refuges will be managed in the future.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is hosting a series of public meetings this week to hear input on five alternative plans for future management of the National Bison Range and nearby wildlife refuges.

Alternatives for two Comprehensive Conservation Plans range from continuing management as it is now,  to emphasizing visitor experience, to managing for key species, to managing for ecological sustainability, and working with tribal and local partners to increase connectivity between the refuges.

Federal wildlife officials have agreed to prepare a conservation plan for Montana's National Bison Range as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by an environmental group. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will prepare what’s called a comprehensive conservation plan, or CCP, for the Bison Range by 2023.

As winter comes to the National Wildlife Refuges of the Mission Valley, we begin to see a whole different group of visitors. And I’m not just referring to the human kind. Strange as it may seem, the National Bison Range, Ninepipes National Wildlife Refuge and Pablo National Wildlife Refuge, along with other lands in the Mission Valley, are where a number of birds choose to spend their winter.

More than half of Montana is currently in the grips of a severe drought, according to the latest numbers released by the U.S. Drought Monitor Thursday. And, as pastures shrivel up in the heat, ranchers are trucking in bales of hay and selling their cattle early.

But there’s another big, horned animal out there on the range. Bison.