Last Wild Places: American Prairie Reserve | National Geographic

Everything that is in this creation is put here for a specific purpose. All the things that fly, all of the things that swim, all of the things that crawl, they all have a special place in our culture. It is our responsibility as the two-leggeds to try to foster good relationships with the earth. It's beginning now. I've taught for 17 years here at the high school and also in the grade school, and I teach community language classes. I am a firm believer in our Indian way of life. We've been working diligently to try to revitalize our language and reintroduce it to our children.

"Hey Dez, how good is it, my man? Good new info here, son."

My ancestors were the Nakota people of the prairie, from the Great Rockies to the Great Lakes. We consider this area in between to be the land that was meant for our people. "Where you've been all my life? Does just now wake up?" Yeah, we thrived in the country that we lived in. So remember that all of these things so far in the story, they're all in reference to heaven. How it is in heaven, the June berries are heavy, and the buffalo are fat, and the grass is tall and it kicks running, and the teepees are white, and everything's good. People look young, look like you guys. This is all in reference to end in heaven. The buffalo, he was the image, a symbol of God to our people because everything we knew came from the buffalo.

When the western people came, they took away the buffalo from our people. They brought in the cattle, they brought in the farming, the mining, the fishing, the logging, all of these kind of things.

As far as the American Prairie Reserve goes, in my mind, what they're attempting to do is one of the more impressive things that's happened in this country.

I grew up in Great Falls, Montana. My parents used to bring me out, and we would camp right on the prairie. Seeing this landscape was very exciting and wide open with possibilities. It's not hard to put together in your imagination what could be here again. The idea, the mission at American Prairie Reserve is to create the largest wildlife reserve so far, ever created in the lower 48 states. Open it up to the public, save it for future generations.

We're creating the reserve out of existing intact native prairie. There's very little of this left around the world where you can reassemble something like we're talking about here. The best thing about this is we don't have to buy it all. Much of the land that we are pulling together to be a part of this model already belongs to the public. What we're doing is gluing these parcels together with pieces of private land, taking down the fences, bringing all the wildlife back so we have intact prairie that looks like it has for thousands of years.

People are excited about the heritage of wildlife that they have read about, and they want to be a part of saving that as a part of American history. But some people in the local area think that this may not be the best use of land out here, that perhaps this land should only be used for food production. So we wanted to start something that benefits local people in the work that they're choosing to do.

Ranching has been in my family probably about 100 years. I'm the fifth generation rancher here. You always hear the term that stuff gets in your DNA, I guess, and that's probably what it is. It's just in my blood. My dad, he bought this when he was a young man in his 20s. We've scattered his ashes here. I'll probably get scattered here too, I suppose.

I had essentially grown up about an hour north of here and moved back here, doing our thing. I told her to move back here and live a nice quiet leisure country life. She told me I get bored easy, so I'm trying not to let her get bored. I'm not bored.

We joke sometimes when we're having coffee on our front porch that people pay to go on vacation to live the lifestyle we live. You know, there are days that it's hard, but there are more days that it's really nice. I think there's constantly threats facing ranchers. They're afraid of getting diseases from the buffalo. They're afraid of predators or land grab. It just seems like every time you turn around, the deck is stacked against you.

So when I heard about American Prairie Reserve, my first opinions were very negative. I was very much against them. It's like, go away, leave us alone. That's not how we live here. But as I started educating myself, I got involved with Wild Sky Ranch, which is a branch of the APR. I saw it as an opportunity to make a few bucks, to utilize these conservation practices, whether it be wildlife-friendly fencing or camera traps.

Once a guy sets up cameras and then, you know, you get a picture of a mountain lion or a bear, you get a couple hundred bucks, and that adds up over the course of the year. That helps buy hay or part of a vet bill, but definitely helps my bottom line. So far, the camera traps have caught bears, mountain lions, and to my knowledge, I have not lost a single calf.

"Man, these coyotes are gonna make me rich."

Yeah, so I think we are living in harmony, living in balance, and wildlife is thriving, and they're doing well. I'm gonna have to go get more clothes on; the wind's got a bite to it.

To leave this land as a legacy is extremely important. Ranching is evolving and it has to evolve. I think if we're not very mindful of the connection that our society has to have with nature, it'll be too late.

It's funny how much green is still out there. I know that's the other reason we're having problems catching the bison. To me, bison are really interesting in that they fit so well in this place. This guy got mud on the truck. Their name brought back simply to fulfill their ecological role, their ecological niche in that landscape.

What we're gonna do today is we are gonna sort the cows from the bulls. Number one priority is for everyone to leave here safe. We are relocating bison to Fort Belknap. Fort Belknap is a great receiving site because of the social and cultural values Native American tribes have for bison.

So kind of how it's going to work, essentially we're sorting out four cows out of here and we want to get them separated from the bulls. So we will be running some animals into this pen. When bison need to be relocated to another property or conservation organization or tribe, it starts with capturing the bison off of large pastures and then sorting them into different pens depending on their destination, age, and sex.

"I'm gonna have to tie the thing to your hand."

All right, once they're sorted, they will be shipped and loaded onto a truck and hauled to their destination where they will be released and able to be bison again.

There's some things that there's just really no words for at times, to see them back here, you know, places where their ancestors roamed long ago. You know, and to see them in place is pretty, pretty cool.

There are more and more buffalo that are coming back to the places that they belong. It does my heart good; it does my mind good because as the buffalo grow stronger, my people grow stronger.

We're living in this time to see a lot of those things come to pass where our people are going to find themselves and become a vibrant, thriving people again.

"I think a person is foolish to think that they could ever own the land, and those are things that our people have said from the beginning of time. There's an old song among our people. It says, my relatives, don't be foolish. Death is a hard thing, but the earth is the only thing that lives forever."

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