Is American Prairie Private or Public
By Terry L. Anderson
Professor Emeritus, Montana State University
The nonprofit American Prairie recently announced the purchase of 2,083 acres of wetlands in Phillips County, Montana. The property was privately owned but already protected by a conservation easement held by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. Because the easement already limited development and the land is not especially suited for ranching, the additional conservation value of the purchase is uncertain. What it clearly does is add another asset to American Prairie’s expanding land portfolio.
The announcement highlights a larger question: What kind of institution is American Prairie?
The organization describes itself as a nonprofit public–private partnership supported by donors across the country, about 20 percent of whom it says live in Montana. A recent article in The New Republic described the project quite differently, calling it “an entirely market-based approach” that buys land from willing sellers using private donations rather than government funds.
The reality is more complicated. American Prairie does operate through voluntary exchange when it buys land. But its funding depends heavily on charitable donations that qualify for federal tax deductions. Those deductions reduce federal tax revenues, which ultimately must be offset by reduced public spending, higher taxes elsewhere, or greater public debt. In that sense, the project relies partly on public fiscal policy even though the donations themselves are private.
The organization’s conservation plan also depends heavily on public land. American Prairie’s long-term goal is to assemble a three-million-acre conservation landscape in northern Montana. Yet the group expects its own landholdings to account for only about 20 percent of that total. The remaining 2.4 million acres would consist largely of federal and state lands—an area larger than Yellowstone National Park—that would remain under government management while forming part of the larger reserve.
Because of that dependence, politics inevitably enters the project. The Bureau of Land Management has ruled that bison cannot replace cattle on federal grazing permits held by the organization. American Prairie has also turned to the courts in a dispute involving the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation over whether bison can substitute for cattle on state grazing leases. Those questions are still unresolved.
Financially, the organization has grown rapidly. Its audited statements report assets of roughly $206 million in 2024. That year it recorded revenues exceeding $47 million and expenses of about $15 million, leaving a surplus of roughly $33 million. Nonprofits, of course, do not distribute profits to shareholders, but they can accumulate surpluses to expand their missions—and American Prairie clearly has the resources to continue expanding.
Supporters sometimes compare the project to private ranches that have restored bison herds. Media entrepreneur Ted Turner, for example, maintains bison on the Flying D Ranch west of Bozeman. But the models are different. Turner’s properties rely on private capital rather than tax-deductible donations, and access is generally governed by market transactions such as guided hunting.
American Prairie emphasizes public access and relies heavily on surrounding public lands.
That makes the project neither purely private nor purely public. It is a hybrid: privately financed through philanthropy, indirectly supported through tax policy, and deeply dependent on public land management.
For supporters, this hybrid structure represents an innovative model of landscape-scale conservation. For critics, it raises questions about how tax policy, public lands, and private philanthropy interact in the American West.
Either way, the debate over American Prairie is not just about bison or grasslands. It is about institutions—and about who ultimately shapes the future of Montana’s prairie landscape. Is it yesterday’s and today’s cowboys or tomorrow’s environmentalists?