Inside the Nefarious Scheme to Destroy the Great American Prairie

The boldest conservation project in America is being hunted by a political consulting firm in a cowboy hat. Here’s the scheme, and the wild prairie they’re trying to destroy.

If you’ve driven Highway 191 north of Lewistown, you’ve seen the signs. Save the Cowboy. Stop American Prairie Reserve. A father and son in cowboy hats, watching the sun set over Big Sky country. They look hand painted. Homemade. The last stand of a vanishing way of life against a wealthy invader.

That’s the part worth sitting with. Somebody made them.

They are none of those things. Those signs were made by a political consulting firm in Helena, run by the former head of the state Republican Party, whose other recent work includes electing the United States senator who just celebrated driving native bison off your public land. We will get to all of it. The operative, the senator, the private equity firm, the fifty year old precedent they torched to do it.

But to understand why anyone would build a professional campaign to destroy this thing, you first have to understand what this thing is. Because it’s one of the most extraordinary acts of restoration happening anywhere in America right …