The Bison Range

Those few bison calves grew into a large free-ranging herd under the stewardship of Tribal members, who later included Michel Pablo and Charles Allard.  This herd became the largest herd of plains bison in the world by the end of the 1800’s. After Charles Allard died in 1896, his estate sold his share of the Pablo-Allard herd, some of which went to the Conrad Ranch in Kalispell, Montana in the early 1900’s.

The Pablo-Allard herd ranged freely on the Reservation for decades before they were sold to off-Reservation interests in the early 1900’s due to the opening of the Reservation, over strong objection from the Tribes, for non-Indian settlement. 

In the Hellgate Treaty of 1855, the United States promised that the Flathead Reservation would forever be the Tribes’ permanent homeland. In exchange, the Tribes agreed to relinquish millions of acres of their aboriginal territory. The Tribes lived up to their promise but sadly, the United States did not.

In 1908-1909, despite strong objection from the Tribes, the United States unlawfully took the land from the Tribes for the Bison Range, previously called the National Bison Range. The United States paid an estimated $1.56 per acre. In 1971, the U.S. Court of Claims held that this purchase was below the fair market value of the time and therefore unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment. They awarded the CSKT around $231,548 in compensation (approximately $14 per acre, based upon the 1912 fair market value rate). However, tribal members have for generations believed that no amount of money could compensate them for removal of the Bison Range from their permanent homeland.

The Tribes’ Natural Resources Department has extensive experience in wildlife and natural resources management,

including the establishment and management of the country’s first tribally-designated wilderness area (the 91,000 acre Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness), as well as special management districts for large animals (Little Money Bighorn Sheep Special Management District, Ferry Basin Elk Special Management District) and the restoration and management of bighorn sheep populations, peregrine falcons and trumpeter swans on the Reservation.

From 1994 through 2016, CSKT engaged in extensive and repeated efforts towards entering into partnership agreements with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to participate in managing the Bison Range. These contracts were authorized by the Tribal Self-Governance Act and two such agreements were in effect from 2005-2006 and 2008-2010.

No other tribe has had similar contracts outside of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, under which tribal employees performed the same scale and scope of federal work as CSKT performed at the Bison Range. Under the Self-Governance agreements, the CSKT employed over a dozen employees at the Bison Range. During both the 2005-2006 agreement and the 2008-2010 agreement, the CSKT managed all or part of the Bison Range’s biology, maintenance, fire and visitor service programs and also staffed one of the Deputy Refuge Manager positions.

The New York Times, in a September 3, 2003 editorial supporting efforts for Tribal management at the Bison Range, recognized the singular circumstances there: “The National Bison Range is an unusual case. It offers a rare convergence of public and tribal interests. If the Salish and Kootenai can reach an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service, something will not have been taken from the public. Something will have been added to it.”

Beginning in 1994, the CSKT tried to secure a stable Tribal Self-Governance agreement with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) for partnering on Bison Range management.

The CSKT and FWS signed the first Self-Governance agreement for the Bison Range in 2004. A number of staff within FWS were opposed to the Tribes’ presence, and FWS illegally terminated the agreement in December 2006.  The CSKT appealed that termination, resulting in the signing of a second agreement in 2008, under which the Tribes and FWS built a constructive partnership.  This agreement was challenged in federal court and, in 2010, the court rescinded it on procedural grounds due to FWS having failed to properly explain its decision to apply a categorical exclusion under the National Environmental Policy Act.