APNewsBreak: Ranch Buy Adds to Huge Montana Wildlife Reserve

Source: Associated Press

APNewsBreak: Ranch Buy Adds to Huge Montana Wildlife Reserve

By MATTHEW BROWN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
BILLINGS, Mont. — May 6, 2016, 1:42 PM ET

A huge Montana nature reserve added a 47,000-acre historic ranch to its patchwork of lands along the Missouri River on Friday, a significant step in a privately funded effort to stitch together a Connecticut-sized park where bison would replace livestock and cattle fences give way to open range.

The PN Ranch north of Winifred sprawls across rugged badlands, tall grass prairie and cottonwood-filled valleys. It's almost wholly within the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument.

It includes the remnants of the Montana Territory's first military post, Camp Cooke, and was reportedly a rendezvous point for American Indian tribes on the Great Plains.

Its purchase by the American Prairie Reserve comes amid tensions with some in central Montana who see the project's rapid expansion over the past decade as an encroachment on their way of life.

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