A sweeping effort to rewild the American Great Plains has reached a landmark: American Prairie Reserve has removed 100 miles of fencing from its Montana landholdings, reopening ancient migration routes for bison, pronghorn, elk, and dozens of other species. The project is the largest voluntary fence removal initiative on private land in U.S. history, and it signals a new chapter for one of the most altered ecosystems on Earth.
At a glance
- Wildlife corridors: Removing fencing restores natural movement pathways that allow animals to follow seasonal food sources, find mates, and escape predators — behaviors suppressed for more than a century by agricultural subdivision of the plains.
- American Prairie Reserve: The nonprofit has assembled roughly 460,000 acres of deeded and leased land in north-central Montana, part of a long-term vision to protect and connect 3.2 million acres of mixed-grass prairie.
- Bison restoration: The reserve’s bison herd has grown to more than 800 animals, and the fence removals allow the herd to roam across larger stretches of native grassland for the first time in generations.
Why fences matter on the Great Plains
The Great Plains once supported tens of millions of bison migrating freely across a landscape the size of Western Europe. Within a few decades after European settlement, that ecosystem was subdivided by barbed wire into a grid that persists today. The Nature Conservancy estimates that the Great Plains is one of the least protected ecosystems in North America, with less than 2% under formal conservation status.
Fences don’t just divide land — they divide populations. Pronghorn antelope, which undertake one of the longest land migrations in the Western Hemisphere, are particularly vulnerable. Studies by the U.S. Geological Survey have documented how even a single fence line can deflect or block pronghorn herds, stranding them away from critical winter range.
For American Prairie Reserve, fence removal is not symbolic. Each mile of wire taken down reconnects habitat patches in ways that compound across the landscape.
How the project works
The reserve’s approach combines land acquisition, voluntary grazing lease arrangements with willing ranchers, and systematic removal of interior fences that serve no current agricultural function. Working with partners including Wildlife Conservation Society, crews assess which fence lines fragment critical movement areas and prioritize their removal.
Some fences remain — those that mark property boundaries or support active grazing operations stay in place. The goal is not to eliminate ranching from the landscape but to reduce the fragmentation that cuts off migration corridors. American Prairie Reserve has been explicit that it sees working ranches and wildlife as compatible, a position that remains contested with some local ranching communities who have raised concerns about bison wandering onto neighboring lands.
That tension is real and unresolved. The reserve operates in a region where land use debates carry deep economic and cultural weight, and not all neighboring landowners view the rewilding vision as compatible with their livelihoods. Long-term coexistence will require ongoing negotiation.
What 100 miles means for the ecosystem
Ecologists who study grassland connectivity say the effects of fence removal extend well beyond the large mammals most people picture. Audubon Society research on the northern Great Plains has found that grassland bird populations — including species like the chestnut-collared longspur and ferruginous hawk — respond positively to larger, unbroken patches of native prairie.
Soil and plant communities also benefit. Bison grazing, unlike cattle grazing in many configurations, tends to be patchy and mobile, which creates a mosaic of grass heights that supports higher plant diversity and better carbon storage in the soil.
A hundred miles of fence removed represents meaningful progress. It also represents a fraction of what would need to change for the full 3.2-million-acre vision to be realized — a reminder that conservation at a landscape scale is a multigenerational undertaking, not a single milestone.
Read more
For more on this story, see: American Prairie Reserve
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