National Bison Range restored to CSKT

What happened

The National Bison Range, a federal wildlife refuge inside the Flathead Reservation in Montana, was returned to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) by act of Congress. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (Public Law 116-260), approved the transfer by repealing the statute that created the Range. A news report hosted on Senator Daines's site says it was part of an omnibus spending bill signed by President Trump on December 27, 2020, within the Montana Water Rights Protection Act.

On June 23, 2021, the Department of the Interior announced the transfer of all the lands comprising the Range, approximately 18,800.22 acres, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to be held in trust for the CSKT. Interior said the lands lie completely within the reservation. The Range had been established on May 23, 1908. An Interior official said that act reduced the Salish and Kootenai peoples' homeland by thousands of acres.

CSKT Tribal Chairwoman Shelly Fyant, quoted in the Daines-hosted report, called the restoration a great historic event that came after a century of separation from the buffalo and after a quarter-century effort to co-manage the refuge with the Fish and Wildlife Service. A tribal spokesman said the public would see little change: the Tribal Council agreed to keep following the existing conservation plan, and the refuge would remain publicly accessible and focused on wild bison. The law provides a two-year transition of management.

Good to know. The law passed in December 2020; reports say the transfer papers were signed around January 15, 2021, and Interior announced the transfer in June 2021.

Summarized with AI assistance from 4 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error