(Havre) – On August 16th, Matt Rosendale the Congressman for Montana’s Second district sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland requesting more information on meetings her department is holding on the potential reintroduction of bison in Montana. Rosendale talks about why he sent the letter.
“We’ve been hearing a lot about the Bison reintroduction in a lot of these areas and Secretary Haaland is doing a lot of things that interior that have been raising some red flags for us. Number one, she’s allowed one specific lessee to manage the BLM land differently than everyone else but now we see that she has also proposed new rules on the management BLM to raise and elevate conservation practices and measures above agricultural uses and now we were told that she has these special groups that are looking at the reintroduction of bison and we’re not getting any information about it and so when these things start coming out of interior that are completely contradictory to statute we need to know what’s going on.”
He goes on to answer the question if Bison introduction is a good thing.
“I don’t know that it is and that’s why I want to see this information about what they’re trying to do and where they’re trying to do it. What I do know is that if you start reducing or eliminating agricultural production, okay, production of agriculture in the state of Montana two things are going to happen. Number one you going to limit the food supply that we have available to people across this country and around the world because we export a lot of our products and number two you’re going to damage a lot of the communities that have been built upon agricultural production and all the implement dealers and truck dealers and the grocery stores and the school districts everybody that has built a community around that. If you start reducing the agricultural production then you’re going to adversely impact those communities and I think that that is a terrible thing.”
