Bison Range trail ride canceled

A popular annual trail ride that has been held at the National Bison Range since the Korean War has been canceled by the refuge manager, raising the ire of riders who have participated in the event for years.

“This is Montana. This isn’t New York or something. People get on horses and ride,” said Columbia Falls resident Vernon Kiser, who has participated in the ride nearly every year since the 1980s.

“It’s one of the funnest rides I do every year,” Kiser said. “It’s amazing country that you see from the back of a horse that you could never see from a car.”

The ride has been held the third Sunday of May for the last 57 years, organized by a group called the Mission Rangers. Each event attracts between 125 and 300 riders from across the country and around the world, said Jerome Stenberg, a Mission Valley rancher and one of the ride organizers.

Participants traditionally have camped on private land near the refuge, and the camp has been catered by local clubs and groups as a fundraiser. Stenberg said that because most participants are from out of state, the ride has brought considerable economic benefits to the Mission Valley.

Two years ago, Stenberg said, he rode with a woman from London, England.

“She had to go on this ride, all the way from London,” he said. “There aren’t that many things that have that kind of pull around the region.”

Jeff King, the refuge director, notified Stenberg and others in March that the ride was being canceled.

King explained the decision in an interview this week, saying that it was driven by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “appropriate use policy” that was enacted in 2006.

The policy requires refuge managers to evaluate past and future uses for their compatibility with a series of priority uses for national refuges, including wildlife watching, photography, environmental education, hunting and fishing.

In this case, the trail ride was evaluated on whether it was necessary for wildlife watching.

“Riding a horse is not necessary on the National Bison Range to go out and watch wildlife,” King said. “We have a 20-mile tour road that is open for everyone to use.”

 King said there were other underlying considerations for ending the once-a-year use of horses on the range by the public.

“We were bringing in privately owned horses and trailers onto the refuge and no one else except for the trail-ride folks were allowed to ride horses on the refuge,” King said.

“We had a risk of introducing invasive [weed] species because these horses are coming from all over the West.”

Another consideration was safety risks to the riders, King said, noting that a refuge staffer suffered a broken back when his horse rolled on top of him during the 2006 trail ride.

King acknowledged that the refuge and its bison are managed mostly on horseback.

“I feel there is absolutely no other way to fulfill the objectives of the bison range without horses,” he said. “We can’t do it without them.”

King said the decision to cancel the ride was difficult and he’s aware that it hasn’t been popular. “It was a decision based on policy,” he said.

For Stenberg, Kiser and other veteran riders, those are weak, bureaucratic reasons to end a long Western tradition on the refuge.

Kiser said potential weed introduction is a valid issue, “but at the same time those weeds are already there and they haven’t proven [that canceling the ride] makes any difference.”

King said he is obligated to ensure that a weed problem that is already costly for the refuge doesn’t get worse. He said past rides have taken participants into the refuge’s backcountry areas, where weeds would be difficult and expensive to fight.

Stenberg doesn’t buy the safety argument and said he suspects King is simply uncomfortable around horses. Past directors have participated in the ride, but King hasn’t, he said.

Stenberg said the fundamental problem with the decision is that it is restricting traditional public access to public lands.

“Do we honestly think that sitting in a car’s back seat can compare with the experience of riding the backcountry of the National Bison Range and seeing herds of wild bison, elk, bighorn sheep and even mountain goat?” he wrote in a letter posted on the Mission Rangers website. “As rural Montanans, we increasingly have to stand up to these ‘winds of change’ from urban or non-western mindsets.”

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com