The state of Montana yesterday filed to dismiss its own lawsuit against Yellowstone National Park over bison management.
The suit stemmed from Yellowstone’s new bison management plan, released in summer 2024. Under the framework — the first update to bison management in Yellowstone in nearly two-and-a-half decades — bison numbers would average about 5,000 in the park, allowing for the species’ ecological role on the landscape and enhancing tribal transfer and harvest opportunities outside park boundaries.
The state filed suit on New Year’s Eve 2024, renewing decades-long tension between Yellowstone National Park and Montana over how many bison there should be, where they exist, and who gets a say.
Conservation groups and tribes celebrated the news that the state was dropping the lawsuit.
“The state of Montana had all the opportunity to participate just like everyone else,” said Michelle Uberuaga, Greater Yellowstone program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association. “They thought that they could leverage a new administration to get what they wanted.”
Uberuaga said the motion to dismiss is a victory for the country’s national mammal. “Montanans understand bison belong on the landscape. They need to be able to move freely in and out of Yellowstone. And ideally, across a much larger swath of public lands and tribal lands not only across Montana, but across their historic range. We will continue to work to ensure a robust bison transfer program, healthy numbers in the park, and science-based management for bison moving forward.”
The Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes intervened in the case last year in support of the National Park Service, citing the tribes’ role in the Bison Conservation Transfer Program. Fort Peck is home to the only federally approved facility capable of receiving disease-free, quarantined bison from Yellowstone. Working with the park, the tribes have transferred more than 400 bison from that facility to 26 other tribes in 12 states since 2019. The tribal facility received 200 bison from Yellowstone this year alone.
“The Fort Peck Tribes are encouraged to see the State of Montana dismiss its lawsuit so that the parties can move past litigation and focus on the real work ahead on the Bison Management Plan,” Floyd Azure, chairman of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation, said in a Sept. 14 press release.
Over the course of nearly two years of litigation, Montana alleged the plan allowed for too many bison, and that the park made their decision without legally required consultation with the state. While there’s never been a documented brucellosis transmission in the wild, bison can spread the disease, which can cause cattle to spontaneously abort fetuses and force ranchers to quarantine their herds.
“The National Park Service has repeatedly and consistently failed to engage with the State in a meaningful and transparent manner,” Montana Governor Greg Gianforte said in a press release when the state filed suit in 2024. “We will always defend our state from federal overreach.”
In July 2026, Montana attorneys filed a motion to include text messages from Yellowstone superintendent Cam Sholly to Gianforte. In one text, Sholly called the state’s desire for a bison herd as small as 3,000 members a “bs number.” The texts, the state’s attorneys alleged, showed the park had already made up its mind.
Sholly last week announced he was stepping down from his post as Yellowstone National Park superintendent. And on Monday, the state seemingly had a change of heart.
Last April, Yellowstone announced a new step in the long legal saga over bison that influenced the state’s decision to drop the case, according to legal filings. Under a new Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement, or SEIS, the park will examine new alternatives not considered in the park’s previous impact statement. The release cited the state’s lawsuit and one other pending piece of litigation: “As part of the SEIS process, NPS will determine whether additional analysis of any issues raised in those lawsuits is appropriate, and if so, will include such analysis in the SEIS.”
Montana attorneys cited the SEIS process directly in their motion to dismiss the suit. “There is potential that Montana’s claims will be addressed, if not resolved, by that process,” they wrote in the filing.
While the park hasn’t yet published a date to expect the SEIS, the process will include a robust public comment period, according to the National Park Service. “There will be an opportunity very soon for the state, for scientists, for partners, for all of us, to weigh in on the very important matter of how we manage bison,” Uberuaga said.
Yellowstone National Park declined to comment on the litigation. The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.
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