PBS - THE BUFFALO WAR: In Their Shoes, Rancher Situation

"Well, it's a constant threat. We have to test our herd before we can come from one state to another. Where I winter in Idaho and bring them to Montana for summer range, we have to test those cattle nearly every spring. We vaccinate our replacement heifer calves and so it's an expense as well as hard on the cattle."
Keith Munns

In many ways the Munns represent a typical ranching family. For more than 60 years, they have raised cattle on their ranch near West Yellowstone. They pay the U.S. Forest Service a small per-animal fee each summer to graze their cattle on and around Horse Butte.

The Munns brothers

Cattle ranching and agriculture bring in two billion dollars per year for Montana, which ranks as the sixth largest beef producing state in the United States. The Montana Dept. of Livestock believes that the economic consequences of brucellosis can have impacts large enough to put many individual producers out of business. Although the risk is very low, if cattle become infected, ranchers can be prevented from shipping livestock out of state until stringent testing and quarantine requirements are met. There is also the potential for bison to do damage to private land.

"I came out here there were 200 head of 'em here on this ranch one time. Well, what does that do to my grass? I'd hate to have 200 head of somebody else's cows come in here. I don't like to see them shoot the buffalo, but I don't like them out here either. I'd like to see them kept where they belong, wherever that is."
Delas Munns

The Munns have continued the family business despite the rising costs of ranching, declining beef prices, younger generations moving away and pressures to sell to real estate developers.

"The antagonists of Keith Munns fail to acknowledge that were they to drive Keith Munns off the open range so that he would have to sell his ranch, that there are realtors circling in the waters waiting to carve up that parcel of land. Which would further complicate the management of bison because we don't know what kind of sentiment those new homeowners would have for bison."
Todd Wilkinson, Author, Science Under Siege

With changes in technology, market shifts and environmental consequences, a large number of farming, mining, timber and manufacturing communities have lost or are losing their base.

"You worked all your life to do what you do and get what you got and then it's gotta go some other way. Why, yeah, it's a little tough."
Delas Munns