Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has reversed plans to transfer control of the National Bison Range to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. When tribes called for the change in 2016, they claimed the federal government had taken the land from American Indians without their consent.
“The tribes have long maintained the U.S. government illegally took the 18,800-acre site in 1908, which the Salish owners didn’t want to sell in the first place,” says The Billings Gazette. “The government paid the tribes $1.56 an acre, a fraction of its value even in 1912. Almost 60 years later, a court ordered the government to pony up the rest of the actual 1912 market value of $14 an acre, and the tribes were compensated just over $231,000.”
In January of last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which currently manages the refuge, announced that it supported a transfer of management to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes on the Flathead Reservation. Zinke changed course, saying that he didn’t believe in the transfer or sale of public lands.
“We understood that President Trump and Sec. Zinke himself had promised about not selling off public lands, but from my perspective, that isn’t what this is,” said Vernon Finley, the chairman of the confederated tribes, on Wednesday. “It’s more of a restoration of reservation land, which is different than selling public land.”