It want to ask all the anti-APR landowners the economic costs to them of having the APR next door vs. the nontraditional elk recreation-focused landowners. Both of these groups are buying ranches. Both are entitled to their private property rights. One has to pay appraised value and one doesn’t/isn’t. One results in significant (literal, not perceived) damage to traditional ag operations while the other (for the most part, at least not yet) doesn’t. But one of these is ostracized and the other isn’t. Why?? That’s the hypocrisy I see in it.
Theodore Roosevelt was a wealthy, nonresident landowner. Yet we lionize him as a champion of public lands and wildlife conservation. Dichotomy is a massive part of the human condition.
The history of westward expansion is rife with examples of wealthy people from far away buying large swaths of land for agriculture. In the 1880's, it was a major economic investment engine. The Nobility of Europe bought large properties and grazed them heavily. Those landowners started going away once the grass was gone, and it made zero financial sense to be in the cattle business. That model is well known to those who live in ranch-land. it's part and parcel of the challenges of being a rancher. It's a known threat rather than the unknown of APR. For many, American Prairie is another attempt at the "Big Empty," or "rewildling," or even worse, "The Buffalo Commons."
In 2010, a memo leaked from the Obama Interior Dept about potential new monuments. The expansion of the Breaks was in there, which lead to a pretty sporty meeting in Malta. BLM Chief Bob Abbey went to Malta, and met the firestorm.
For a while now, folks in eastern and central MT have felt like they don't matter as humans to a large swath of the world outside Montana. They feel as though they and their communities are targeted by wealthy elites trying to push them out of a place they've lived for generations in order to achieve an idealistic outcome that may or may-not be worthwhile. AP is the physical embodiment of that threat. Their schools are shrinking, communities get smaller and it's harder and harder to actually be an independent cow-calf operator due to a ton of factors, with land prices being a chief concern. It's harder to find a decent town job to help pay for the homeplace and a big chunk of the public is telling them to abandon their lives and move. It's much easier to be mad at an entity, a non-profit, than it is your neighbor, even if they are Billionaires. Although I do think that the sentiment is pretty evenly split between the amenity ranch owner, AP and Fed on who is disliked the most. It's a part of the tribalism of America these days. When people feel threatened, isolated and looked down upon, it's really tough to look at an entity purchasing property in a positive light, especially if that's a place you wanted to expand the operation.
I don't see their separation of NR Landowners and AP as hypocritical, I see it as fighting the enemy they think they can get a hold of. It's a place to focus that anger and resentment and fight for a lifestyle, quality of life and level of freedom that they cherish.
As for land prices, while AP does not pay over appraised price, that appraisal continues to increase exponentially due to people paying over appraised, but also by people who pay at appraised, rather than negotiate a price (FTR, AP negotiates, uses local banks for their purchases/loans and gets the best deal they can). To many who aren't part of traditional family agriculture, real estate is an investment; the value is accruing and you get some pretty good tax benefits for being in production agriculture. For AP, that investment is different - it's a long term investment to change how 4 million acres of land is being used. Dan & Ferris Wilks aren't planning on turning cow pasture into buffalo wallows. There are a lot of other issues that arise with those kinds of landowners and how they interact with the public to be sure, but the enemy you know and have lived with your whole life is more comfortable than the enemy you don't know.
