We are filled with gratitude and awe as we look back over 2025 and ahead to 2026: what a remarkable year for American Prairie! The past twelve months have been characterized by collaborative effort, and we’ve celebrated some hard-earned progress. The year was not without its challenging moments, which makes our shared accomplishments all the sweeter. Together, we are building something that will endure. And as we approach our 25th anniversary, the excitement and sense of purpose across our community are electric!
The story of 2025 – truly, of the past twenty-five years – is one of persistence, growth, and community. Here at the end of the year, let’s look back on what we have accomplished together:
- American Prairie now encompasses over 600,000 acres: Our land base would rank us among the top ten largest national parks in the lower 48 states!
- This year marked twenty years of bison on the prairie! In October of 2005, we welcomed sixteen bison from South Dakota’s Wind Cave National Park. Slowly but steadily, that small herd has grown and expanded into two herds (totaling over 900 animals) that roam almost 50,000 acres of wild prairie on our White Rock and Sun Prairie properties.
- We have officially removed (and for the most part recycled) more than 500,000 pounds of scrap metal from the prairie.
- More than 50,000 acres of previously inaccessible public land is now open once again for public access.
- More and more people are falling in love with the prairie: We continue to set and break visitation records, hosting over 6,600 overnight guests and 5,000 visitors to the National Discovery Center in 2024. Early counts for 2025 suggest those records are set to be broken again!
- Our Wild Sky program continues to grow: Wild Sky is a program which we use to partner with neighboring ranches to incentivize wildlife-friendly management practices (like carnivore compatibility and wildlife-friendly fence conversion). In 2025, we expanded enrollment in the Wild Sky program to 21 landowners and 70,000 acres!
- The American Prairie Field School program doubled in size: This program welcomes students from all over Montana into the “living laboratory” of the prairie, allowing them to explore this special ecosystem with lots of hands-on, experiential learning.
- Our new volunteer program kicked off its first year: Volunteers from all over the country contributed over 3,000 hours to support projects like beaver dam analog construction, fence removal, and plague mitigation on our prairie dog colonies. To everyone who volunteered this year (and everyone who helped make our volunteer visits a success!): THANK YOU!
We could not have accomplished any of these landmark moments alone. To all of our friends, neighbors, partners, and colleagues – wherever you are, in whatever capacity you were able to participate – please accept our most heartfelt thanks. Your support made 2025 one for the books – we’d love to have you join us in making 2026 even more remarkable!
Thank you for being part of this remarkable community. As we step into our 25th year, we do so with deep gratitude and unwavering confidence that the best is yet to come.” – Alison Fox, American Prairie CEO