Sponsors (5)
The bill shifts significant authority, funding, and programmatic tools to tribes to reintroduce and manage buffalo—advancing tribal conservation, cultural, and economic goals—while creating new federal costs, coordination and disease‑management risks, potential transparency tradeoffs, and uncertainty from a built‑in sunset.
Tribal governments and Tribal organizations gain substantially greater authority, capacity, and formal roles to plan, manage, and restore buffalo and their habitat on Indian lands, improving Tribal self-determination over these resources.
Tribes and tribal communities will have increased access to buffalo reintroduction and stewardship programs, supporting cultural renewal, better subsistence diets, and improved buffalo conservation outcomes on tribal lands.
Tribes can develop economic opportunities (including commercial buffalo activities, mobile meat-processing, and reduced acquisition costs for surplus animals) that could support tribal small businesses and local revenue.
Taxpayers could face increased federal spending to fund grants, technical assistance, transfers, and other program costs tied to buffalo restoration and tribal capacity-building.
Non‑tribal landowners, neighboring communities, and public-health authorities may face greater conflicts and risks from expanded buffalo herds — including land-use disputes, fencing and property impacts, and animal-disease transmission or emergency-response complications.
Changes to statutory definitions, new consultation requirements, confidentiality rules, and altered fee/transfer authorities could produce legal disputes, administrative delays, coordination burdens, and regulatory uncertainty for agencies, states, tribes, and partners.
Based on analysis of 9 sections of legislative text.
Introduced March 17, 2026 by Jeff Hurd · Last progress March 17, 2026
Authorizes the Department of the Interior to work directly with Indian Tribes and Tribal organizations to restore, manage, and transfer buffalo (Bison bison bison) on Indian land. It creates contracting/grant authority, requires consultation and a Department policy aligned with Tribal management plans, protects Tribal-designated culturally sensitive information from disclosure, allows transfer of surplus buffalo from Department lands to Tribes (with fee waivers possible), and preserves treaty rights. All authorities expire seven years after enactment.