A Montana cattle rancher and his wife have made the remarkable decision to donate their $21.6 million ranch in a move that evokes the climactic ending of the runaway dramatic TV series Yellowstone.
The Veseth Cattle Co. ranch has been a family operation for generations. Deeding the 38,000-acre spread to the nonprofit Ranchers Stewardship Alliance (RSA) will insure the land remains a working cattle ranch.
In giving the cattle ranch in southern Phillips County to RSA, Dale and Janet Veseth will continue to manage the operation during their lifetimes, but ownership will pass on to the non-profit.
The gift is reportedly the largest recorded donation of a working ranch in Montana’s history.
RSA was founded by ranchers to preserve the state’s ranching identity and prevent land from being carved up and sold off to other interests.
“At 63, he’s been refining his rotational grazing system for 35 years, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather before him as a legacy Western cattle operation,” Cowboy State Daily reported of Veseth.
The Veseth ranch received the “Environmental Stewardship Award” in 2008 from the Montana Stockgrowers Association and was featured in a short documentary:
The main story spine of the critically acclaimed series Yellowstone tracks the fictional Dutton ranch — which is also set in Montana — as developers try to drive the Duttons out of business and turn their breathtaking spread into unsightly commercial real estate.
In the final episodes of the contemporary western, the family defeats the developers by essentially giving away their land to a local Indian tribe which has the legal authority under treaty rights to preserve it.
While it could be said the Veseths’ donation is life imitating art, the reverse is actually true, according to the modern economic pressures reportedly being put on ranchers in a state often called “Big Sky Country.”
“For Dale, 63, the decision reflects both hard economic realities and a deeply personal reckoning with what ranching has become in the modern West,” the Daily Mail reported.
“Competing interests now vie for ranchland across Montana’s high northern plains – a landscape once defined by family homesteads, now increasingly shaped by conservation groups, investors, and soaring land prices,” the Mail’s coverage continued.
“The capitalization to get in and maintain a ranching business was out of the reach of most Americans,” Veseth told Cowboy State Daily.
He continued, “Land is just one aspect. You have cattle. You have equipment, you have labor. And (everything) to make all these things go. We thought it was pretty hard to recruit the next generation of people who produced our food.”
The average age of ranchers is now 60, and full-time ranchers under 35 represent just 12% of that agricultural population, according to the digital western outlet.
The Veseths see their gift as creating ranching opportunities for the next generation with their land remaining in the hands of people who want to work it.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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