The real ‘Yellowstone’: A battle for the cowboy way of life

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1:10This is the horse I ride. Sniff, he's about my age in horse years. Brud Smith gently strokes the neck of a glossy chestnut horse. The little white patch on its muzzle matches Brud's moustache. On his head sits a wide-rimmed cowboy hat. He turns well and he's real gentle, but he's got lots of action when you go after a cow and have to turn him or whatever. I'm on a ranch in rural southwest Montana in the United States. A single dirt track led us to the entrance, marked, as most ranches are, by a timber archway. There's a hand-painted sign welcoming us to the Smith Ranch. In the distance, in all directions, are mountains.

1:51What makes a good horse is if they can chase a cow and turn the cow. They have to have a lot of horse sense, too. They say if you've got a good horse sense, you're smart or whatever. And horses are pretty smart. Yeah. This is a medium-sized ranch, Brud tells me. He owns the place, a real-life cowboy. Each summer, they saddle up the horses and drive their cattle into the mountains to graze the grass on higher ground. Think roping, lassoing, and lots of yeehawing. This frees up the land on the main ranch for making hay, ready to feed the cows when Montana's brutal winter comes. This is our tactic.

2:32This is what you dally on when you rope a cow or a cow. You dally the rope around that to hold them. He takes us into a barn that's been standing here for more than a century. Occasionally, planks of wood get dislodged from the floor when you step in the wrong place. That's my settle. I've had that since 1959, the settle here. Montana is a western US state that goes all the way up to the Canadian border. The TV series Yellowstone, featuring 21st century gun-toting ranchers in the state's stunning landscapes, was set here. This is all part of a popular revival in country music and cowboy culture.

3:12But for Brudd and his family, this is their way of life, steeped in tradition. And this one is another saddle that's the same model as that. It was probably built in 1959. That's my daughter's. The ranch has been in this family for five generations. But there's now a feeling that this way of life is under threat by incomers to the area and by an ongoing debate about who should own the land here. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Ellie House, on assignment in the United States.

3:52I hop into Brudd's dusty 4x4 truck. You see where the brown is over there, where it starts out there? Yeah. That's the edge of our ranch there. And we probably go over to where the trees, just on the side of the big trees down there. I've never been somewhere with so much open space. This area is known as Big Sky Country. It's almost overwhelming, the acres of flat land rimmed by mountains that poke up into an endless blue sky. There above those bales, it goes out to there. This is a patchwork of land, some in the private ownership of Brudd and his family. And actually that's private land up to that sign up there.

4:38And some is owned by the federal government. In the US, each state has its own government, but the national leadership, currently headed up by President Trump, is the federal government in Washington, D.C. This is all federal land here, and then it's federal land beyond that. About 30 % of Montana is owned by the federal government, and that's referred to as public or federal land. That percentage is higher in some other Western states. This land is at the centre of a debate. Some think the government shouldn't own so much, calling for portions to be sold off or transferred to the state authorities.

5:20But Brudd says access to this land, and keeping it publicly owned, is crucial to his ranch. That could be a moose track, that big track right below there. Which one? This one. Oh, wow. We pull over near a muddy patch churned up by wild animals, horses and quad bikes, next to a pristine meadow that's skirted by pine trees. So this is public land. So explain to me how it works. Well, we have a permit, a certain amount that we could run up here on a forest permit during the months of middle of June to the middle of October. Brudd leases this land from the government so that his cattle can graze up here in the summer.

6:01He pays$1.35 for each cow every month. But it's very, very low compared to what private property leased for. The average monthly cost for each cow on private land here in Montana is around$29. How important is having access to this public land for your business, for your ranch? Incredibly important because without it you'd have to cut down your operation as to the number of cattle you're on. And most of the time you're running kind of on a margin. The cost of running a ranch, unfortunately, is very high to equipments high, fuels high, all that. So the ranching industry here really relies on having access to public lands?

6:41Oh, definitely. Nearly one out of every three acres in America is owned by the federal government. In states like Utah, it's even more extreme. Almost 70 % of our land is controlled by Washington, D.C. That's not sustainable. It's not fair. It's not serving the Americans who actually live here. President Trump gets it. That's why his secretary... This is Utah Senator Mike Lee in a promotional video posted on X. He made a proposal on public land as part of President Trump's big, beautiful bill this summer, a mega piece of legislation where the president set out his spending plans. Now, Senator Lee's proposal would have required the government to sell up to 3 million acres of public land in the West for house building amid a nationwide shortage.

7:30We're opening underused federal land to expand housing, support local development, and get Washington, D.C. out of the way of communities that are just trying to grow. Three million acres sounds like a lot, but it's less than 1 % of what the government owns. That's how we make government smaller, freer, and work for Americans. Lee said it would raise as much as$10 billion for the federal government. I think that our public lands are one of our country's best ideas. This idea that we own these lands in common as American citizens is unique around the world at the scale at which we're talking about and beautiful.

8:14We meet Tracy Stone Manning by a creek on public land near the city of Missoula in Montana. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. That was a mother white-tailed deer and her fawn still with spots. They were just galloping in front of us. They just galloped away from us. Tracy headed up the Bureau of Land Management under President Joe Biden, the biggest agency overseeing federal lands. And she's now in charge of the Wilderness Society, which is an environmental conservation non-profit. The current administration under President Trump talks about our public lands in the form of a balance sheet. That kind of language and that kind of approach is about today's profits, not about what we need to pay forward to the future so that future generations have the ability to access and touch nature, have the ability to hunt and fish and camp and bird watch and picnic like we do.

9:13But Senator Mike Lee has argued that there's a real need to develop some of this land for housing. Oh, this isn't about housing. This is about a values war that the federal government should own these lands. The senator's sell-off proposal exempted national parks, monuments, protected wilderness areas. He said that nearly all of the land for sale would be close to an existing town or city. And he insisted that his proposal only covered a tiny portion of this land. Senator Lee was pretty clear that it would be maximum 0.75 % of public lands that would be eligible for sale, which is a pretty small percentage.

9:56The idea that this year they're going to just sell off just 3 million acres, what about next year? And what about the year after that? If you do that every year for 100 years, you don't have public lands left. So I think that's really what drove the backlash, people understanding this was the beginning of a very bad idea. This is ideological for a lot of people here. The land where Brudd grazes his cattle wasn't part of the proposed sell-off, but for many, it's seen as a slippery slope. housing is being used as a wedge to try and sell off public lands, to get at that deeper value of we don't like the federal government.

10:45The idea of a sell-off is very unpopular here in Montana. The state was left out of the senator's draft legislation, so land would be eligible for sale in all the other mainland western states, but not here. The public in huge numbers said don't sell. Republican Senator Lee first thinned down his proposal, then, facing opposition even from inside his own party, was forced to drop the whole thing. But Tracy says the fight isn't over. Senator Lee, when he withdrew his language, was very clear that he wasn't done. So the threat of losing this identity that we have in common as Americans, that we have this cherished thing called public lands, is real.

11:32and the risk to tinkering with that is more risk than reward. We approached Dennis Lee for an interview but didn't get a response.

11:48I'm with Brud's ranch hand, Willie, back in the old barn. He's got long blonde hair, aviator sunglasses and, of course, a cowboy hat. Open it. Open like that? Okay. He's showing me Pitch, his favourite horse, a jet black fella with one eye missing. Put it up to his nose, he'll find it. Here you go, Pitch. Ooh! I've never said a horse before, this is exciting. So what sort of things do you do with Pitch and the horses around here? Mostly push cattle, which would be pushing the cattle to grass. Branding season, horses are used quite a bit. You still rope calves, we're all dragging them to the fire.

12:28So you rope them by the heel. It's like the best part of the job. It's what young guys and old guys just love. Ranchers out here mark their cattle with a hot brand to prove who owns what. You're here at like four o 'clock in the morning. Everyone's got chaps and spears. You're looking in the 1800s still. These cowboy traditions do come from the 19th century. It's when these communities were first established. As the United States pushed west, it took over lands. often brutally from the Native Americans. This history is a big part of how the federal government came to own so much of the territory out here.

13:05This ranch had like at least three homesteads on it here to begin with and then there were some others. There was a drive to get American families settling in the West, called homesteading. The government would give settlers 160 acres for almost nothing if they could live self-sufficiently off that land. That was in the 1860s. It was right after the Civil War. And that's when people came out and they homesteaded. But not all the land was claimed for homesteads. And so much of it remained in federal hands. Whether it's right for the government to own all this land has been an on and off debate for decades.

13:43The United States government owns one third of the country's 640 million acres. Most of that's in the American West. This is lawyer William Perry Pendley. I also ran the Bureau of Land Management for President Trump in his first term. Pendley is a controversial figure. When he headed up the Federal Land Agency under President Trump, a judge ruled that he was in the position unlawfully because his appointment was never confirmed by the Senate. He was also an author on Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump's second presidency. So when the federal government sneezes, we catch a cold. We really can't do anything economically without the permission of the federal government.

14:29A lot of these debates come back to a disparity between the east and the west of this country. The federal government owns around half of the land over here in the west, but only 4 % in the rest of the US. The people in Ohio, if they decide they want to do something, they don't have to say mother may I to the federal land managers in Washington, D.C. This is a point that Senator Mike Lee and his supporters made when trying to get his idea passed in Trump's big, beautiful bill. Well, I didn't take a position on Senator Lee's proposal. You know, I will say all the photographs that I saw on X in opposition were of lands that I recognised as national parks or wilderness areas or even private land, and none of those were in his proposal.

15:25Critics of a sell-off posted photos on social media of public lands, many of which the senator said weren't actually part of his bill. He called out what he dubbed misinformation and in some cases outright lies. No one has ever suggested that we sell any part of our national parks. There's recent polling that shows 71 % oppose the sale of existing public lands to private bidders. So it is quite an unpopular proposal in general. Is that something you found? No. Well, based on what? Based on what? I saw some pictures on the internet that purport to show the lands that were going to be sold, and I didn't, want to sell that.

16:09Public land is sometimes given up by the government for development, even in the current system, just nowhere near the scale that was proposed. When I was running the Bureau of Land Management for President Trump during his first term, I went down to Las Vegas. This comes up a lot. The Nevada casino city is infamously surrounded by federally owned desert land, making economic growth difficult. But since the 90s, there has been piecemeal sale or transfer of some of this land for development. And I met with a BLM official and he pointed out all the things that were there, housing developments, commercial activity, recreation facilities.

16:54And he said, Mr. Penley, I got to tell you, if we had not been authorized to dispose of all of this land, none of this would have been possible. And all this economic activity that you see here would have been prevented. I frankly think that fully informed the American people would agree with that. Is there part of this argument that is more ideological, you know, more of the traditional libertarian anti-big state view? You know, it's just you just don't like the federal government. Is that part of it? No. No, that's none of it. The Constitution controls, federal laws control, unelected bureaucrats do not control.

17:37And that's the difference. This view of federal agencies has become part of mainstream Republican politics. And the recent proposals to sell public land came from the American political right. But it wasn't just shot down by people on the left. In a time where the US feels extremely polarised, on this issue, an unlikely coalition has formed. So I guess my political ethos is, I think I would be, the public would label me a conservative, but I believe in personal responsibility, for sure. Ryan Mossad is another rancher. we meet him in a bar in the montana town of dylan where the first things we saw were shops to get your saddle repaired to get new cowboy boots or to buy a gun did you hear about the proposal in the big beautiful bill to sell off some public lands yeah what did you think about that um i thought it was a bad idea a bad idea my first thought that comes you know what was everything was, oh my gosh, this can't be true.

18:45There are very few ranches out here that don't depend on public ground. It's huge. Brian's not alone. Many Trump-supporting ranchers, MAGA influencers, and conservative hunters actively campaigned against Lee's bill, finding themselves on the same side as activists from the left. So we're all in lockstep together. So it doesn't matter if you're on the left, you're extreme environmentalists, or if all of our congressional delegation, our senators and congressmen and our governor are all supposedly far-right conservatives, and everybody said no on this one. It was a real good common core issue. And why do you think this issue on public lands was something that crossed that partisan divide politically?

19:31Because it's a multi-use. Public land is multi-use, and so it brings your hunters together, your recreators together, your landowners that are there using it. And we're all starting to realize how precious open space is. And I think that's what brought us together. People listening to this might find it quite interesting to hear a conservative rancher advocating for the federal government to manage the lands over giving them to the market. And typically, the traditional conservative view is that the market wins. Is there a contradiction there? It's a different thing. Absolutely not. You sell to the highest bidder, it doesn't work, especially today, because the highest bidders, there's getting fewer and fewer and fewer of those that can do it.

20:20And the people who need it the most, and it trickles all the way down to the consumer, don't get anything. They get what's left, and that's not good for anybody. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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21:39I'm Ellie House, on assignment in the United States. This is quite a party. You're going to see top-level talent tonight, top-level competitors, top-level bucket horses, bucket bulls. There are a lot of women in cowboy boots and men with big buckles. The red, white and blue of the American flag is everywhere. I can definitively say this is my first rodeo. Hey, I'm very thankful to be born here in this great state of Montana. A traditional event in this neck of the woods, the patriotism of the crowd can't be contained. There's a lot to be thankful. Are you paying respect for all 50 of those stars?

22:21Are you paying respect for all 13 of those stripes? Are you paying respect for something? That still stands for something. But friends, I want you to take a second and think, what does that red, white and blue mean? A man stands up and yells, freedom, as we rise for the national anthem.

22:50We take our seats again as the riders get ready to compete. This is a variety show of different Western events.

23:01There's the bucking bronco, calf roping, barrel racing. Perhaps the most terrifying is the bull riding. For the bull riding, they're swapping the cowboy hats for a helmet, which I think is a wise choice. The bull rushes out, writhing around furiously, trying to shake off its rider. Again, it's happening. Ooh, and he's on right away.

23:30Staying on for just eight seconds is considered an achievement.

23:38Round the back of the arena is a burger stall and a taco van. We sit down at a table. What's your name? Deanne. Deanne, nice to meet you, Deanne. You too. How long have you lived in Montana or Bozeman? Um, 60 years and two weeks. Oh, wow. OK, a long time. Deanne says she's noticed big changes in this area in recent years. It's seen an influx of new people drawn to the culture and to the wide open spaces. It's just gotten harder to do everything. You know, prices have been driven up. Traffic is a nightmare. You know, so yeah, a lot of us wish it was the way it used to be. She tells me you can spot the newcomers a mile off with their unsullied cowboy boots and fur vests.

24:21But also, she feels, a disrespect for the history of the land. I'm a big fan of public lands, and that's kind of what separates people who have been here a while and the people who have come in is, you know, public lands are great for all this kind of stuff, so I think I will buy myself 600 acres of it and build my mansion on it and then block everybody out. This fear is echoed by a lot of people I speak to here in Montana, a feeling that their culture is under threat by all these changes. And in this conversation, one city in particular always comes up. It is 5pm in downtown Bozeman and I'm standing on the main street and this city is the centre of Montana's development and population boom.

25:07And you can really feel that here, it's absolutely buzzing. It's almost like a Disney version of the American West. You've got all of the cowboy paraphernalia, but it's sold for quite high prices next to things like artisanal soap and handcrafted jewellery. Bozeman, often ranking as one of America's fastest growing cities, is emblematic of a modern changing Montana. It's nicknamed Boz Angeles by locals after the wealthy Californians, they say, are moving in and driving up prices. And if you look at the Bozeman Valley, and just as you drive, you just see house after house after house, subdivision after subdivision.

25:46And that's beautiful, fertile land that really should be in agriculture. And now it will never be in agriculture. To many, this isn't just about who owns the land. It's about a way of life.