"This Is the Way to Do It": How Matt Skoglund Built NorthBridge Bison From Scratch

Matt Skoglund, a former environmental policy attorney from Chicago with zero agricultural background, now runs NorthBridge Bison Ranch 30 miles northeast of Bozeman, Montana. He field-harvests every animal himself, sells 100% direct to consumer by the quarter, half, or whole bison, and ships across the country. The whole operation started because of a Google Alert.

From Policy Work to the Ranch

For ten years, Skoglund worked on Yellowstone bison policy for a conservation organization. He helped form a Citizens Working Group that successfully pushed for expanded tolerance zones outside the park—including Horse Butte Peninsula, where taxpayer dollars were still being used to haze bison back into the park to protect cattle that no longer existed. But over time, he grew frustrated with the limits of nonprofit advocacy. "You lack control," he says. He'd meet with state and federal scientists who agreed with him on restoring bison to places like the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, but "politically, that's a nonstarter." He concluded that if you really want to protect biodiversity, "it has to come from how we produce things and how we consume things, like through the business world."