Montana: Back to Lewis And Clark?

A home where the buffalo roam would be a darn sight more profitable than a busted ranch. Or so thinks Robert Scott, who has proposed turning the 15,000- sq.-mi. Big Open area of east-central Montana into a game park the size of Maryland with half of New Jersey thrown in.

Like Scott, who lost his ranch in the Big Open, many of the 3,000 human inhabitants of the flat, arid area are going broke trying to raise wheat or cattle. If their lands were combined into a cooperative and replanted with native grasses, says Scott, the area could support wild animals on a scale ; unseen since Lewis and Clark came through in 1805. Tourists would flock in to watch the deer and the antelope play, hunters to stalk elk and perhaps 75,000 bison. Scott presented his plan in Missoula last month to the nonprofit Institute of the Rockies and heard nary a discouraging word. The institute is raising funds for a study.