How Much Is Enough? (To Save Or Destroy A World-Class Ecosystem?)
Topic of new ongoing MoJo series comes at time of record visitation to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, crowded rivers, exploding development pressure, surging outdoor recreation and climate change
Introduction to an ongoing series aimed at exploring
whether the wildness of Greater Yellowstone
can really endure without limiting the human footprint
by Todd Wilkinson
Ask yourself the hard, discerning question, dear reader: how much—how much of anything is enough? How much to appease the hunger for more? How much evidence before you start to reflect on impacts affecting community and and public lands around you? At what point do citizens say "they've had enough" and begin to entertain accepting limits on personal desires in order to protect something greater than ourselves?
How much money do we believe will make us happy, how much development must there be to achieve economic prosperity, and how much access to public lands before our desires for more are satisfied?
Is there ever enough? And is it even possible for reflection on such questions to occur at levels in which elected officials, public land managers, planners, business people, real estate agents, tourism promotors, architects, outdoor recreationists and citizens pay attention?
We live in a time and in a country addled with short attention spans, where there is a voyeuristic fascination with breaking records. Noble or alarming, such records seem to be falling at a quickening pace, happening so fast our ability to make sense of them—and potentially adapt—can’t keep up.
What does this mean for a region like the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem? Why should a citizen who seeks a stewardship connection to the wildest expressions of Nature care?
The web and superstructure of biological diversity in Greater Yellowstone—it is the last, still-intact wildlife-rich ecosystem in the Lower 48 states, and still holds all of its mammal species present half a millennium ago—provides a lens for reflection on differing, sometimes contradictory iterations of enough.
Greater Yellowstone is a region where the flag of surrender has not yet been flown in appeasement to promoters of Anthropocene theory—the notion that not only do we live in an epoch in which humans dominate Earth but some believe we possess the wisdom and insight to engineer a natural future. Many conservation biologists, like the late forerunner of large landscape conservation Dr. Michael Soule believed such homocentric thinking is fraught with hubris, particularly when it comes to safeguarding something as rare, fragile and inspiring as Greater Yellowstone.
Can Greater Yellowstone really "have it all:" a world-class wildlife ecosystem, virtually unbridled development growth, planning without zoning, skyrocketing outdoor recreation users, affordable housing, continued wildlife migrations, enough water and protection of open space that inspires our awe? Or is it just a 21st century expression of neo-Manifest Destiny in which human uses trump others on the checkerboard? Photo credit in this montage: most images public domain. Photo o mansion via Flckr user Paul Siberian; clearcut user Sam Beebe
How long can the quality of wildness that persists here still hold out remains a question of deepening concern. The 150th year of Yellowstone National Park’s creation provides an ideal opportunity to pause and ponder the direction we are headed. Yellowstone was, in the time it was created, a radical notion—a protest embraced by Congress that the proto-resource extraction of colonial Manifest Destiny would not occur there. It was protection of the land base that, complemented by smarter ecological thinking in the 20th century, gives us the Yellowstone and surrounding ecosystem we have before us today.
In this vast part of the Northern Rockies, located at the geographical intersection of three-states—Wyoming, Montana and Idaho—differing kinds of converging record-breaking events are common and were accelerated by changes in human behavior catalyzed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
New reports from scientists tracking data points show a slope of higher average temperatures in Yellowstone Park than at any point in the last 20,000 years and, possibly, the past 800,000; record visitation figures have been announced by Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks; record average home prices by realtors; record volumes of passengers arriving at Bozeman and Jackson Hole airports (the busiest air hubs in Montana and Wyoming), counties in Greater Yellowstone are counted among the fastest growing in their states and fasted-growing rural areas in the country; Bozeman/Gallatin Valley, even prior to the pandemic was the fastest-growing micropolitan area in America; there are record influxes of people coming here to dwell permanently or own second homes; record numbers of new subdivisions (equating to new buildings, roads, and lighted yards on private land) are being approved; record volumes of sewage is being treated and water used; record numbers of outdoor recreationistspouring into national forests and floating on the region’s hallowed trout streams; more differing kinds of recreation are occurring on landscapes than ever before; more farm and ranchland is being lost to asphalt, concrete and exotic lawn grass. The list could go on. More locals are saying “enough is enough.”
Even if a month, season or year does not yield a new record, even if there is a slight dip, say, in visitation, it is important to consider: the human footprint continues to expand and it is not going to recede. A wildlife overpass or underpass constructed across a busy highway does not address the larger issues happening on both sides of the road that warranted its necessity. Like an ill person dealing with clogged arteries, installation of a stint (the equivalent of a wildlife crossing) does not necessarily fix the declining health of the patient who didn’t take care of his body across decades.
Most of the effects of the human built environment (think Bozeman and Jackson Hole) the expanding infrastructure supporting outdoor recreation and tourism (think Big Sky), and the volume levels of people using public lands and rivers, are growing, being driven by more people being here (think of the transformation that has happened along the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs or the western face of Utah's Wasatch).
Bear biologists say a mother grizzly with cubs in Greater Yellowstone does not care whether the stream of hikers, mountain bikers and ATVers she encounters in her living space are local or out of state, rich or poor, white or people of color, where they self-identify on the spectrum of gender, or whether they consider themselves conservationist or not. Eventually, constant thrums of users moving into the bear’s domain will result in an encounter or cause her to be displaced from habitat. This phenomenon exists now with many species.
Similarly, elk and mule deer don't care if a subdivision built into winter have homes that use solar power, are LEED Platinum certified, or have liberals or conservatives living inside them. The existential question facing them is do they have enough habitat?
Differing elk migration routes in the three-state Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem still intact and unsurpassed in the Lower 48. They still exist because their corridors have not yet been severed or too constricted by habitat fragmentation and development but for how long? Image courtesy Wyoming Migration Initiative and University of Oregon Infographics Lab.
The issue is not one of just a single development on private land or individual specific recreation users on public land, scientists say, but the volume and behavior of a lot more people and their disruptive influence bringing a cascade of cumulative effects.
How much is enough to sustain the wildlife abundance we have today? Seldom is this a question considered in city and county commission meetings, in real estate offices, land management agencies (think recent Custer Gallatin National Forest plan) or even among some conservation organizations who claim "outdoor recreation equates to wildlife conservation" and emphasize the need for more trails and public access to wildlands. It's a question especially pertinent to discussions of wilderness.
There is a myth which continues to be perpetuated and it goes something like this: we have plenty of wilderness in Greater Yellowstone and in some corners of the ecosystem we may be adding more. This is misleading.
The truth, scientists say, is we—this includes the entire Lower 48— actually have a finite amount of wilderness-caliber lands—i.e. landscapes that are not significantly dominated by human effects, yet—and they are declining in total area, not expanding.
“Wilderness,” in the capital “w” sense, is merely a legal administrative land designation but wilderness, lower “w,” speaks to a high quality of remnant natural landscape that we might define as habitats less inundated by humans and which rate extremely high in value as places where wildlife can still thrive. But wilderness-caliber lands in Greater Yellowstone, as expressed by the wildlife diversity still inside them them, are wilder than all national parks and wilderness areas in the entire Lower 48 (excepting Greater Yellowstone and the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem which includes Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness).
Intensifying human pressure is expected to only continue. The Covid-19 pandemic unleashed a new kind of 21st century migration fueled by a cultural epiphany—the realization that more people can work from home. You don’t have to be based in a distant city, and commute to work daily to a large office building to make a living. You can telecommute or base your operation in the exurbs of Greater Yellowstone.
Another new phenomenon:Greater Yellowstone also is attracting people who could be categorized as climate refugees—they are tired of dealing with wildfire threats in other parts of the West, or water shortages, or extreme heart or threats of hurricane damage and its social disruption. (Ironically, rising wildfire threats, water challenges and extreme heat are also coming to Greater Yellowstone, exacerbated by where and how the booming human population lives).
Once upon a time, this part of the Madison Range where Big Sky, Montana is now located was rich with wildlife and part of important migration corridors. Today, the impacts of ski slopes (which are also used by recreationists in warm weather seasons) and imprint of development are visible in this photography by Chris Boyer. What kind of spillover effects is Big Sky having on wildlife in the Madison and Gallatin Range? See more of Boyer's work at kestrelaerial.com
The net effect of all of the above is that it comes at a time when scientists say the best hope of maintaining biological diversity—i.e. healthy, migrating wildlife populations and river corridors—is to have more resilient landscapes.
What resilience means is having big, unfragmented landscapes that allow terrestrial wildlife to still move from low elevations in winter to higher elevations in summer, and vice versa. It means wildlife having enough alternatives so that when key habitats are impacted, for example, by drought and years with less natural foods to eat, they can move. It means having areas where wildlife do not constantly feel squeezed by more people circuiting through their homes and we humans displacing them which comes at a cost of physical health and reproduction.
Yet every month in Greater Yellowstone the expanding human footprint is exerting a countervailing effect. For as vast as Greater Yellowstone is, fragmentation is causing its carrying capacity—its ability to support the healthy populations of wildlife we know today—to shrink. Resiliency means protecting the best and highest quality habitat that remains and soon, in some places, opportunities allowing this to happen will surpass the point of no return.
In this ongoing series, Mountain Journal will be exploring the question: How much is enough? Part and parcel of this are: How much growth? How much profit? How much recreational opportunity? How much tourism? How much human incursion on public and private lands can Greater Yellowstone’s wildlife populations sustain before we reach tipping points and the problems become irreversible?
How much landscape fragmentation can happen before the rural character of our region is lost and Greater Yellowstone more closely resembles areas where the diversity of wildlife we still have here no longer exists? Part of this, too, means subjecting long-held convictions to scrutiny and determining whether they are reality or myths.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Mountain Journal is seeking stories from our readers about how you have witnessed private land habitat, favorite trails, frontcountry, backcountry or river stretches being transformed the effects of development, rising use levels or sharing of their location on social media. Write to us by clicking here. We would love to hear your perspective and if you have photographs, even better.
