Beyond Rescue: Do We Really Need Cell Phone Coverage In The Wild Backcountry?
As cell towers proliferate, allowing the internet and social media to penetrate remote landscapes, how come the public wasn't asked if it's a good idea?
The southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake, one of the most remote wilderness corners of Yellowstone, is a place where motor boats are not allowed. Is it also a place that needs good cell phone reception? Photo courtesy Jim Peaco/NPS
By Earle Layser
When I was growing up, we lived in a remote mountainous area. For a time, we had no indoor running water, the privy was outback; no telephone, not even AM radio. Electricity was slow to arrive through a rural cooperative. But where the mountains came down to the farm fields, wild land and its wild inhabitants existed just outside our back door.
It was a different time and place. Who could have ever foretold the variety and overwhelming rapidity of technological advances in just my lifetime?
Humankind’s population growth combined with complex societal and other changes assumed accelerating trajectories. The Anthropocene emerged full blown—an exponential explosion within an array of dimensions related to our human relationships with the natural world.
When I first arrived in the Rocky Mountain West, a great deal of public land qualified as de factowilderness. Generally, it existed not because of any deliberate plan, but rather because it was uneconomical to construct roads into it. However, the US Forest Service and other federal land management agencies began receiving Congressional appropriations for “below cost” timber sales and other“improvements,”meaning it cost more to expedite the logging and get the trees out than any direct financial return it generated.
Such taxpayer-subsidized programs opened up large areas of national forest for timbering and motorized access under the auspices of “multiple use.” The economic infusion propped up local economies and businesses, while roadless areas melted away.
A divergent outlier that flew in the face of those economic and administrative policies, passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, was an extraordinary event. The Act had required six years and 66 revisions to satisfy its authors they had gotten it right and for President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign it into becoming law.
Jackson Hole’s Margaret “Mardy” Murie, was at the signing in Washington DC flanking the president, along with other luminaries of the conservation community. Mardy was there honoring her late husband, Olaus, one of the Act’s authors, who had died of cancer just a month before.
A national wilderness preservation system, like the network of our national parks, was a uniquely American idea. It set a worldwide precedence for the recognition of the importance and value of wildlands, allowed to exist in their natural state, to society.
It was also a simpler time then, too. The Wilderness Act and its analog requirements were readily understandable by most people. And it specifically identified what are prohibited uses— roads, motorized equipment, mechanical transport, structures and installations, and commercial activities—within classified wildernesses.
But nowadays what can happen when the Department of Interior or Agriculture is led by political appointees who have an agenda or don’t understand or appreciate nature not intensively manipulated? Most of us entrust the federal agencies to administer wildernesses in accordance with the law. However, we have just witnessed how this may be subverted by special interests that have the ear of an administration intent on regulation roll backs and weakening of environmental laws.
The old fire lookout on Mt. Washburn was originally built to be a perch for rangers to quickly identify lightning-caused wildfires and over the years has grown in its size. While some claim the addition of antennae to enhance cell phone reception is unsightly, a bigger criticism is how it allows the digital world to more of Yellowstone. Photo courtesy NPS
I am reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s pithy assessment of the Constitutional Congress’s creation: “We have given you a democratic republic, if you can keep it.” The creators of the Wilderness Act gave us the legislative framework for a wilderness preservation system… if we can keep it. Above, I’ve mentioned some of the more overt threats but returning to my theme of technological advancements, there’s another affecting the aesthetics and feel of wilderness.
This subtle threat to wild areas is the explosion of modern communication technology and associated commerce: WiFi, the internet, cell phones packed with gadgetry, electronic commerce, and Orwellian social media—like they are on electronic cocaine, the “screen addicted” need to be connected 24/7. I assert that it is the antithesis of wilderness and the natural world.
While visionary, the Wilderness Act was not prescient. Its language is silent with respect to the unforeseen digital world’s potential conflicts with wilderness. The technology did not exist back then; we were all unwired, sans cell phones, Wi-Fi, the internet, and electronic commerce and commercialism. And while we navigated the backcountry were we any worse off?
Modern communication technology has dramatically transformed the way we live, play and work. It is more than a tool or use, it adds a different dimension to the way present day generations relate to or experience their environment, the natural world and wilderness that often functions as a refuge for wildlife populations as we know them in Greater Yellowstone.
Such communication ecosystems are social, economic and technology centric, not nature centric. Similar to mechanization or motorization, they set us apart from the natural world.
The fact you do not see, feel, or hear electromagnetic or microwave transmissions can make communication devices even a more insidious human and societal threats to wild areas and nature, especially considering our burgeoning urban population’s continuing disconnect with the outdoors,
There is a gathering awareness of such digital technology is doing to us. In an article that appeared in University of Montana’s newsletter Wilderness Connect, “A Double-Edged Sword: Threats to Wilderness from Technology," the ways communication and navigation technology are potential threats and incompatible with wilderness character, resources, and experiences are identified and described. Another expert, in an article titled "Cellular Towers in Wilderness Areas: Really?" that appeared in EarthTalk magazine, stated that letting cell towers into National Parks is no different than letting other forms of industrial development into those places.”
Indeed, the virtue of the Wilderness Act may be threatened by another law whose consequences were not adequately thought through. When the 1996 Telecommunications Act was passed, Congress recognized some federal lands, such as parks and wildlands, should be off limits to wireless infrastructure.
That intent has become less than inviolate in the recent rush by private telecom corporations to extend the reach of coverage and e-commerce into places that potentially harbor lots of subscribers or users. National parks like Yellowstone and Grand Teton, and their associated public facilities, are just such places.
Here, we need to note: the National Park Service has avoided legislatively designating any wilderness areas. Instead, the powers that be have administratively labeled qualifying areas as “recommended wilderness,” claiming to manage such places the same as if they were in fact classified under the Wilderness Act.
Wireless carriers are in the business to make money. They make more profits at places where people make more connections or calls. How does that mesh with policy and rules regarding commercialization or industrialization of national parks and any “recommended” or adjoining wildernesses? Does this qualify as another form of plundering parks for commercial gain, a throwback to 19th century frontier capitalism? At this link you can learn about the Park Service's approach to the issue.
Jimmy Tobias in an essay that appeared in High Country News, “Wiring the Wild” (HCN, March 2020) and Chistopher Ketcham in a story he wrote for Sierra magazine, “Wi-Fi in the Wilderness,” have both reported on how restrictions attached to the 1996 Telecom Act have largely gone by the wayside and instead are currently being driven by a Department of Interior Executive Order 138210 and corporative pressure, which calls for increased electronic communication services, e-commerce, and use for profit private contractors in our national parks.
Section 2 of the Executive Order reads: “Supporting Broadband Deployment. (a) The Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) shall develop a plan to support rural broadband development and adoption by increasing access to tower facilities and other infrastructure assets managed by the Department of the Interior (DOI), consistent with applicable law and to the extent practicable. DOI shall draft model terms and conditions for use in securing tower facilities and other infrastructure assets for broadband deployment.”
Within Greater Yellowstone and elsewhere in the public-land-rich West the push for installation of broad band and other communication facilities serving federal lands is being advanced under the above January 8, 2018 Presidential Executive Order for “streamlining and expediting” the wiring of rural America.
Public safety, search and rescue (SAR), and improved interpretive services in the parks are cited as justifications. In small towns, stronger wireless signals may enhance tele-education and medical services. It can seem un-American to even question the appropriateness of any proposed installations.
Hikers in the Greater Yellowstone high country. The power of the outback is most potent when humans allow themselves to have a sensual experience devoid of ringing phones, pings and ear buds. While phones come in handy for taking photos, do the images really need to be instantly posted on social media while you're still on the mountain and, just as bad, identifying quiet places and invited the masses to overwhelm them? Photo courtesy Jacob W. Frank/NPS
America’s national forests and national parks are somehow considered a part of rural America. Cellular build out of our national parks and forests is ongoing and is being further justified under the seemly benign objective of “updating utilities.” In keeping with the above Executive Order and the Trump Administration’s environmental regulation roll back, the National Environmental Policy Act requirements, which require analysis and public scrutiny for actions deemed significant, have been circumvented through use of “categorical exclusions.” In essence, it means decisions are left up to the local land manager in charge.
In Yellowstone, a company known as AccessParks working in combination with Xanterra is pushing ahead. AccessParks’ mantra is “people don’t visit National Parks for longer periods because high speed internet services are not available.”
That raises an eyebrow for many. Do we really need more people visiting parks for longer and, further, people who would invoke lack of available internet available as a reason for not visiting?
While some argue Yellowstone should be a place you go to unplug, the Park Service has adopted a resigned position that high speed connectivity throughout is “impossible to deny; it is inevitable.” Ironically, Yellowstone has previously always banned television from the park’s lodging facilities for the reasons that “it would detract from the Park’s purposes.”
Currently, Yellowstone is installing 187 miles of fiber optic cable following along park roads. Additionally, as reported in 2019 by National Parks Traveler and described in Yellowstone’s own 2019 and 2020 planning documents relating to “Right of Way" regulations, the IT company AccessParks isproposing a massive installation of 484 small antennas, a network of 39 other antennas linking to outside broadband services, and more, in and around Yellowstone and its lodging facilities.
The installations are intended to provide updated communication and high-speed internet to park visitors and employees throughout Yellowstone’s developments. Areas of “recommended wilderness” are supposedly excluded, but “spill over” seems likely. The build out of this system can be likened to industrial infrastructure. I would also argue that when one enters wild nature, it is not only about the caliber of the terrain one encounters but the mindset one brings in.
There is a lot we still don’t know definitively about the impacts of proliferating gadgets on human health. While long term effects remain unknown, microwave radiation has become recognized as a 21st century pollutant. Potential health issues associated with it are only starting to be realized and documented.
Should people be unknowingly subjected to invisible and concentrated levels of electromagnetic radiation while in a national park, in outdoor and pristine settings? In addition, patho-physiological effects of electromagnetic radiation on plants, birds and mammals have also been, and continue being, discovered and documented. Read the findings of a research paper by Alfonso Balmori and colleagues. How does that mesh with Park Service laws intended to protect wildlife and natural resources within parks?
As aggressive as Yellowstone’s plans are for increasing cellular technology and connectivity, Grand Teton National Park in Jackson Hole goes beyond. It may be the poster child for Park Service ambitions to expand and update wireless infrastructure and technology— reportedly “the largest expansion in NPS history,” according to the stories by Ketcham and Tobias. (op. cit.: Ketcham, 2020; Tobias, 2020). Driven by telecom giants—ATT, T-Mobile, Verizon—Grand Teton Park is planning to deploy 60 miles of fiber optic cable, a sprawling network of nine new cell tower sites, and an indeterminate number of antennas.
The goal is to “close up the areas lacking cellular coverage.” Spill over, as in Yellowstone, will be difficult or impossible to totally predict and contain. Undoubtedly, coverage will extend intoareas ofthe park where previously many have enjoyed refuge frommodern technology and e-commerce, including backcountry, natural area, and Park Service “recommended” and classified wildernesses on adjacent national forests.
How appropriate or necessary is this extensive coverage in a national park? Why aren’t we, visitors who love parks and the idea of getting away, having meaningful conversations about appropriateness? Why aren’t they being led by the land management agencies in Greater Yellowstone and elsewhere?
Grand Canyon touts its mobile phone app that allows visitors to learn more as they travel through the park. Photo courtesy M. Quinn/NPS
Roughly 80 percent of Americans live in urban settings; 85 to 90 percent reportedly use or have access to the internet, many of whom likely could not imagine life without it.
Technology obviously can be a strength for bringing the world to one’s fingertips. But for a large segment of our population, natural areas are only infrequently, or not at all, part of their lives. Is being wired in necessary to having a better experience inside a national park?
Does encouraging people to visit national parks because high speed connectivity is available send the right message? Places such as the national parks and forests should be where one goes to unplug and experience or learn about what is a rarity nowadays—the natural world.
As in a performing arts hall, cell phones for the most part need to be turned off.
NoSevice.org, an organization dedicated to “Wilderness without Wireless,” and EarthTalk, the non-profit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), and others are questioning the wisdom, legality, and desirability of wiring the wilderness and our national parks. PEER has been a tenacious watchdog. Read its assessment of the issue here.
As they ask, do we really need to be able to stream a movie or view an ad for a Big Mac on our iPhone while in the backcountry? The Bureau of Land Management, on its page providing information to hikers who want to explore national monuments in southern Utah, gives readers this warning: "While a cell phone may help in an emergency, do not rely on your cell phone. Cell coverage outside established towns may be poor or unavailable. Be prepared to follow other recommendations to ensure a safe trip."
Questioning connectivity and wireless installations within natural public lands, of the caliber we have in Greater Yellowstone, is a risky prospect. It runs counter to the expectations of a general public that seldom ever goes unplugged, as well as the recent Trump Administration’s Executive Orders and the profit pursuit of telecom giants. Sadly, you might consider it a David meets Goliath story but it's really a battle over saving the essence of places where virtual reality should not be allowed to tread
About Earle Layser
Earle F. Layser is a writer who lives in Alta, Wyoming on the west side of the Tetons. This former Forest Service smokejumper and graduate of the University of Montana worked for the Forest Service, Interior Department and in the private sector as a biological consultant. He is certified as a wildlife biologist by The Wildlife Society, as a professional ecologist by the The Ecological Society of America and as a forester by the Society of American Foresters. Married to the late writer Pattie Layser, he established the Earle and Pattie Layser Creative Writing and Journalism Fellowship in her memory. It focuses on exploring conservation issues in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The couple also created the Layser Endowed Distinguished Professorship in Conservation and Biology at UM-Missoula. Earle is author of several books.
