Checkerboard: Do Laws In Greater Yellowstone Favor Private Rights Over Public Interest?
Award-winning writer and longtime Forest Service veteran Susan Marsh writes a parable for our time that underscores how we must take action to save our fragile ecosystem
The Hoback River, a 55-mile long tributary of the Snake River, flows toward the Gros Ventre Range in northwestern Wyoming. Until about 20 years ago, most of the Hoback River Valley consisted of ranchlands, writes Susan Marsh. Then a ranch was purchased and subdivided. Are the flood gates now open? Photo by Jon Mullen/Ecostock
by
Susan Marsh
Four
days of excellent presentations during the recent Yellowstone Summit closed
with Todd Wilkinson’s new book “Ripple Effects.” The talk, and the book on which it was
based, can’t help but leave one with great worry about the expanding human
footprint in the Greater Yellowstone region. Towns expand into cities,
ranchlands are gobbled up for subdivisions, and wildlands become increasingly fragmented.
We all see the ripples expanding and wonder what, if anything, can be done
about it.
It’s
not just the outskirts of towns going under the bulldozer. Private lands within
national forest boundaries are being bought up by billionaires with
billionaire-sized plans for development. Some of these plans have been
facilitated by land exchanges, especially in areas of checkerboard ownership
patterns, a legacy of the 19th century giveaways of alternate
sections to railroads.
Much of the Gallatin National Forest shared ownership in
checkerboard fashion with Burlington Northern Railroad until exchanges
consolidated ownership, particularly in the Gallatin River drainage.
In 1972, a land exchange took place between the Forest
Service and Burlington Northern, which made possible the development of Big Sky.
Later exchanges with the Gallatin and Beaverhead National Forests increased the
amount of private land in the Big Sky/Jack Creek area while consolidating national
forest ownership elsewhere.
Elimination of checkerboard ownership was seen as a great
asset to the efficiency of national forest management. As wilderness proposals
were taking shape in the early 1980s, consolidated Forest Service ownership of formerly
private timber lands made it possible to give consideration to parts of the
Gallatin and Madison Ranges that would otherwise be long shots for future
wilderness, given the checkerboard ownership pattern. They remain long shots
today, but for different reasons.
If retention of undeveloped wild land is seen as a plus,
what some areas gained was by necessity lost by others. The Gallatin Range and
its wildlife benefited from land exchanges while Big Sky has been transformed from
a ski resort to a full-on community.
The public has lost access to places that once were open to all. And elk, deer,
moose and bighorn sheep are among the species facing ever more traffic on US 191, which has long been a death zone.
Other
developments of inholdings have been in motion for years on the
south end of Greater Yellowstone. While these do not include skiing or golf opportunities
(yet) they have some similarities with what Big Sky has become: havens for the
wealthy.
Enter Joe Ricketts, founder of Ameritrade and whose family owns a 95 percent share of the Chicago Cubs. He bought a ranch near the mouth of Kilgore Creek and ... [began] tearing out the new roads built to serve the subdivision. He put in a fence and started raising buffalo.
I
have had many opportunities to take in the changes while driving along the
upper Hoback and Greys River roads in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The
properties are separated by 25 miles (as the Clark’s Nutcracker flies), but it
turns out they are quite intertwined, and not just ecologically.
Until
the turn of the new millennium, most of the private land in the Hoback Basin
consisted of ranchlands, subdivisions for housing that you had to snowmobile
into during the winter, and small businesses along the main highway. Then part
of a large ranch in the upper Hoback River valley was purchased, subdivided and
being prepared for lot sales.
Enter Joe Ricketts, founder of Ameritrade and whose family owns a 95 percent share of the Chicago Cubs. He bought a ranch near the mouth of Kilgore Creek and the already-platted
subdivision to the north. The first thing I saw after he took charge was
machinery tearing out the new roads built to serve the subdivision. He put in a
fence and started raising buffalo.
Bison bison wandering
in a large stretch of bottomland where their ancestors once grazed seemed a
darned sight better than a bunch of trophy homes. Some years later it appeared
that the buffalo didn’t pay all the bills, and an exclusive fly-fishing
destination was added, along with a few cabins. That, too, seemed innocuous
enough. And Ricketts
must be
credited for his involvement in the fight to keep a Texas energy company from
developing a natural gas field on the national forest nearby. His donations were
instrumental in securing a buy-out of the leases.
Sublette
County is now considering a request from Ricketts to create an exclusive resort
of an order that far exceeds what has been built in the valley so far. His
neighbors are not pleased to contemplate a development that might rival the
environmental effects of the proposed gas field that he and they beat back.
Travel
west into the Greys River drainage, south of Alpine, Wyoming, to another
private inholding within the Bridger-Teton National Forest. For decades, a
local family owned a ranch at the confluence of Deadman Creek and the river,
but it had not been used for crops or cattle for some time, and the heirs felt
a need to sell it—reluctantly, I am told. If they had to relinquish ownership, they
wanted the ranch preserved. Perhaps the Forest Service could acquire it.
Forest
staff and leaders were equally interested in protecting the property, much of
which lies in the broad riparian-wetland zone of the Greys River. The forest’s lands
staff worked hard to compete for funds to purchase the property through the
Land and Water Conservation Fund, or to find a conservation buyer.
I’ve been wondering: What can concerned citizens do when private inholdings within public lands are purchased by those with little to no understanding of how incompatible their plans are with the surrounding countryside?
– Susan Marsh
Congress
was squeezing LWCF at the time, so properties with lower land values than those
in northwestern Wyoming were given higher priority by the Forest Service, as
more land could be purchased per dollar spent. Deadman Ranch was nominated more
than once, but never funded. A couple of leads on conservation purchasers fell
through. Long story short, after much effort to prevent it, the property went
to a land developer.
Unlike
Big Sky, which is close to a major highway, the Deadman Ranch lies about 26
miles south of the nearest pavement along a dusty forest road. It is a small
inholding in a vast national forest, sandwiched between the spectacular east
slope of the Salt River Range with its 10,000-foot peaks and the west slope of
the Wyoming Range, whose summits reach even higher.
Some
of the ranch’s neighbors include trailheads, an elk winter range (closed to the
public in winter), Moose Flat Campground, the Box Y Lodge, and Meadows Guard
Station, which is rented to the public for overnight use. Visitor activities at
the lodge, both summer and winter, focus on backcountry uses like horseback
riding and snowmobiling, and the main road itself is groomed by the state of
Wyoming for snowmobile travel. People come in all seasons to hike, hunt, fish,
ride horseback and travel on OHVs. They come for the wildlife, scenery, fishing
and a chance to spend a weekend with family and friends. Development plans for
the Deadman Ranch did not mix well with what people had enjoyed for generations
in this place.
The
first thing I saw after the land purchase were a couple of large, ostentatious “ranch”
entrance gates with big signs and plenty of private property warnings. Then
came the first house. Then, not much happened for a while.
The
ranch was eventually sold to a new developer who renamed the place “Renegade”
and began development in earnest, marketing to the high-end, as is the norm in
this part of the state. Knowing that residents would not put up with an hour’s
drive one way (assuming no stops
Deadman Ranch, as seen from the air in 2006, was nominated for purchase under the Land and Water Conservation Fund, but never funded. It sold to a land developer who renamed the ranch "Renegade."
for cattle, sheep or someone’s RV in the road
with a flat tire) to the liquor store in Alpine along a bumpy, washboard road, the
investors laid out an airstrip that slices through the former pasture like a
yardstick on a patch of lawn.
Recently,
the nonprofit news service WyoFilepublished an article about what is
going on at the ranch, complete with a hand-wringing photograph of total
destruction. The article has pretty much gone viral among Wyomingites who
scratch their heads over how something like this could happen.
What
once was a willow-wrapped riparian zone and lush pasture is now mostly bare
ground, waiting for the invasive weeds to take hold. From the photo it looks as
if excavation has lowered the property to a level well below that of the river.
There are certainly plenty of ponds where none existed before.
Tying together this inholding with the one in the upper Hoback, part of
Renegade (how apt a name!) has been purchased by Joe Ricketts, owner of the
Upper Hoback River Ranch. There is much speculation that the purchase was made as
a bargaining chip for a land trade, as a strip of national forest land sits between
the Upper Hoback Ranch and some private parcels upstream (also owned by
Ricketts).
I did some checking on ownership in and around these holdings and found
several investment entities. One thing three of them shared was the same post
office box in Aurora, Colorado.
Assuming
the Deadman purchase is planned as a potential trade with the Forest Service
for property in the upper Hoback, it doesn’t strike me as a particularly astute
idea.
Once,
the Forest Service would have leapt at the chance to acquire and protect
Deadman Ranch. But now? Where is the public benefit in giving up the only piece
of national forest left between private lands where the public can access the
Hoback River before reaching its headwaters? What does the public gain from a patch
of degraded land, structures which are essentially permanent without expensive
removal, a paved runway, a high-standard road to nowhere, and other alterations
to the land that are completely incompatible with the national forest setting
around them? Twenty years ago, the Forest Service wanted to save the property to
prevent what has happened.
I’ve been further wondering: What can concerned citizens do when private inholdings
within public lands are purchased by those with little to no understanding of
how incompatible their plans are with the surrounding countryside?
So far, proposals like this have been challenged through protests, efforts
to regulate what can be built in wildland zones, and in court. But county zoning
and land-use regulations are often weak and vague, and accommodation of uses
incompatible with such regulations can easily be made by commissioners willing
to grant variances or rezone properties.
On a larger scale, our laws favor private rights over the public interest. Big
money with big ideas consider long-time residents a bunch of ignorant hicks who
can be bought with empty promises. Too often we prove them right.
As Todd Wilkinson said near the end of his talk at the Yellowstone Summit,
there is a need for a regional approach to saving Greater Yellowstone. Like
many of the Yellowstone Summit speakers, he made a call for action. I suppose
the first action in this case is to make sure we are thoughtful as we enter the
voting booth.
About Susan Marsh
Susan Marsh spent three decades with the U.S. Forest Service and is today an award-winning writer living in Jackson Hole.
