Is A Toothless Federal Bureaucracy Devoted To Ecosystem Protection Capable Of Doing Its Job?
What happens when a bunch of federal bureaucratic agencies are thrown together with a mission to protect America's best wildlife ecosystem? Not enough, argues Earle Layser in part two of his series on
As development intensifies on private land in Jackson Hole, it is negatively affecting wildlife and habitat on adjacent federal public land, as with the Bridger-Teton National Forest represented by forested mountainous areas on the left-hand side of this photo. It also is created islands of of habitat as represented by East Gros Ventre Butte to the right. Meanwhile, as private land development surges in the region, one entity that has been strangely silent in raising concern about impacts on public land is the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee, comprised of the major federal land management agencies. GYCC was formed 60 years ago to promote thinking across invisible administrative boundaries. Critics say that not only does the GYCC lack teeth but its leadership doesn't possess the courage to make the public aware of how development is impairing public lands. Photo license from Shutterstock/GagliardiPhotography
EDITOR'S NOTE: In this, the second part of Earle Layser's three-part look at the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, that began 75 years ago with a visit to Yellowstone Park and included work for the Forest Service and agencies as a resource consultant, he highlights the lack of a cohesive vision for protecting the region. In particular, he draws attention to an obscure bureaucratic confederacy known as the "Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee" that has been in existence since the 1960s and is supposed to promote transboundary thinking in addressing important issues shaping the ecosystem. The GYCC, as it known, however, has a mixed record. While it has played an important role in getting different agencies to, for example, embrace policies that advance grizzly bear conservation, it has failed to reconcile contradictory agency policies pertaining to feeding of elk, the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease, and highlighting negative development on private land that threatens the ecology integrity of public lands. If it were really providing a leadership function, critics ask, then why doesn't the public know what it does? Layser provides an overview of the GYCC in his piece below that is part of "Reflections on a Changed and Changing Yellowstone." —Mountain Journal
Part 2: Is The GYCC Part of the Solution or the Problem?
By Earle Layser
The 22.5-million-acre *Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is a vast area, larger in size than the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut combined. Grand vistas, wildlife, geysers, canyons, rivers, forests, and America primeval come to mind—a place the American people proudly cherish. And, rightly so, it is a national treasure.
Behind the scenery, however, overseeing and underlying it all, is another type of vastness—bureaucracy. The administration of the parks, public land and natural resources within the ecosystem is a hugely complex and often controversial endeavor.
First, principally, there are four federal agencies involved—the National Park Service (two national parks), US Fish and Wildlife Service (three wildlife refuges plus threatened and endangered species) and the Bureau of Land Management, all of which are under the US Department of Interior; and the US Forest Service (with five national forests consolidated from seven) and three different larger regions represented) overseen by the US Department of Agriculture. Each federal agency has its own legislative mandate, meaning mission and sometimes inconsistency in how it is carried out.
In addition, further confounding the picture, three state (Idaho, Montana and Wyoming) wildlife agencies lay claim to management of wildlife not federally protected under the Endangered Species Act and fisheries on the public lands within their states adjoining the national parks (but not within the parks). Of course, wildlife recognize none of those things mentioned above, including the artificial administrative boundaries created by humans.
Like I said, it is complicated—different entities with different and often inconsistent or contradictory objectives. Recognizing the complexities, in 1964 the federal agencies, represented by the dozen or more jurisdictional or administrative units, formed what we know today as the “Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee or GYCC—not to be confused with the conservation organization, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition or GYC, founded in 1983.
Jurisdiction of the federal Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee
The purpose of creating the GYCC was to foster “cooperation and coordination [of management] at the landscape scale.” With a proviso, however: “the GYCC was/is not intended to be a regional decision-making body.” Of course, this leads to the question: what does it actually do if it is a bureaucracy that mostly only "advises" but has no teeth to implement policy nor force to confront sister agencies whose actions might be undermining ecosystem health?
Subsequently, in 1985, a US House subcommittee held hearings on the need for coordination and planning across the region’s federal administrative boundaries and to better include science in the decision-making process. It found that while the agencies might see themselves as part of a larger ecosystem, they were not always apt to act with a unified vision.
In 1994, the agencies produced a 70-page draft Vision for Yellowstone’s Forests (15 Pub. Land and Resources Law Review, Vol. 15 #3, 1994). It described the purpose and pathway for integrated management of Yellowstone’s federal lands.
The perceived or imagined implications of the Vision for traditional uses, private land owners, and other vested interests set off an uproar of public protest. Meanwhile, on the other hand, meetings, seminars, and scholarly policy analyses were being conducted promoting and defining ecosystem management. A type of stalemate was achieved—continuation of the status quo. The Vision was reduced to a 11-page Framework for Coordination, while two high-ranking agency personnel and their jobs vanished, victims of the controversy. Here is an overview of the contentious political battle, for those who might care to read a summary.
Writer Jeffery St. Clair summarized, “It should now be obvious that even when high-level agency officials develop innovative ecosystem management scenarios, ideas that invariably conflict with the dominant political paradigm, politics will prevail—often with disastrous consequences.”
Today, the GYCC lives on and generates a great deal of information and data, but no actual decisions per se. Decisions remain the purview of each administrative unit’s line officers. Collecting data is portrayed as science. Through GYCC coordination, though, administrators are less apt to blindside one another. Significant decisions are informed collectively.
But you still might rightly wonder to what extent do the Greater Yellowstone administrators actually incorporate the reams of public comment, data, and information (or science) that is generated by the GYCC in the management and decision-making process? Has the administration of the parks and public lands really changed much or any since the House subcommittee hearings in the 1980s?
Artificial feeding in winter of thousands of elk at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole is considered the epitome of dysfunction when it comes to coordinated management of wildlife. The Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee has steadfastly refused to take a science-driven leadership position in resolving obvious contradictions. Feeding elk has led to artificially high numbers of elk and right next door Grand Teton National Park every fall holds an "elk reduction" hunt inside its borders to deal with "too many elk." Meanwhile, concentrating large numbers of elk at the Elk Refuge around feed also has created elevated risk for the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease and brucellosis among elk that then disperse into the Bridger-Teton National Forest, Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. In addition, despite large elk numbers, wolves are aggressively targeted by the state of Wyoming based on the (false) argument that wolves are having a serious negative impact on elk. Why the GYCC hasn't been more involved in fixing the conflicts or called out artificial elk feeding is a mystery, critics say. Photo used via license with Shutterstock/mgwilmoth
Most concerning is the continuing criticism that administrative units exist as bureaucratic fiefdoms and at cross purposes with policies potentially carried out by one agency (on one part of the common landscape) while potentially causing unintended impacts or conflicts with neighboring public lands right next door.
Many conservationists with decades of experience believe the GYCC does simply not have the teeth to confront the challenges the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is currently facing—the biggest not always being traditional resource extraction, but rather, today, the ongoing development on private land adjacent to public lands and ever increasing and overwhelming numbers of people using the national parks and forests.
Compared to the multiple use purview of the national norests, the National Park Service’s mandate is the most direct and understandable. It is to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural values for the enjoyment of the people.
But it is no easy job either; think curators of a living ecosystem, not frozen in time but continuing to evolve. Preserving natural values and simultaneously providing for their use by the ever-growing technologically-driven masses of humanity is a highly-politicized, complex, and contradictory mission. And its chief human clientele often are uncomfortable in wildland settings. After all, real life for most visitors nowadays are urban centers while Greater Yellowstone’s natural and wildlife richness are a world apart.
You might ask, since Yellowstone National Park is considered the heart of the ecosystem, are there any criteria for gauging the Park Service’s success in “preserving the natural values?” A simple standard might be Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic,” which states: A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Yellowstone Park has some tangible examples of the “right things” from relatively recent time, that we can hold up as having demonstrably contributed to preserving natural values (I.e., “the biotic community”) within the ecosystem:
° For example, there’s the Craighead brothers’ 1958-68 grizzly bear telemetry research, out of which arose an Interagency paradigm for grizzly bear management that recognized the national park habitat alone would not suffice to maintain a viable grizzly population. An ecological epiphany, it gave rise to the notion and term Greater YellowstoneEcosystem. Combining this concept into a park and public land’s management approach (e.g., the GYCC) has allowed the grizzly bear population to grow from 136 bears in the 1970s s to more than 728 in 2019 (or what some claim is actualy 1000 today, using the current controversial monitoring and bear counting methods that critics say is flawed). The fact species habitat requirements do not necessarily conform to administrative boundaries has likewise been recognized to apply to other large cursorial and migratory species within the Greater Yellowstone.
° As far as landscape-level events, the historic 1988 wildfires burned around 800,000 acres. At the time, in a media frenzy, the fires were wrongly reported as having “destroyed Yellowstone.” The wildfires, along with post-burn studies, have served to raise questions about the agencies’ fire policies, bringing about recognition that periodic wildfires are a necessary and normal phenomenon, if the park’s wildernesses or ecosystem is to be maintained in a relatively natural condition.
° Another high-profile event for the region as the 1995-1996 wolf reintroduction. In the park’s early years, wolves and grizzly bears were relentlessly hunted, trapped and poisoned. And, as is the case with poisons and anti-predator mania, there were collateral victims—fox, coyote, wolverine, marten, cougar, black bear, and eagles. By 1926, wolves were extirpated from the park. After all, it was believed, “people didn’t go there to see fanged creatures.”
To the contrary, since the reintroduction of the wolf, a significant biological contribution of the National Park has been the living demonstration of a functioning ecosystem. The wolf has contributed immensely to both visitor enjoyment and natural values, such as improved ecological condition of the park’s riparian vegetation, habitat, and species diversity. Development of eco-tourism businesses have followed, benefiting local economies. With the wolf’s return, Yellowstone boasts a wildlife compliment that includes all the large charismatic species extant before European settlement.
° At present, after decades of controversy, the writing of a new Yellowstone bison management plan is in progress. It has potential to address and resolve some of the long-standing issues for Yellowstone, national forest livestock grazing allotments, and the state of Montana’s lethal involvement in the management of this iconic animal. Bison are our national animal. They symbolize the park’s protection of natural values. Workable alternatives to the wasteful and inhumane practices of slaughtering hundreds of bison each year as they leave the northwest corner of park are long overdue. Will the Park Service planning accomplish its goal and resolve some of the long-standing bison issues? Will the Forest Service be more vocal in welcoming native bison onto its lands or will it continue to favor private cattle interests?
For instance, disparaging the benefits that wildlands and park lands provide for humanity is a biophobic element comprised of state and local officials, ranchers, and certain sportsmen, which are fundamentally opposed to preserving natural values; an animus, that would eagerly eliminate public lands, exterminate the bison, wolf and grizzly bear again, and abolish Wildernesses given the opportunity to do so. This was also a large part of the element involved in defeating the GYCC Vision, too.
Regardless that the above examples contribute materially to the preservation of natural values, and arguably to the enjoyment of park visitors, none of it has been or continues to be without opposition and huge public debate. As a society, we are painfully far from all being on the same page regarding the things we value. In the video, below, efforts by the Bureau of Land Management to address the spread of noxious weeds across jurisdictional boundaries are touted by the GYCC. But more noxious to wildlife health is permanent habitat fragmentation on private land.
Even though the region's world-famous wildlife populations rely on federal public lands for habitat—lands to which all US citizens support with their tax dollars, states exert a disproportionate amount of influencing in demanding how wildlife species, especially predators, ought to be managed. The Forest Service in Wyoming has seldom condemned artificial feeding of wildlife, or condemned the slaughter of Yellowstone bison on its lands in Montana. Seldom do we ever hear Forest Service personnel voice advocacy for public wildlife on lands they administer and where wildlife are allegedly regarded by the agency as important indicators of ecosystem health.
I think of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1903 Grand Canyon speech—“Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it,” when I hear agency and chamber of commerce proposals calling for better meeting human needs vs. protecting natural values. Generally, with the backing of the GYCC, this has translated into promoting increasing visitation, convenience by expanding infrastructure, communication as in cell towers, modernization, transportation, and technological fixes—items involved with humanizing the environment and providing for and encouraging ever-increasing numbers of visitors.
You might believe non-governmental conservation organizations (NGOs) are the answer. Indeed, they make important education, watch-dog, and lobbyist contributions. But this is not so simple either. In 2011, for example, 183 conservation NGOs, with 500 employees and 700 board member, were reported to operate within the Greater Yellowstone. Not surprisingly, they likewise may compete and work at cross purposes with each other. Some are praised by the public for being bold and visionary while many are criticized for steering clear of controversy or enabling environmental degradation by not getting involved in important issues, such as planning, zoning and demanding agency scrutiny on the impacts of outdoor recreation.
Paradise Valley, Montana, located along the Yellowstone River between Yellowstone National Park to the south and the town of Livingston, Montana to the north, is a crossroads for wildlife moving between both Yellowstone and the adjacent Custer Gallatin National Forest. which rims the valley. The scene in this photo is deceiving for it gives the impression that the open space will be there forever. However, invisible are the thousands of private property lots that have been subdivided. Even if not all of them are developed, those that do, along with structures and driveways, lawns, fences, yard lights and dogs will bring major disruption to wildlife that moves to and fro from the national forest. The Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee does not weigh in significantly on private land issues even though it is exists to advance ecosystem health. Its reluctance to be vocal, critics say, is a major problem and a disservice to the public lands it is supposed to be protecting. Photo licensed through Shutterstock/PTZ Pictures
In many ways, the administration and protection of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem today mirrors our increasingly splintered democratic society and its complexities, including a fractured decision-making process as illustrated boldly by the GYCC.
There is continuing and deepening concern that increasing population and urban growth, combined with today’s technology, are threatening the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s core natural values and resources, while the agencies responsible for administering the ecosystem are being swept along by the rising tide of people on the landscape. Simultaneously there are calls for more accommodations, developments, ease of access, and more resource use, to the detriment of the ecosystem.
Decades ago, the growing and potential problems were already recognized and a management paradigm to better address the issues was developed and proposed in the Vision. A ground swell of local and high-level politics with vested interests intervened in defeating that in order to allow for continuation of the status quo.
Today, the Greater Yellowstone faces an existential threat from cumulative effects; but more, too from a burgeoning population in the valleys and resort towns adjacent the parks and public lands and the demands of many more people engaged in multiple activities across the landscape.
A question on the minds of many is if federal land managers, conservation organizations and elected officials are up to the task of meeting the challenges?
Next time: Part 3: How Do We Slow Down Change When It Is Happening Faster Than We Can Respond?
Also read: When The Government Tries To Think Big by Mountain Journal columnist, award-winning nature writer and longtime Forest Service recreation and wilderness specialist Susan Marsh
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.
