The Yellowstone we know today was arguably less wild a century ago when caretakers had Draconian ideas about predators, had poor understanding of wildlife biology and sometimes saw their role as choreographing an entertaining experience for visitors fit for the times. Here, elk are fed by hand in the Lamar Valley in about 1930, around the time wolves were ruthlessly eliminated from the park. Photographer unknown/courtesy NPS
EDITOR'S NOTE: While Yellowstone is universally loved, not everyone today understands the paradox of how this trailblazing nature preserve has had to constantly repel threats inside and out. Earle Layser provides a brief overview of some of the obvious and less obvious menaces to its ecological integrity.
“To develop a national park is to not have one.”
—Former Yellowstone historian Lee Whittlesey
By Earle Layser
As a designated World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve, the significance of Yellowstone National Park’s intact wilderness resources are recognized globally. This progenitor park attracts visitors from all over the world. None the less, it is a cautionary tale, too. Plunders appear to always be waiting at Yellowstone's borders with ambitious plans for industrial or exploitive uses.
Most recent was application by foreign companies to operate large-scale industrial gold mines in Paradise Valley on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest close to Yellowstone's borders. Grizzly bear habitat became a key focal point; had the grizzly been delisted from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, the outcome may have proved different. As it was, years of conservation advocacy and an act of Congress, the 2019 Yellowstone Gateway ProtectionAct, were required to prevent the mines. “Yellowstone Park,” it was said, “was more precious than gold.”
It was the same slogan that rallied the 10-year fight against the even larger New World Mine proposal, pushed forward by a Canadian company, Noranda Minerals, in the 1990s, just five miles northeast of Yellowstone near Cooke City, Montana. How younger generations forget that what they enjoy today in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is the result of every successive generation trying to hold the line and prevent the vulnerable public land base from being further degraded.
When the law that created Yellowstone was originally promulgated in 1872, Section 2 of the Yellowstone Protection Act had provision against “wanton destruction of fish and game.” But there was no enabling legislation, and “game” certainly did not mean all wildlife back then. Gaining protection for Yellowstone's wildlife required decades of additive action.
In the early years, poaching was rampant. Park Superintendent George Anderson called the wildlife pilferers “border pirates”— elk tuskers, hide, market, and bounty hunters. A bison head fetched up to $500 from Livingston, Montana, taxidermists. Elk were literally killed by the thousands for a dollar a hide and the last wild bison in the West came dangerously close to being extirpated.
Ironically, it was the blatant activities of the poachers themselves that finally lit a firestorm of public outrage in the East that drove passage of the 1894 Lacey Act—the legislative authority “to protect the Park’s birds and animals.”
But back then, protection was assumed not to apply to large predators—bears, wolves, mountain lions. Those iconic animals were made villains because they might eat non-native exotic cattle and sheep being turned loose on public lands, with private ranching interests also claiming they were dire threats to big game animals that actually had evolved with bruins, lobos and cougars over thousands of years.
Early auto visitors drive literally up to the cone of Old Faithful Geyser across fragile geothermal crust. Photographer unknown/courtesy NPS
Park managers have been credited with protecting its rich resources, but those efforts reflected the popular attitudes of the time, expressed by citizens willing to speak up. It was thought people came to Yellowstone to see creatures like deer, not the dreadful fanged ones. Predators were labeled “a decided menace" and that depiction was shared even by Theodore Roosevelt.
TR appointed renowned lion hunter Charles “Buffalo” Jones as Yellowstone's game warden in 1902; within a few years, Jones claimed to have killed 72 lions. Wolfers and houndsmen operated throughout the park aggressively attempting to limit predators..
In 1916, the National Park Service's Organic Act was intended to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife… unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations, but by the mid-1920s, both wolves and lions had been eliminated from Yellowstone. EDITOR'S NOTE: For more information on that, read Layser's book Green Fire, 2010.
Not much later, individuals such as George Bird Grinnell, George Wright, and Adolph Murie championed the protection and restoration of predators in the national parks. Still later, the 1963 “Leopold Report” was revolutionary in recommending sound stewardship for all of the Park’s resources, including its original biota. It opened the door for rewilding with restoration of the wolf in 1995.
Yellowstone from a wildlife perspective is arguably "better" today than it was 120 years ago but it only happened as a result of political pressure being applied by citizen advocates for nature.
The evolution of the attitudes, science, and laws for the protection of all Yellowstone’s wildlife has been a long, controversial, and challenging journey. Today, an extant complement of original biota rivals the importance of the park’s hot springs and geysers—both are national treasures. All the wildlife species are present which were in existence before European settlement—an intact ecosystem, a singular gem in today’s world of unraveled ecosystems. People travel to Yellowstone from all over the world to have a chance to observe wolves, grizzly bear, and native ungulates interacting in a natural setting.
In 1897, the last bison that existed in the immense Bechler Meadows were eliminated when they migrated out of the park. The ghosts of those wildlife “border pirates” still haunt us. However, Yellowstone wasn't under siege just by external profiteers and raiders. Inside the park, wolves were deliberately wiped out, grizzlies were fed trash to provide entertainment for tourists, bison were ranched in the Lamar Valley and elk fed there in ways remarkably similar to the controversial artificial feedgrounds in Wyoming.
Top: Black bears, deliberately fed and habituated to human food, provide entertainment for park visitors at West Thumb Camp in 1924. Photo just above: Bison in the "Mammoth Showpen" in 1924 when wildlife, in order to insure visitors saw animals, were really managed as if in a glorified zoo. Photographer unknown/courtesy NPS
Fast forward: For decades now, political and grazing interests have taken it upon themselves to destroy the decendants of Yellowstone's bison—the national animal, an American icon—when they migrate outside of the park to survive— déjà vu the 19th-century frontier. For me, it represents a continuing shameful travesty. In the 21stcentury, we still seem unable to resolve those provincial interests imposing on a World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve, which is supposed to shine as an example for other nature preserves to emulate.
Not to be overlooked, nor taken for granted, Yellowstone still miraculously harbors another rare resource in today’s arid West —its pristine headwaters. “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in the water,” wrote Loren C. Eisley. That being true, there are few places more magical than Yellowstone. It is awash with undine blessings and an amazing concentration of unique water features. Everywhere one looks, there is sparkling clean water. Conversely, fresh water ecosystems are reportedly among the most threatened in the world.
The legendary geophysicist and volcanologist Dr. Robert Smith has referred to Yellowstone as a "hydro-thermal" national park in that water and geothermal heat—emanating from the furnace of the famed hotspot—shape topography and life. The park has more than 10,000 geothermal features, more than anywhere else in the world combined.
Yellowstone Lake is the largest freshwater lake above 7,000-feet elevation in North America—136 square miles. Headwaters thunderously pour from the jumble of mountain summits and snowfields comprising the continent’s backbone, while others emanate quietly and mysteriously from the earth as rivers full born. Fifteen pristine rivers and countless crystal clear tributaries, an estimated 2,500 miles of streams, rush, tumble, and leap off Yellowstone’s volcanic plateaus creating a crescendo of falling waters. Native Americans believed the waters embodied the spirit of motion, endless and eternal.
Several places in North America claim “the greatest concentration” of waterfalls—the Columbia Gorge at Hood River, nearly 100 waterfalls; the Great Smokey Mountains, 250 —but comparatively, within Yellowstone National Park there are an amazing 300 waterfalls, not to mention the surrounding Greater Yellowstone region, which adds many more!
Until Rubinstein, Whittlesey, and Stevens’ relatively recent field investigations and publication, Yellowstone Waterfalls and their Discovery in 2000, the extent of knowledge of waterfall occurrence generally consisted of 30 to 40, mostly in the front country; albeit, storied cascades and cataracts such as the Lower Yellowstone Falls (308’), Tower Falls (132’), Gibbon Falls (84’), and Fairy Falls (197’). However, in the Bechler River backcountry (Cascade Corner) alone, there are ~97 waterfalls; some of the most sublime as well as the 2nd and 3rd highest in the park, Union (250’) and Ouzel (230’) occur there. These water features are another of Yellowstone’s incomparable “natural wonders.”
While Yellowstone’s waterfalls may not compete in height (Yellowstone’s highest is seasonal Silver Cord Cascade, ~ 1000’) with some of those in Yosemite National Park, such as Yosemite Falls (2,425’), or those in the Hawaiian Islands, Pu’uka’oku Falls (2,750), few or no others compare with the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls for the sheer water volume, up to ~ 60,000 gal/second!
Already, over a century ago, all the water did not fail to catch the downstream attention of the Bureau of Reclamation and irrigation interests, ominously summed up in their testimony: “… an enormous amount of water runs to waste.” Few people today are aware of the extent Yellowstone’s free-flowing waters were, and continue to be, threatened.
Yellowstone experienced its own Hetch-Hetchy (a hugely controversial dam built in Yosemite National Park). Cascade Corner was a highly contested area. Between 1919 and 1938, irrigation interests in Idaho repeatedly tried to construct reservoirs on Mountain Ash Creek and the Bechler River, flooding the Bechler Meadows and southwest corner of the Park. Their intent was to store water for late summer irrigation for southeast Idaho farmers—“make the desert green.” The dam proponents pursued their objectives for decades; reportedly with “missionary zeal,” but fortunately without success.
Decades before catch and release fishing regulations arrived in Yellowstone, anglers caught and kept as many trout as they liked. This photo was taken in 1933 and represents the attitude of excess that was common in the era and reflective of park visitors who had a poor understanding of how nature has limits to human impacts. Photographer unknown/courtesy NPS
Similarly, not to be outdone, around the same time, Montana irrigation promoters proposed a dam on the outlet of Yellowstone Lake at Fishing Bridge. The intent was to raise the lake level to draw upon for downstream late season irrigation purposes. Yellowstone Lake would have developed the characteristic reservoir “bath tub ring” in late season draw down. Far fetched? Think again. A dam at Fishing Bridge was discussed yet again in 1991. Once on the shelf, dam plans never seem to quite go away.
Today, the Bechler’s expansive meadows, flowing rivers, and waterfalls, and Yellowstone Lake, still exist in their natural and pristine state because of the diligence and past hard work of conservationists who came before us. If any of the above dam and mine proposals had become reality, Yellowstone would have ceased to be the pristine Park it is today. For more information see the late Mike Yochim's paper Conservationists and the Battles to Keep Dams out of Yellowstone National Park, presented at the park's Sixth Biennial Scientific Conference in 2002.
Around the time the reservoirs were planned in Cascade Corner, another development was endorsed by southeast Idaho—a road through the Bechler region to Old Faithful—“to make this area of the Park more accessible to the public.” Has this idea gone away? Not really. Over the years, the road from Ashton, Idaho, to the Bechler entrance of the Park, has been gradually and incrementally improved. As reported in Mountain Journal (10/26/2020), the remaining twelve mile stretch of dusty, pot-holed dirt road across National Forest is currently being upgraded into an engineered gravel road (ready for paving) leading right up to the Park’s southwest boundary.
The Bureau of Reclamation did succeed in locating dams around the periphery of Yellowstone Park—for example: Buffalo Bill Dam on the North Fork of the Shoshone River (1910); Jackson Lake Dam on the Snake River (1916), before Teton National Park was established—an argument has been if you can have this dam in a national park, why not elsewhere? Sure enough, nearby at Grassy Lake (1937) on Cascade Creek and Falls River near Yellowstone's western border. At the time, the dam on Falls River was considered by some as a "compromise" for not damming the Bechler. Along with the water impoundments above there were more with Island Park Dam (1939) on the Henry’s Fork and and Palisades Dam (1951) on the Snake and Salt Rivers.
The last dam built in the Greater Yellowstone region was on the Teton River (1976) near Rexburg, Idaho It failed catastrophically, resulting in $9 billion (in today’s dollars) in downstream damages and eleven deaths. Since then, there has been less appetite for dam construction in southeastern Idaho.
As our population grows and demographics shift across the country, the remaining open spaces in private ownership in the Greater Yellowstone continue to rapidly fill with more people, homes, industrial agriculture, and highways. What follows is a perennially old story in the West: more demands placed on the public land’s resources. Wildlife habitat and water quality and supply will continue ramping up as major issues.
Still-wild and free Bechler River in Yellowstone, once nearly dammed to create a reservoir that would provide water for potato growers outside the park in Idaho. Photo courtesy NPS
Four years ago, I might have been more confident about future outcomes; but after experiencing the current outgoing administration’s unilateral ability to deconstruct science, environmental regulations, and previous land use decisions, I worry. I spent much of my professional years working for land management agencies. We have just witnessed what a national leader with authoritarian tendency can potentially do.
Just like that, by administrative fiat or whim, for example: the Bears-Ear National Monument was disassembled, logging Alaska’s old growth coastal forest on the Tongass National Forest was resumed, the 1002 lands in Arctic Refuge were opened for oil and gas leasing and seismic testing, wolves were removed from protected status, environmental regulations removed, and clean energy and climate science disparaged. It has continuing implications for sustainability and all of humanity, and potentially for special places like Yellowstone.
Fresh water ecosystems are among the most threatened on Earth. They have widely been interrupted by dams, flow levels reduced by irrigation withdrawals and urban needs, contaminated with litter, fertilizers (phosphates and nitrates), pesticides, industrial chemicals, mine runoff, and sediments, and their aquatic biological features destroyed or simplified.
The clean free-flowing waters of Yellowstone and its adjoining wildernesses are an ecological treasure trove and rarity in today’s world. For some, it is also viewed as an unexploited economic opportunity, “water going to waste.” But there is some good news too.
US Sen. Jon Tester of Montana recently introduced the Montana Headwaters Legacy Act, a groundbreaking, made-in-Montana bill that will, if passed, forever preserve 336 miles of wild rivers through Wild and Scenic River designation. The bill's hopes depend upon bi-partisan support in both chambers of Congress and then getting the signature of President Biden.
Still, as climate change turns up the heat and development brings more demand for water, begs the question: In the future can insatiable economic pressure be kept at bay or will our most treasured places and their natural resources be subject to continued incremental looting over time? When push comes to shove for scarce resources with our ever expanding population, will our national park’s preservation policy remain inviolate? The lesson to date is that national parks and their natural resources remain secure only as long as they are defended.
Afterword from MoJo: We welcome your thoughts and how to best protect the essence of Yellowstone, Grand Teton and public lands. Write to us.
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.
