For winter travelers making a play-vacation pilgrimages to
one of our region’s world class downhill ski areas, hearing the term “Greater
Yellowstone Ecosystem” may attract only passing interest.
Yet when one informs them that they’ve arrived in a place that,
because of the congregation of native large mammals, is home to an American
version of the African Serengeti, their attention is more likely to alight.
What even many local denizens of Greater Yellowstone don’t
realize is how special and uncommon the ecosystem is, not just for being
unparalleled in the Lower 48 but it is largest remaining still-intact ecosystem
in the temperate zones of Planet Earth.
There are plenty of destinations to ski or hike or mountain
bike or cast a fly line but there are none with the number and diversity of
large predators and prey moving across the landscape of Greater Yellowstone.
That’s because they still can and the reason is that not
only is the habitat unfragmented or overrun like so many other places are by
hordes of people, but the animals have room to roam between the high country
and lower elevation, between birthing grounds in the mountains during spring
and summer and winter ranges in the valleys.
“Greater Yellowstone” is neither a mere slogan nor a
geographical accident. Recognition of its uniqueness has been evolving, and
deepening with more understanding, and with this has come the realization that
unless smart, conscious human efforts are taken to protect it, the health of
the ecosystem can easily be lost.
Greater Yellowstone has helped pioneer the concept of island
biogeography—the notion that wildlife disappears faster if it is forced to
exist inside a geographically-isolated box of living space cut offer from other
populations of its own kind.
In 1985, a young ecologist from the University of Michigan
named William Newmark undertook a novel examination of national parks in the
West, including Yellowstone, and arrived at the following conclusion. As big as
they are, they are not big enough by themselves to sustain viable populations
of grizzlies and elk, bison and other species.
Further, given human development on private lands just
outside parks and natural resources extraction activities happened on adjacent
public land like national forests, the process of ecological unraveling happens
faster.
Some 35 years ago, in his examination of trend-lines (this
was at a time before the onslaught of climate change was even being discussed),
Newmark predicted ongoing irreversible declines of species.
Around that time, government entities, spurred by
conservationists and supported by members of Congress, were forced to consider
managing Greater Yellowstone not as a constellation of differing jurisdictions
but with common goals, aimed at preventing the ecosystem from suffering the
same plight as most everyplace else.
At the same time, the study of conservation biology, driven
by ecological thinking at the landscape level, gained traction and took off.
Along with the Greater Yellowstone concept, there were other ideas such as
Yellowstone to Yukon advanced, and the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection
Act and plans hatched by a number of groups and leading scientists.
While some dismissed it as radical and concocted
half-baked—if not completely wacky—conspiracy theories claiming it was a
government land grab, better approaches to landscape protection applied in
Greater Yellowstone have yielded huge dividends.
Not only is it vital to protect the best wild country that
remains—habitat that is crucial to the persistence of species that need room
away from large numbers of people in order to survive—but conservation biology
has touted the benefits of “rewilding.”
Rewilding involves healing landscapes that were damaged by
human activity and having their ecological function restored. Recovering
grizzlies, wolves, elk and bison is an example of rewilding, so is restoring
keystone habitat creators like beavers, and so is enlisting ranchers, by
offering good incentives, to be more wildlife friendly.
Wild places with healthy wildlife populations do not remain
so by accident. They persist only because of conscious self-restraint embraced
by people—permanent residents and visitors who realize that in order to save
America’s version of the Serengeti we need to consider the needs of wildlife
survival versus our short term desires just to have another place to play. And
builders who understand that putting up another subdivision that will destroy
fragile habitat. And citizens who do not
put their yen for turning a profit over the priceless value of an international
treasure like Greater Yellowstone that belongs to all American citizens.
The question facing all of us is: what are we willing to
give up, which within the larger context of our lives really isn’t very much,
in order to insure this ecosystem can persevere through tectonic shifts—growth
and climate change—already underway?
If you’ve only come to Greater Yellowstone to ski or
snowmobile or snowboard and you don’t have the wherewithal to reflect on the
natural novelty of this place on Earth, you probably should have gone to Aspen
or Vail, Squaw Valley or Park City and Sun Valley where the experience is all
about you.
There, the concept of wildness is only a fractional
afterthought and an ongoing sacrifice to human indulgence. What we have here they will never know again.