By Todd Wilkinson EBS ENVIRONMENTAL COLUMNIST
Climate change. More people flooding into our region and exacting a larger human footprint on the land. Soaring visitation to national parks and developed parts of national forests. Rising impacts from outdoor recreation. The arrival of chronic wasting disease.
What does it say about us to see the changes coming and yet
we behave as if, just by ignoring them, things will always be the same? Or
worse, what if we relegate them into a category called “inevitable” which lets
us off the hook of responsibility?
What does it say about us when we have elected officials too
afraid to say the obvious, based on the argument that if they do, they can
never get elected in the first place?
What does it say about us to have politicians continue to
defend the continued burning of coal by trying to glibly deny the evidence of
climate change documented by the most distinguished scientists in the world?
What does it say about us when the top manager of the
National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole—overseeing the most famous elk herd on
Earth— faces certain professional reprisal for warning that artificially
feeding thousands of elk are setting us up for a disease disaster?
What does it say about the credibility of the U.S. Forest
Service when it approves the continued operation of state feedgrounds in
Wyoming with CWD literally on its doorstep?
What does it say about us when commissioners from the 20
counties and mayors and council members from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
fail to get together on a regional level and instead remain stuck in their
silos?
What does it say about us when the promotion of
conservation, in many places, only exacerbates the social and economic inequity
for working class people?
What does it say about us when we frame the cause of
affordable housing mostly within the context of giving worker bees a place to
lodge so that they can be maids, teachers, firefighters, police officers, etc.,
and not because it’s really a fundamental matter of dignity?
What does it say about us when we disparage coal miners and
loggers and ranchers for engaging in resource extraction and yet, in many ways,
we’re supplanting those users with industrial strength outdoor recreation whose
impacts in many cases may be more permanent and landscape transforming?
What does it say about us when we condemn the conservation
movement for lacking human diversity in its ranks, which it obviously does, yet
its politically-correct critics fail to understand why building a movement that
counts biological diversity and respect for other sentient species is also
important?
What does it say about us when we starve federal and state
land management agencies of the funds needed to do their job and then we beat
those agencies up as allegedly being inept?
What does it say about us when we hear that trophy hunting
of grizzlies, after we’ve just brought them back from the brink, is vital to
their conservation? And if the argument is that trophy hunting generates money
and builds social tolerance, then why aren’t we also sport shooting bald and
golden eagles, peregrine falcons, whooping cranes and wild horses?
What does it say about us when we know that wildlife
watching is central to our $1 billion annual nature tourism industry in
Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks alone, yet we allow popular park research
wolves to be shot along national park borders?
What is it saying about us when a state—Montana—chooses to
deliberately ignore a report prepared by the National Academy of Sciences that
says elk, not bison, represent the most eminent threat of brucellosis
transmission to cattle and yet we slaughter bison anyway?
What does it say about us when government agencies are not
actively coordinating to halt contradictory management practices often
operating at cross purposes and negatively affecting the ecological health of
the region, such as: feeding wildlife, permitting oil and gas exploration in
wildlife migration corridors, not ending the slaughter of Yellowstone bison for
disease reasons, and not demanding cumulative affects studies on the total
impact of recreation as different national forests assemble their forest plans?
What does it say about us when we see something like running
down wildlife predators with snowmobiles, that is so obviously ethically dubious
and runs counter to our beliefs as a society, yet we deflect and diminish the
taking of professional responsibility?
What does it say about us when we work for conservation
organizations and are reluctant to call out a recreation use and the impacts it’s
having because we engage in that same use on weekends and don’t want to
alienate ourselves from our friends?
What does it say about us when we wake up in the morning and
consciously decide to “get along by going along” even though we know in our
guts that if we’re really going to save this place—if we are sincere in our
rhetoric about thinking long-term—that we need to challenge status quo thinking
and act soon?
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem we know today is actually
the product of individuals who previously were not afraid to tout the enduring
value of conservation and smart thinking.
One of them, the forerunning ecologist Adolph Murie once
said, “Let us not have puny thoughts. Let us think on a greater scale. Let us
not have those of the future decry our smallness of concept and lack of
foresight.”
Todd Wilkinson is founder of Bozeman-based Mountain Journal (mountainjournal.org) devoted to protecting the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and a correspondent for National Geographic. He also is author of “Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek” about famous Jackson Hole grizzly bear 399 available only at mangelsen.com/grizzly.