Headwaters 2017

Conservation & recreation Can they get along? issue

two

2017

A Jackson Hole conservation legacy // Teton Science School Founder Ted Major Science and advocacy // Closing words by Paul Hansen and Luther Propst

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JHWF Volunteers from left to right: Gretchen Plender, Carol Schneebeck, Chuck Schneebeck, Randy Reedy, Debbie Kopp, Dennis McCracken, Shirley Cheramy, Bob Kopp, Doug Sobey

Live your Jackson Hole Lifestyle, Leave the Banking to Us

As private land uses have shifted in the valley requiring less fencing, many land owners have turned to the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation to modify or remove fencing to better accommodate the wildlife migration. Founded in 1993, JHWF works to promote ways for people to live compatibly with wildlife; be it “Give them a Brake” signs on roads to help reduce deadly vehicle-wildlife collisions or 184 miles of fence removed by local volunteers. Bank of Jackson Hole shares this same vision of removing unnecessary barriers to its banking products, services and staff so as not to fence in our customers.

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Our contents

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What is conservation? Here are a few terms to get you started on the journey through Headwaters.

what else is inside

features

Photograph by Rebecca Huntington

page

Glossary

24

28

To save the Greater Yellowstone, scientists say they shouldn’t be punished for taking a stand.

Is professional conservation going soft by collaborating, or adapting?

science and advocacy in an age of uncertainty

Evolving advocacy

By Todd Wilkinson

By Mike Koshmrl

6 // welcome to conservation

16 // conservation and recreation

Let’s chart our next conservation legacy

can conservation and recreation get along?

By Franz Camenzind

By Molly Absolon

8 // a key profile

22 // Photo gallery

making a major difference

Scenes: Conservation in action

By Mike Koshmrl

By Mike Koshmrl

12// search for headwaters

32 // famous last words

A boatman’s journey

on the environment, we’ve got work to do

What will be said about our efforts in 100 years?

Ted and Joan Major look back 50 years after founding Teton Science School.

From a wild, quaint seep springs the Snake’s true headwaters.

By Reed Finlay

For the good of the public lands fight, compromise is wise.

It may not be glamorous, but the results are beautiful.

Still a long way to go to make good on our promises.

By Paul Hansen and Luther Propst

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Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: The complex of mostly federal lands that spills over the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park into Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. At 34,000-plus square miles, the GYE still houses the full suite of native wildlife species that existed here presettlement. It’s considered an intact ecological gem of not just the United States, but the world.

Wilderness: Federal land forever protected by the 1964 Wilderness Act. The intent for a wilderness area is to remain in its “natural condition,” which means it is “untrammeled by man,” undeveloped and has “outstanding opportunities for solitude.”

Wilderness Study Area: A class of land managed closely, but not quite as stringently, to the standards of a designated wilderness area. Federal agencies are charged with upholding the wilderness characteristics of designated study areas. There are two in Teton County: the Shoal Creek and Palisades areas.

Wild and Scenic River: The aquatic version of a wilderness area. The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, which dates to 1968, was established to keep eligible waters in a free-flowing condition for the enjoyment of present and future generations. Some 390 miles of the Snake River and its tributaries are designated as Wild and Scenic.

Headwaters: The highest-elevation or farthest-reaching stretch of a river or stream that often begins as a spring or trickle of snowmelt. The Snake River’s headwaters begin in the remote southern reaches of Yellowstone National Park. (See “A boatman’s journey,” page 12.)

JACKSON HOLE IS THE LAST PLACE YOU’D EXPECT TO FIND IMPAIRED STREAMS In the past, watersheds in the Upper Snake River could absorb the nutrient pollution from Teton County’s small population. As Jackson Hole grows there are more nutrients entering our rivers and streams from wastewater treatment facilities, septic systems, and runoff from fertilizers and manure.

EFFECTS OF NUTRIENT POLLUTION: Nutrient pollution damages the environment and harms water quality. Too many nutrients can lead to excessive algae and aquatic plants that harm habitat and diminish aquatic insect populations.

HOW IS FRIENDS OF FISH CREEK ADDRESSING NUTRIENT POLLUTION? • • • •

Science-based approach that targets controllable nutrient sources for quick reductions Collaborative solutions developed with stakeholders that reduce nutrient pollution in the watershed Cost effective solutions that stop pollution at its source Community outreach to provide individuals and groups the information they need to reduce nutrient pollution

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

We can all take action to reduce nutrient pollution through the choices we make around our homes, on our farms, with our pets, in lawn care and in transportation.

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2017 Headwaters

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Editor notes Conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is steeped in history, sometimes controversial and — for good reason — quite celebrated.

Yellowstone National Park was the birthplace of purposeful land preservation, and Jackson Hole has its own vaunted legacy. The 2017 edition of the Jackson Hole News&Guide’s annual magazine on environmental issues, Headwaters, pays homage to the institution of conservation.

It’s a field where the parameters are hazy, and it’s a broad topic to take on and attempt to synthesize. The business of conservation has grown in scope over the decades, both globally and regionally, alongside the maturation of the communities that dot the outskirts of the three-state, 20-million-acre ecosystem.

In Jackson Hole alone, there are dozens of organizations devoted to environmental do-gooding: The Community Foundation of

Jackson Hole lists 40 in its nonprofit directory that self-identify as such, ranging from Friends of Fish Creek to the National Parks Conservation Association. Regrettably, telling the tale of each is not possible in 36 pages.

Our writers, however, took on tough topics to educate Headwaters readers about the successes and challenges of the conservation movement today. Molly Absolon explores how outdoor recreation and its proponents fit into the never-ending battle to protect the Yellowstone region’s wildlands. Sources interviewed by environmental journalist Todd Wilkinson make the case that outspokenness, even advocacy, is an important trait in a scientist, especially if the powers that be are seeing the science — and looking the other way. Ted Major, 97, fondly recalls the earliest days of environmental education in Jackson Hole: He founded Teton Science School 50 years ago.

Dig in, enjoy, then think hard about where the conservation community ought to turn its attention next.

— Mike Koshmrl

worthy contributors

Molly Absolon

Franz Camenzind

Paul Hansen

Molly Absolon is a freelance writer living in Victor, Idaho. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California-Berkley. The author of 13 outdoor skills books, Absolon has worked in the outdoor recreation field as well as for an environmental organization — so her view on the recreation/conservation divide strikes close to home.

See page 16.

Franz Camenzind is a 47-year Jackson resident, scientist and conservation advocate whose professional life has taken many twists and turns.

He’s been a documentary wildlife filmmaker of black rhinoceros, grizzly bears, giant pandas, condors and wolves, and directed the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance for 13 years before retirement.

He remains involved with environmental issues and organizations.

See page 6.

Paul Hansen is a Jackson Hole resident and lifelong conservationist. He served as executive director of the Izaak Walton League of America, director of the Greater Yellowstone Program for The Nature Conservancy and has served on the boards of a dozen conservation groups. He has written hundreds of articles on environmental issues and a book, “Green in Gridlock: Common Goals, Common Ground and Compromise.”

See page 32.

Luther Propst

reed finlay

todd wilkinson

Luther Propst founded the Sonoran Institute in 1991 and served as its executive director until 2012. He has advocated for conservation and smart growth in the American West for three decades and has served on boards for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Outdoor Alliance, George B. Storer Foundation, International Mountain Biking Association, SHIFT Festival, High Country News and more.

See page 32.

Reed Finlay is the senior boatman for Barker-Ewing Scenic Float Trips, and has guided on the Snake River since 1994. A ski patrolman for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort during winters, he’s an avid ski mountaineer and cyclist, and enjoys globetrotting and camping with his wife and son. Finlay has written for Jackson Hole Magazine.

See page 12.

For nearly 35 years Bozeman, Montana-based writer Todd Wilkinson has been a national magazine and newspaper journalist. He began his career as a violent crime reporter before moving West. Wilkinson has written several books, including “Last Stand: Ted Turner’s Quest to Save a Troubled Planet” and “Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek: An Intimate Portrait of 399.”

See page 24.

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Special supplement written, produced and printed by the

Publisher: Kevin Olson Associate Publisher: Adam Meyer

Nature Provides.

We Protect.

Editor: Johanna Love managing Editor: Richard Anderson Headwaters Special Section Editor: Mike Koshmrl art director: Colleen Valenstein Graphic Design: Kathryn Holloway

© Wolf Johnson, 2017 Student Photo Contest

Photographers: Bradly J. Boner, Ryan Dorgan

We believe in a future where nature and people thrive together. Help protect the nature that sustains us.

Contributors: Molly Absolon, Franz Camenzind, Paul Hansen, Mike Koshmrl, Luther Propst, Reed Finlay, Todd Wilkinson

Nature.org/wyoming

Advertising Sales: Karen Brennan, Chad Repinski, Tom Hall, Megan LaTorre, Oliver O’Connor Advertising Coordinator: Maggie Gabruk Creative Services Manager: Lydia Redzich Advertising Design: Sarah Grengg, Ben Shafer, Kelsey Chapman Office Manager: Kathleen Godines Customer Service Managers: Lucia Perez, Rudy Perez Circulation: Kyra Griffin, Hank Smith, Jeff Young, Mark Whitaker COVER PHOTO: Fishermen at Wilcox Point in Grand Teton National Park. RYAN DORGAN Printed at Publication Printers in Denver, CO

Wild. Open. Connected. ©2017 Teton Media Works Jackson Hole News&Guide P.O. Box 7445, 1225 Maple Way Jackson, WY 83002 (307) 733-2047 Fax: (307) 733-2138

We all see Jackson Hole in our own unique way, but the beauty of this place – the wildlife, the community, the landscape – is undeniable. No JACKSON HOLE matter your perspective, we know

that by joining together we can preserve that which we all agree is precious. Together we can protect a wild, open, connected Jackson Hole, for today and for the future.

L AND TRUST

Photo Courtesy of Jansen Gunderson

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09/06/17 1:02 PM

2017 Headwaters

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Welcome to conservation After more than 40 years of conservation work, Franz Camenzind is still fighting the good fight.

C

onservation has always been a cornerstone of Jackson Hole history.

Likewise, it has always been a catalyst for controversy, not because of its meaning and purpose, but through its implementation. Whether someone proposes a commercial development, is trying to expand recreational opportunities or wanting to solve transportation’s Gordian knot, one can bet the effort will run right up against someone’s conservation values.

This is not a recent phenomenon.

Beginning with the formation of Grand Teton National Park, conservation has been part of the Jackson Hole experience. Thankfully, even back then, there were visionaries who realized that this land’s highest value for the most people was not in its development potential, but for the pleasure it afforded residents and visitors alike. They understood that leaving the land in its natural state was the best way to enjoy the gift and assure that its value would remain for future generations. That’s how the region’s conservation ethic was born.

The successful efforts to protect the valley’s landscape and character didn’t go unnoticed by the outside world. Soon, those wanting to escape their own hurried and hectic lives began flocking to the slow-paced, wild beauty of Jackson Hole: most as vacationers, some as permanent residents.

Conservation was paying dividends. But at a cost. As the permanent population and annual visitation grew, so did the demand for more housing developments and expanded infrastructure.

Many felt that if left unchecked, growth threatened to degrade the very character and appeal of the region.

In 1975 the Wyoming Legislature passed the Wyoming Land Use Planning Act, which granted counties the right to develop their own land-use plans. Today’s comprehensive

Let’s chart our next conservation legacy

By Franz Camenzind // Photography by Ryan Dorgan

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plan for Teton County carries forward a decades-old vision to “preserve and protect the area’s ecosystem … for current and future generations” while also ensuring a “healthy community and economy.” Thus, our comp plan is our community’s binding commitment to balance growth and development while maintaining our conservation legacy. It’s not an easy task, since all too often these goals are at odds with each other.

The high stakes and strongly held opinions partly explain why Jackson Hole became home to numerous nonprofit conservation organizations. At last count, there were several dozen groups with some element of environmental conservation in their missions. Some are local, others regional in their focus, while others are national organizations with local chapters.

Over the years their efforts have produced notable successes.

Environmental activists halted Chevron’s proposal to explore for oil and gas in Cache Creek, keeping an industrial-size road out of this popular recreation area. It was conservationists who put an end to major clear-cutting of the region’s forests.

Conservationists joined forces with businesses and elected officials to stop the proposal to replace the Jackson Lake dam with a new dam near Pacific Creek that would have flooded the iconic Oxbow Bend. It was tenacious conservationists who kept the airport runway from being extended farther into the park, striking a compromise that increased safety while accommodating increased jet service.

Conservationists working with agencies and the community have served our wildlife well, too. Less than a half-century ago, a grizzly bear sighting made the newspapers. Now they occur throughout the region. In 1970, bison numbered a grand total of nine. Now we have a challenge of abundance. We have wolves when just two decades ago the biggest native canine was the coyote. After a long absence, our migrating antelope population is holding steady. The valley’s isolated sage grouse population remains stable, but tenuous. Mule deer, black bear, trumpeter swan and bald eagle populations are healthy and holding their own. Long absent, peregrine falcons are back, defending their high cliff aeries. Cutthroat trout are spawning in streams that several decades ago were isolated, muddied and empty of trout.

Our elk populations, too, are stable, and by some accounts too abundant to be sustainable.

Conservation values supported by environmental groups and applied by private landowners and our governing bodies have paid off. But the challenges continue. With growth come inevitable changes to the landscape. Can our treasured wildlife adapt? Too much of our defining environmental component is near the tipping point. We no longer have the luxury of making mistakes that could have been overcome decades ago.

If our community aims to perpetuate its world-class environment and the unique character of Jackson Hole, we must continue working together to make wise conservation decisions. History has demonstrated that we can have both a healthy environment and a thriving economy, but our options are shrinking, and the stakes are getting higher. Our future will be shaped by today’s conservation commitment. Will we remain a community known for its intact, native landscape, or a community described by its overbuilt and degraded environment? It is our decision, just as it was the decisions made by previous generations that gave us what we cherish today. Let our conservation history guide our future.

2017 Headwaters

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A key profile

Making a Major difference Ted and Joan Major look back, 50 years after founding Teton Science School.

By Mike Koshmrl // Photography by Bradly J. Boner

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D

irecting the upstart Teton Science School back in 1967, environmental educator Ted Major had plenty of leeway when selecting what his students should experience in the field.

In the world of hands-on learning, liability and red tape were not the impediments they are today. Case in point: Major once led a class of a dozen teenagers into Yellowstone National Park to an awaiting immobile grizzly bear that biologist Frank Craighead had sedated and was processing for research. It was a moment that made an impression on Louise Hirsch Koehn, who was in the inaugural batch of Science School students.

“We had to all get back on the bus when they woke her up,” Koehn said. “It was really exciting.”

First, however, Major’s brood of science learners were able to touch the slumbering bruin’s impressive claws and watch the animal get weighed and have its blood drawn.

While grizzly handling with Craighead may take the cake, Major’s other curricula were memorable for his students in the earliest days of Teton Science School (now Teton Science Schools). Geology lessons came from the likes of eminent researchers David Love and Bob Smith, and renowned naturalist Jim Halfpenny helped teach biological sciences. Oversight of the school came in part from conservation giant Mardy Murie, who sat on the school’s board.

Besides Yellowstone, field trips took early students backpacking in the Red Desert, Wind River Range, Dunoir Valley and remote, seldom-visited crannies of the Tetons.

When Major, who today is 97, and his wife Joan, 89, started Teton Science School a half century ago, the desire was to use Wyoming’s wildlands as the classroom to make science education interactive, fun and hands-on. Major’s intent was also to impart his own conservation bent to his students.

He doesn’t shy away from using the word “indoctrination.”

“I wanted to enforce their ideas about taking care of nature,” Major said this summer from his Victor, Idaho, home. “You can’t do that much in a public school, because you can’t get out much and take field trips like we did.”

Major took a nontraditional path to founding a school that has grown into an environmental education powerhouse and large, complex organization. In his 20s and 30s he flirted with running a Hereford ranch near Pinedale, and then earned a master’s degree in science education at the University of Utah-Salt Lake Ted and Joan Major, founders City. He taught in of the Teton Science School, Ogden, Utah, and visit on the porch of their in Fairbanks and home in Victor, Idaho, in June.

Anchorage, Alaska.

The chance to do field research for the Aspen Institute in Colorado drew him back to the Rocky Mountains.

Joan Major was at his side at every step. She recalled a peripatetic existence, with lots of traveling and camping. In

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the mid-1960s, they were back on the Last Frontier teaching.

During one summer of salmon fishing on the Russian River, they got word from Teton County School Board member Virginia Huidekoper about a science teacher job that had opened up. They tossed a coin, and the outcome was a return to Wyoming.

In its earliest days Teton Science School took in just a dozen to 16 students who would commit to spending six weeks in the summer learning and exploring in the outdoors.

“It was very simple, and very relaxed,” Joan Major said.

“The kids were always happy and doing their own research projects. We weren’t NOLS. It was not a race to go from point A to point B. It was a learning situation.”

Out of the gate, the Majors and Teton Science School had no brick-and-mortar facility — tents and the outdoors were it. They secured use of the chunk of property off Moose-Wilson Road in 1969, and in 1973 struck an agreement with Top: Joan Major holds a photograph of her and her husband, Ted, leading a group of Teton Science School students during a backpacking trip into the Wind River Mountains in the late 1960s.

Right: Fifty years after founding the Teton Science School, Ted and Joan Major are still receiving correspondence from former students.

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Grand Teton National Park to set up shop at the Elbo Ranch north of Kelly.

“People in the park were completely behind us,” Joan Major said. “They remodeled a lot. They had to put in a new water system, because we froze up in the winter. They fixed up the cabins.”

It’s still in use today, known as Teton Science Schools’ Kelly campus.

The Jackson Hole community was tremendously supportive.

The school district superintendent at the time, Jerry Wimberley,

Meanwhile, the school grew and evolved steadily after the let Major use an emergency bus to pick up his class every day.

Majors’ departure, slowly adding a graduate school, wildlife Jackson Hole Mountain Resort waived the fee for the Aerial safari company, research arm, K-12 school and, most recently, the Tram so he would have access to an alpine environment. Sandy Murie Center, an organization honoring the legacy of early Pew provided the Science School with lunches, financial board member Mardy Murie. It’s now among Jackson contributions and more. A hunting outfitter, Walt Corn, Hole’s largest employers and an institution that teaches donated tents, and another outfitter, Pinky Bonner, more than 15,000 people annually. The Majors lament gave them a cooking trailer. some of the changes, and at first blush there’s little The goodwill, Joan said, “really saved us.” semblance to the 12-student class Ted set up in the open Friends even donated their science-minded air of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. But Teton children for the summer.

Science Schools’ administration has “We had at least 12 good friends kept one element of its programming in Jackson,” Ted Major joked, “and unchanged: Major’s outdoor high they told their children they had to go school field ecology class. to our school.”

This year the program consisted Still, Joan recalled the ground of 17 students, some of whom got floor being “a hell of a lot of work.” to meet Ted and Joan Major and “We were tired,” she said. share their monthlong research Ted worked as a science teacher projects at the Kelly campus during at the high school, coached crossa July celebration of the founders. country skiing on the side and was His students, colleagues and friends a busybody throughout the year. A ted major gathered, too, sharing their thanks for dozen years after founding Teton 50 years of changed lives.

Science School, the Majors moved on.

Many distinguished careers have sprung from Teton Science Now deep in retirement, they’re spending their days in a Schools experiences, as have many friendships and even marriages. modest brush-choked house at the base of Teton Pass next door But Major didn’t take the credit for making the difference. to their son. Joan dutifully logs every critter that scurries over “We had an opportunity at Teton Science School of changing the property, and the emergence of every species of wildflower. lives,” he said. “We did, because we weren’t confined to a room, Ted, who’s nearing a century on Earth, is fading, and was in and like this. Never. It was always outdoors.” out of the hospital as this story went to press.

“We had an opportunity at teton science school of changing lives. We did, because we weren’t confined to a room, like this. never. it was always outdoors.”

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2017 Headwaters

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Search For headwaters

A Boatman’s Journey

tired of that? It doesn’t seem real. Honey!

Take a picture!” exclaims a mother from Charleston, South Carolina. Then as the awe settles and our boat drifts downstream, she asks: “So where does this river begin?”

That’s a question I’ve often pondered while guiding locals and tourists down this From a wild, quaint seep springs same stretch for 23 seasons and more than the Snake’s true headwaters.

38,000 miles, accumulated 10 miles at a time between Deadmans Bar and Moose.

Passengers used to ask if this is the river the Story and Photography by Reed Finlay famous daredevil Evel Knievel attempted to jump. Now I hear a growing curiosity about where the river begins and ends. t’s a crystal clear summer morning, and I’m guiding a scenic As a younger guide I had a vague idea about the Snake float trip on the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. beginning somewhere in or near Yellowstone, emptying into While I’m at the oars, one family is sprawled on the carpet, Jackson Lake and then, in a highly controlled fashion — sandals off, binoculars in hand and cameras ready to freezedetermined by the thirst of downstream farms in Idaho — being frame the Tetons. At the other end of my raft, a couple silently released from Jackson Lake dam. The question of the true source contemplates the unfolding tableau of precipitous peaks jutting bobbed in my mind like passengers on my boat, and eventually I to the sky. plotted a journey to go see for myself.

Then it happens. We hit the “Ansel Adams bend,” named The first night we camped about 40 yards from the Snake for the renowned photographer’s iconic black-and-white image River, about 4 miles south of Yellowstone’s Heart Lake. My wife, of the Tetons anchored by the river’s brooding bend.

Rebecca, had refused to go into the heart of grizzly country if “Oh, my God! Would you look at that view. Do you ever get

I 12

Headwaters issue #2

it was only the two of us. So another boatman, Jim Stanford, joined us, increasing our group size and lowering the odds of a grizzly encounter. Indeed, a dinner-plate-size pile of bear scat full of berries sat like a welcome mat at the turnoff to our first campsite. As we settled into our sleeping bags, turning off headlamps, a chorus of howling wolves entertained us with a thrilling sound once absent from the entire ecosystem.

On the river I get questions involving exact answers: “How tall is the Grand Teton?” “How many miles between the Snake River and the mountains?” “How deep does this river run?”

We ground ourselves with these hard facts. But when I first started asking other guides about the source of the Snake River, the answers were vague and conflicting. One guide pointed me to Tim Palmer’s book “The Snake River: Window to the West.” Palmer describes A hiker makes his way a trip with Jackson wilderness advocate up the Snake River near Len Carlman that followed the river to Fox Creek Park in its source through truly wild country, far southern Yellowstone. from the crowds of Teton Park trails.

Not everyone agrees on the definition of the source. Some say the true headwaters are the farthest water flows from the mouth of the river, regardless of elevation.

Others argue that they are where water springs and melts from

the highest ground.

It was October 2010 that I first followed the longest continual source of water labeled “Snake River” on the 1996 U.S. Geological Survey topographical map to a source labeled “spring” north of the Teton Wilderness/ Yellowstone boundary. While looking at the topo map I saw a few sources of water higher up, but when we hiked there six years later some were dried up and filled with muddy elk prints. To get to the headwater spring, we hiked five days roundtrip, starting at Yellowstone’s South Gate on the South Boundary Trail, where we had to ford the Snake right at the start.

The Snake River flows about 29 miles in Yellowstone Park, and a well-established trail follows its meadowy meanderings. On our second day, we left the meadows and wolf howls behind and hiked up a steep, rocky canyon where the river cuts through old igneous lava flows.

Wildfires had scorched the way for clear views of Mount Hancock to the southwest and Barlow Peak to the northeast. Having spent a lot of time in the Tetons, I liked the contrast of more gentle inclines and older, worn mountains. We carried pepper spray, hiked together and kept a clean camp. I fully expected to see bears, but we found only footprints in the talcum-powder-dry dirt from a sow and cub heading up canyon, pointed where we were headed.

Not everyone agrees on the definition of the source. Some say the true headwaters are the farthest water flows from the mouth of the river, regardless of elevation. Others argue that it’s where water springs and melts from the highest ground.

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On our third day we hiked into Fox Park and encountered three Yellowstone rangers on horseback patrol, decked out in leather chaps, rifles stowed in scabbards. We told them what we were up to, and they inquired as to where we thought the source was. The rangers agreed with our determination. A U.S. Bureau of Reclamation historian also agreed that the spring is the most likely source because, in his research, the dry riverbed above the spring reaches higher in elevation than any other creek that far east. Mink, Fox, Plateau and other creeks are all west of the spring and do not reach as far from the Snakes River’s mouth.

Hiking up the canyon we came to a fork where the river came in from the right. It still had a significant amount of water, but we followed the trail up another tributary to Mariposa Lake. Here we ran into the sole, non-uniformed traveler we encountered during our 50-plus-mile journey, an adventurous young woman from Alaska.

We left the trail and bushwhacked over a small rise in the land and looked down on the valley where the river starts.

Dropping down into a marshy area, we then decided to hike up a stream coming down from the east to the area labeled “spring.” We climbed over fallen trees clogging the drainage, and crossed in and out of the streambed until it went dry. We then backtracked 100 feet to discover a lush, green oasis where spring water spouted from the hillside.

“I do believe I’m going to have a drink,” Stanford said, stepping on a mossy rock and cupping his hands under a pintsize, ice-cold waterfall. We spent an hour reveling in the Top: Signage marking the beauty of the source. I imagined Yellowstone National Park boundary the countless streams and near the Fox Creek Patrol Cabin. tributaries downstream and the lands they drain, all emptying Opposite: The Snake River flowing into the Snake to create a river west from its source high in the upon which so much in this Teton Wilderness. ecosystem depends.

Now when I am asked about the source, I try to take people back to that place — the wolf pack song, grizzly tracks and dearth of people — to paint a picture of the wilderness and the wild river it forms.

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www. WildlifeAr t. or g | 28 20 Rungius Road, J ack s on, Wyom ing

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Conservation and recreation

Can conservation and recreation

get along?

For the good of the public lands fight, compromise is wise.

By Molly Absolon // Photography by Bradly J. Boner

S

ummer in Wyoming is construction season, and not just on the state’s highways.

In the national forests and parks around Jackson Hole it’s also trail-building time, and the summer calendar is filled with “dig days” when volunteers come out to help paid crews create and maintain the region’s trail network.

One such dig day, sponsored by the AJ Linnell Memorial Trail Fund, took place on the west side of the Tetons one Sunday in early August. Professional trail crews from the U.S. Forest Service and Mountain Bike the Tetons guided 40 volunteers of all ages as they swung Pulaskis and McLeods to carve out a quarter-mile of new trail.

The project’s goal was to create a network of mountain bike

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trails suitable for novice riders and kids. It was a popular project in the community, but it was not without controversy.

Several conservation groups spoke out in opposition while giving public comment on the trail, which is part of the Southern Trails Recreation Project. They argued it established a mountain bike trail in a recommended wilderness area, legitimized illegal trail building, threatened wildlife and was unnecessary given Teton Valley’s and Jackson Hole’s hundreds of miles of existing mountain bike trails. The Caribou-Targhee National Forest’s final plan removed the section of trail in the recommended wilderness and addressed wildlife concerns, but it allowed the trail system to move forward, to the joy of some and chagrin of others.

The trails debate was similar to many in the region that, on the

surface, pit conservationists against recreationists. The proposed Yellowstone and Grand Teton Paddling Act, which would have forced the parks to consider opening certain rivers to humanpropelled watercraft, resulted in a heated debate and harsh name calling on both sides in the media.

A national group — the Sustainable Trails Coalition — is working to get Congress to pass legislation that would give national forest supervisors leeway to open wilderness areas to mountain bikers, a move fiercely opposed by many conservation groups.

Closer to home, the Skyline Trail — a mountain bike trail in prime wildlife habitat near Jackson — caused an uproar when it was proposed although it, too, was successfully pushed through and is now open. The latest disagreement is over an in-stream Snake River wave park at the South Park bridge.

The argument posed by conservationists seems to be that recreationists are transforming the outdoors into their playground — a place for adrenalin-filled adventure rather than the contemplation of nature — at the expense of wildlife and the environment.

Recreationists push back and say that their sports are being judged unfairly and that they, too, love and want to protect the natural world in which they recreate.

Rendezvous River Sports owner and paddling advocate Aaron Pruzan doesn’t buy the claim that there’s inherent conflict between recreation and conservation. In pushing for the ultimately successful Snake River Headwaters Legacy Act, he straddled both worlds — and he says he continues to do so.

“The reality is that conservation and outdoor recreation are intertwined,” Pruzan said. “There are very, very few people who could truly claim they only belong to one or the other group. It saddens me when some of the elders of the conservation, recreation world in our area scoff at my generation as simply jocks who only care about our sports.”

Retired wildlife biologist and documentary filmmaker Franz Camenzind regularly speaks out against recreation projects. The Snake River wave park, he said, is an idea that’s “insulting to the resource” and an example of where recreationists ought not go.

He’s not anti-recreation — Camenzind recently bought his own packraft for backcountry paddling — but he does worry about how unfettered recreation impacts the natural world.

“It’s a question of when recreation is inappropriate,” he said.

“Why can’t we keep some areas sacrosanct? The community has said it doesn’t want to turn the area into a theme park.”

Camenzind doesn’t apologize for his strong stance. A line, he said, must be drawn at some point to protect our natural world.

He cited a recent controversy over e-bikes on mountain bike trails Hundreds of miles of trails in Colorado, another of the latest on national forest around issues to come up. A decade from Greater Yellowstone are now it will be something else that open to mountain biking, but doesn’t yet exist, he said, and the some users believe trails in threats to nature and wildlife will Wilderness areas should be just keep coming. open, too.

“Where does this end?”

Camenzind pondered.

Others perceive that the tension between conservation and recreation has been overblown. Much has been made of the divide in Teton County, but on the statewide level the Wyoming Outdoor 2017 Headwaters

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Council isn’t finding itself at odds with any one segment of the recreational community, program director Lisa McGee said.

“I think most people want to find some middle ground,” she said. “In my opinion, we simply can’t afford to splinter on these relatively minor issues … when there are so many pressing issues facing our public lands.”

Not all recreation advocates are pushing for unrestricted access to every acre of public land for every conceivable use.

The International Mountain Bike Association, for example, has come out against the Sustainable Trails Coalition’s efforts to push legislation through that could open up wilderness areas to bikes.

Most mountain bikers agree, but they aren’t the ones getting the press. More often you hear about mountain bikers poaching wilderness areas to ride a new trail or about people flouting rules to get their recreational fix. (Dean Potter’s summit of Arches National Park’s Delicate Arch comes to mind.)

Camenzind believes most recreationists favor restraint, but the silent majority’s tendency to remain silent means they aren’t being heard. If most mountain bikers respect wilderness, he said, they should speak out against the Sustainable Trails Coalition’s proposed legislation.

Bridger-Teton National Forest wilderness and recreation

manager Linda Merigliano’s sense is that lots of conservation folks think that all mountain bikers care about is the next great trail.

“I don’t think that is true, “ she said. “But that message needs to be coming more from mountain bikers.”

Merigliano, like many others, believes recreation is a way to build support for the environment, but she also sees the pressure it puts on the natural world. The key, she said, is to figure out how to manage where and how people recreate to minimize the impact.

Expedition guide and outdoor enthusiast Forrest McCarthy echoes Merigliano’s belief that recreation gives people an emotional connection to nature that can develop into a strong sense of stewardship — a connection critical for preserving wildlands in the future.

“I feel very strongly that forms of outdoor recreation that provide intimate relationships with nature — including risks to our well being — and an understanding of natural processes is fundamental to understanding that as Earthlings we are part of nature,” he said.

McCarthy championed the Yellowstone and Grand Teton Paddling Act, and he bristles when reminded of the comments thrown at him during the heat of the debate. The packrafters supporting the bill were dismissed as anti-conservationists and labeled as “jocks,” “selfish” and “hedonistic,” among other things. Environmental journalist Todd Wilkinson wrote in a column in the 2015 Jackson Hole News&Guide that packrafters should rename their tribe “Me First.”

“Their weak rationalizations are little more than a front for selfishness,” he wrote. “Yellowstone shouldn’t be treated as just another cheap conquest.

Top: A Snake River whitewater park proposed for near the South Park bridge has led to a classic conservation-versus-recreation dispute. The park, backed by the kayaking community, has been stalled for now, but it isn’t dead in the water.

Left: Packrafting on Pacific Creek north of Grand Teton National Park. Some recreationalists believe packrafting should be allowed in national parks such as Yellowstone and Grand Teton, where it is now prohibited on most waterways.

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If they were really conservationists, they’d acknowledge the needless mess they’re creating and reverse course.”

McCarthy acknowledged that some recreationists are “no doubt” hedonistic.

“And it is no wonder, with all the imagery and outdoorindustry marketing hype, that many have the impression that recreationists just see the outdoors as a playground.”

But he pointed out that John Muir, Bob Marshall and David Brower, at least initially, were among those who viewed the great outdoors as a place for recreation. Teddy Roosevelt once described the natural world as a “great natural playground.”

“Like many of the founders of wildland conservation,” McCarthy said, “I believe wilderness is to be protected for the people, not from the people, and that wilderness experience is critical for the physical and mental health of society as well as wildlife and wildness. And for this reason, I am deeply disturbed by the attitude of many conservationists, however well-intentioned, who view even traditional forms of primitive recreation as detrimental to wild nature.”

W Y HOME I N G

OWNED BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE 43%

of paddling is on public lands

12,659

miles of mountain biking trails are on public lands

193,500 miles of hiking trails are on public lands

71%

of climbing is on public lands

“The reality is that conservation and outdoor recreation are intertwined.

There are very, very few people who could truly claim they only belong to one or the other group.”

Aaron pruzan Most conservationists say they don’t oppose primitive forms of recreation, nor are they arguing that it is always detrimental to nature. The question for them is where and how much recreation can we allow. What’s the carrying capacity of the places we recreate? How many boaters, bikers or skiers can the backcountry take before they have an irreversible impact? Before they destroy the place they claim to love?

On the other hand, recreationists say that when conservationists take a rigid stand on an issue simply as a matter of principle they alienate potential allies. The world is changing, they argue, and we should be open to changing with it.

Both sides, it seems, need to be willing to compromise, but the heated debates between them have been hurtful and have created distrust. Still, the Outdoor Council’s McGee says the statewide trend is toward cooperation. Outdoor recreation and the love for wildlands it cultivates is growing her organization’s membership.

It’s also essential to Wyoming’s economy and quality of life.

“Regardless of what we most like to do outside,” McGee said, “we are in a unique position to band together to advocate on behalf of the public lands we love. They need defenders now more than ever.”

Orijin is proud to work with multiple local and regional organizations that are committed to conserving our public lands, natural resources, and keeping invasive species out of the place we call HOME.

307-732-5912 | orijinmedia.com

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Photo gallery

Scenes: conservation in action

By Mike Koshmrl // Photography by Bradly J. Boner, Ryan Dorgan and Ryan Jones

V

isually, the practice of conservation isn’t always glamorous.

In the day to day, it might mean sitting in an office, appeasing a donor, answering phone calls, reading through technical documents or streaming a public meeting.

But in a place as wild and vibrant as Jackson Hole, conservation also routinely translates to boots-on-the-ground action. That could be plucking a relic fence off the landscape to ease the passage of wildlife, making sure grizzly bears and humans are safely interfacing on the side of the road, or building a streamside fence to give willows a reprieve from elk browsing.

The News&Guide’s staff photographers, Bradly J. Boner and Ryan Dorgan, picked some of their favorite images, displayed on the pages to come, as examples of what conservation looks like through the lens.

Anna Senecal, an aquatic habitat biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, stands by an exclosure erected with the help of volunteers around a section of Flat Creek on the National Elk Refuge. Senecal hopes the rugged fence, which circles 2 acres and 800 feet of Flat Creek, will help protect 300 willow poles planted on the bank of the stream from foraging elk. The Flat Creek meadow a century ago was a thick mess of willows, historic photographs show, and the area supported beavers and an array of species now absent. The refuge and Game and Fish hope to reverse the conditions and restore some semblance of the natural regime. BRADLY J. BONER 20

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A pair of swans swim with their 2-week-old cygnets in mid-June at the Wyoming Wetland Society’s 10-acre pond complex south of Jackson. The family is part of a breeding program to help restore trumpeters around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, including a breeding swan population in Yellowstone National Park.

Trumpeter swans were once market hunted and almost driven to extinction during the fur trader era, but have since steadily bounced back with help from state wildlife agencies, pond-building landowners and conservation groups. BRADLY J. BONER 2017 Headwaters

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Top: Kate Wilmot, Grand Teton National Park bear management specialist and leader of the volunteer-based Wildlife Brigade, visits with photographers shortly after grizzly 610 and cubs strolled by on a park backroad. Most folks, she said, readily respond to her calls to give roadside bears room. There can be more than 100 grizzly jams in Teton Park and the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway annually, and each crush of people and vehicles provides its own set of challenges. “All bear jams are a lot of work because they’re so dynamic,” Wilmot said. “You’ll come around a corner and there’s cars everywhere. Monkey-see, monkey-do. When you roll up on a scene like that, it can be overwhelming.” BRADLY J. BONER Opposite, Bottom: Former National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis and Grand Teton National Park Superintendent David Vela cross Highway 89/191 in December 2016 to get a glance at the 640-acre Antelope Flats parcel shortly after the deed to the land was transferred from the state of Wyoming to the park. The National Park Foundation and Grand Teton National Park Foundation raised $23 million to complete the years-in-the-making deal.It

meant that a square mile of Jackson Hole would be forever protected from development, and managed like the park land it was surrounded by. “I have one week left in the National Park Service after 40 years,” Jarvis said, “and when I came on as director in 2009, I had a list. This was one of them. ...

This was a big one.” RYAN DORGAN Opposite, Top: Volunteers with the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation remove posts while retrofitting a livestock containment fence in Grand Teton National Park south of Moran. The new fence design allows wildlife to pass through the area more easily, reducing their risk of entanglement. Since its inception 21 years ago, the foundation’s “Wildlife Friendlier Fencing” program has removed or modified nearly 190 miles of fence from all over Jackson Hole. The result is a landscape that’s more safe and permeable to wildlife big and small, be it a low-flying sage grouse or a cow elk. “If we’re going to walk the talk on being friendly to wildlife, these are the kind of things we need to be working on,” Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation co-founder Lorna Miller told the News&Guide in 2013. RYAN JONES 2017 Headwaters

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Science & B advocacy in an age of uncertainty To save the Greater Yellowstone, scientists say they shouldn’t be punished for taking a stand.

By Todd Wilkinson 24

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etween Jackson Hole and Bozeman, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem not only holds one of the largest concentrations of professional non-government conservationists in America, its wildlands have served as launch pads for generations of scientists informing natural resource management.

Field scientists, academics and independent researchers have come together to make sense of what is happening on a interwoven landscape of public and private land. What is the role of science in a time of such enormous uncertainty with things like climate change already exerting an impact?

Many argue that “the precautionary principle” — the notion of looking before one leaps — holds greater importance than ever before in guiding how land and wildlife management decisions are made.

“People protect what they love.” So said Jacques-Yves

Cousteau, the undersea explorer turned activist immortalized in National Geographic television specials that aired during the 1960s and ’70s. An advocate and world-acclaimed conservationist, Cousteau also put a modern face on science.

His observations above water were actually an extension of a well-worn line of thinking in the environmental age: People walk the pathway of things they know and have innate passion for; in turn, people defend what they love if they feel it is in danger of disappearing.

Throughout the Greater Yellowstone — the wildest and most iconic still-functioning complex of wildlands in the Lower 48 — there has been a movement in recent years to discredit scientists by claiming advocacy makes them not objective.

The charge goes something like this: If an elk biologist, say, speaks out and says that wapiti should not be artificially fed on

the National Elk Refuge because of grave concerns about wildlife catching transmissible diseases, then that person is accused of engaging in advocacy. If a grizzly researcher warns that key bear foods are disappearing, jeopardizing the stability of the population, that individual is labeled an advocate. If a bison researcher points out that there has never been a documented case of brucellosis being transmitted from a wild Yellowstone bison to domestic cattle in Montana — a premise that nonetheless has resulted in 9,000 slaughtered park bison — then the scientist is labeled an activist.

These are not abstract hypotheticals. They have happened within the last year alone. Advocacy and activism are considered dirty words by some, and for those who want to prevent scientists well-armed with facts from sharing information, charging a researcher with bias if he/she speaks out as a public servant has been an effective strategy in keeping people silent.

How do I know this? Exactly 20 years ago, I wrote a book about scientific whistleblowers in the Yellowstone region and larger West titled “Science Under Siege: The Politicians’ War on Nature and Truth.” During the extensive interviews I did with more than 100 scientists across the West for “Science Under Siege,” I realized that journalists and scientists are caught in a similar dilemma: We state truths, reinforced by the best available supportable data, but when it clashes with political agendas, critics will try to cast those truths aside as “alternative facts.”

Here is a fact: I’ve never met a scientist in the Greater Yellowstone, including medical doctors, who as a young person was dispassionate about the thing he or she wanted to study.

“The unfortunate thing,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington, D.C., organization founded to protect whistleblowers, “is that by the time people usually contact us they’ve had enthusiasm for their work pounded out of them. They often feel demoralized and depressed, wondering how things Backpackers weave their way went so wrong.” through dead whitebark pine PEER turns 25 years old in this summer on a shoulder of 2018 and has had a number of Huckleberry Mountain. Climate clients — civil servants working change-driven pine beetle for land management agencies — infestations have killed droves from Greater Yellowstone and the of the high-elevation conifer Northern Rockies over the years. around the Greater Yellowstone, Contrary to what citizens might stripping grizzlies of a key food believe, it isn’t easy for a scientist to source. RYAN DORGAN speak the truth as they know it when there is so much institutional pushback, often driven by political agendas, coming from the other direction, Ruch says.

Thus, for many scientists in Greater Yellowstone, the environment can be a pressure cooker for those working in government uniform. It’s also the reason why the region has given rise to so many independently run scientific research entities, including two notable ones in Jackson Hole: the 30-yearold Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative, founded by Dr. Susan Clark, and Craighead Beringia South, created by Derek Craighead, son and nephew of the famous twin Greater Yellowstone grizzly researchers Frank and John Craighead.

Clark, a part-time Jackson Hole resident who is also a professor at Yale University, started the cooperative to serve as a place where scientists can come together and freely share ideas, thinking across jurisdictional boundaries without worrying about retaliation.

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She’s a field researcher by training who helped rescue black-footed ferrets from extinction, and is considered a national authority on how natural resource decisions are made inside public agencies.

“There are three kinds of truths,” Clark says. “One is objective such as the moon passing in front of the sun and creating a solar eclipse. Another is subjective, the kind of truth you see around Jackson Hole when people invoke folk stories to demonize or deify wolves. In the middle is what we call ‘intersubjective,’ where we arrive at accepted truth by agreement. We agree to agree based on a set of verifiable principles,– and that’s where the work of natural resource management in America typically gets done. But all three of these kinds of truths are colliding in Greater Yellowstone, and navigating them can be perilous if you are a scientist.”

Some citizens, Clark says, believe that all conflicts can be remedied simply by generating enough empirical scientific data to fill in the gaps between what is known and unknown. But what science doesn’t provide is reflection on the overriding cultural values, nor does it encourage deeper thinking about humanity’s relationship with nature, which often is falsely portrayed as separate from the places where people live. In reality, people and nature are one and the same in the landscape together.

Changing the mindset, she says, is central to the challenges of modern conservation in Greater Yellowstone. It involves moving away from rigid study of individual species without considering their interrelationships in the broader web of life. And it involves acknowledging that the ecosystem is complicated in ways far beyond human ability to understand.

Instead of adhering to rigid prescriptions for management, which often are driven by politics and short-term economic considerations, more dynamic thinking is required. That means people moving 26

Headwaters issue #2

out of their comfort zones and silo mindsets. Equally Retired Yellowstone National Park biologist Mike Phillips, seated at the as important, Clark says, is left, helped to reintroduce gray wolves sharing knowledge in ways so to the ecosystem in the mid-1990s. that speaking truth isn’t viewed Phillips said he became enormously as a professional liability. frustrated watching his scientific Jesse Logan spent 30 colleagues have to deal with politics years working as a nationally inflamed by opinions about wolves renowned entomologist in the that were not rooted in facts.

West studying forest health in ANGUS M. THUERMER JR. the Rockies and its relationship to mountain pine beetles. From data revealed in tree rings to other empirical metrics, Logan noted how a changing climate has accelerated insect outbreaks that are killing trees in episodes beyond the typical norm. In Greater Yellowstone, climate change has sped up the loss of whitebark pine, which produce seeds that were historically a crucial source of nutrition for grizzlies.

Management policies are supposed to be guided by science but changes occurring in the landscape now warrant foresighted, not reactive management — anticipating the future by applying the precautionary principle rather than thinking narrowly only about nature within the life of a forest management plan that lasts 10 years or a political election cycle.

A prime example, Logan says, are political prescriptions emanating from Washington, D.C., to log beetle-killed forests to prevent them from burning when, in fact, beetle kills are happening, forests are drying out from drought and catching fire because of climate change. There’s compelling evidence, Logan notes, that extensive logging will not improve ecosystem health but

may hasten its loss of capacity for maintaining biological diversity. Hence, agendas to log forests under the guise of job creation are at odds with what science is telling.

Not long ago, Logan, now retired, began writing for MountainJournal.org, where he said that science has done a poor job of making its insights clear and useful for the public. “Scientists largely write for other scientists and in a language intended to be precise, but that is more often than not obscure,” he said. “It’s little wonder that the general public doesn’t understand or appreciate science, or in particular, the scientific method.” Scientists, he said, need to ensure that the best available information rises to public awareness where it can be used to inform public policy.

Mike Phillips worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a biologist overseeing the attempted restoration of red wolves in the southeastern U.S. for years before being tapped by the National Park Service to reintroduce gray wolves to Yellowstone in the mid-1990s. Phillips loved getting his hands dirty, he said, but enormously frustrating was watching his scientific colleagues in Yellowstone have to deal with hostility inflamed by political figures who espoused opinions about wolves not rooted in facts.

In Phillips’ case, he left civil service to oversee the Turner Endangered Species Fund, which uses Ted Turner’s 2 million acres — including four ranches in Greater Yellowstone — to bolster the prospects for imperiled species by providing secure habitat. But Phillips became an advocate for science in another way. “I entered politics based on my belief that far too many politicians exhibit a flagrant and persistent disregard for science, and the conservation ethic on matters of great importance including species restoration, biodiversity conservation and climate change,” he says. “It meant that I had to untether myself from the secure and predictable moorings of fieldwork and jump headfirst into the confusing and sometimes irrational mosh pit of politics.”

Phillips won a seat in the Montana House before advancing to the state Senate. Based on what he’s witnessed in legislative sessions in Montana and what he’s heard about how neighboring state legislatures debate public policy in neighboring Wyoming and Idaho, science has been trumped by political agendas.

Most noteworthy, he says, is the stubborn refusal of all three legislatures to have honest discussions about what climate change means for future generations, and what hotter, drier conditions mean for agriculture and tourism, pillars in their economies. “It is not rational to think that having ‘anti-science’ attitudes is a moral and ethically sound response to being ‘pro-science,’” Phillips says.

Across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, from Bozeman to Big Piney, researchers are trying to understand the region’s natural resource challenges. Some scientists, like Jackson resident Franz Camenzind, think it’s a moral duty to speak up — and to even openly advocate — if the knowledge you can impart can prevent something bad from happening.

LISA LANDENBURGER / USGS

“When you are anti-science, you are pro-ignorance.”

Back in Jackson, Franz Camenzind made his mark as a canid researcher 40 years ago, before becoming an awardwinning filmmaker focused on the plight of species around the world. In his last chapter before retirement, he served as executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance.

Camenzind says scientists evolving toward advocates and activist is a natural progression of expanded consciousness.

It is for him also a moral issue. If a scientist acquires knowledge that could prove crucial in preventing something bad from happening but refuses to speak up — especially if the scientist is a civil servant paid by taxpayers to advance the best interest of society — that a breach of personal responsibility.

Like Cousteau, he says, the more you understand something the more you appreciate its complexity and therefore want to safeguard it from degradation. Where once he interpreted Greater Yellowstone through the lens of coyotes and wolves, Camenzind notes that the older he gets he becomes ever more humbled by what he doesn’t know. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem may be the largest of its kind in the Lower 48, he adds, but it is not large.

Rather it’s actually a tiny island of wildness.

“Conservation biology has brought to the forefront the greater landscape needs of many wildlife species,” he says. “The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is, in practical terms, a terrestrial island surrounded primarily by an industrialized, domesticated and heavily populated greater landscape and the influence of those things are crashing in upon us at a speed beyond the ability of science to measure its impacts in real time. That’s why, more than ever, we need the best scientific minds to be unshackled without fear of speaking the truth. We need land managers to demonstrate courage and stand behind them.”

Science doesn’t provide answers or dictate policy, he says.

It can and should, however, inform how decisions are made.

“Science can be flawed, but it is the best tool we have to help avoid making costly mistakes,” Camenzind points out. “Without it, we are rudderless. And if you look around the world, places where land management decisions have been rudderless, it hasn’t worked out so well for protecting nature.”

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Evolving

advocacy Is professional conservation going soft by collaborating, or adapting?

By Mike Koshmrl

J

ust eight years ago the Greater Yellowstone Coalition was dealt a legal victory acclaimed by many conservationists and wildlife advocates: Grizzly bears would remain under federal oversight and out of the line of hunter gunfire because nobody knew the true impacts of losing whitebark pine seeds, a key bear food source.

Fast forward to spring 2017: The science on whitebark pine decline was settled, grizzlies had been deemed recovered, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was finalizing plans to again let Wyoming, Montana and Idaho manage and hunt an island population of Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem bruins that had not substantively changed since the last “delisting” attempt.

Environmental activists, animal rights groups and Native American tribes promptly fired back, filing no fewer than five lawsuits that contained a dizzying array of arguments.

But missing from the legal fray was the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the Bozeman, Montana, advocacy group that won the day last go-around. Formed 34 years ago, partly to coordinate efforts to save the Yellowstone-area grizzly, the GYC opposed griz hunting and believed the delisting agreements were imperfect. But it thought plans were adequate enough and opted to go down a road of working with the states, rather than contesting them.

“We did not oppose this delisting rule,” Greater Yellowstone Coalition Executive Director Caroline Byrd says. “That doesn’t mean we’re supportive. It means we will be bird-dogging every move the agencies make as we move forward on grizzly bear management.”

With exceptions, collaboration and negotiation have become goto tools for the GYC, whether the issue is grizzly bear management, elk feeding or creating new wilderness areas. Other organizations, including Lucas Bielby and Jay Hoggan the Jackson Hole Conservation drive their team out to feed elk Alliance, have also shifted tactics, last winter on the Patrol Cabin increasingly rubbing shoulders with feedground in the Gros Ventre state and federal officials to steward River drainage. Conservation the land and wildlife they pledge to groups have diverged in their protect. approach to contesting elk But the change of strategy has also feeding, some working with the earned detractors that at times scorn forest, others taking a more what they see as timid acquiescence hard-lined stance. RYAN DORGAN and ineffectiveness. The Yellowstone region’s conservation community isn’t in an outright internal war, but there is an unmistakable lack of cohesion. Groups have at times mounted parallel yet incongruent efforts to contest agency decisions. And in doing so they have unwittingly 2017 Headwaters

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threatened to undermine each other.

Moreover, old-guard environmentalists view the abandonment of hard-line stances and tried-and-sometimes-true tactics as a betrayal of the conservation movement’s founders and the mission statements their forbearers hashed out decades go.

“The conservation community is frustrated,” former Sierra Club activist and resident Phil Hocker says. “They’re discouraged.

People are frustrated and trying to break through what seems to be an impenetrable wall of nothing happening. They’re trying to find different ways of moving up on things.”

Hocker, who helped negotiate the 1984 Wyoming Wilderness Act, looks skeptically upon the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative, which is consuming ample time of the GYC, Alliance and groups such as the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club. The goal is for a diverse panel of stakeholders in each of nine Wyoming counties to come to unanimous recommendations about what to do with 26 wilderness study areas — a class of federal land deemed close to, but not quite, bone fide wilderness.

Plan B: Negotiate Parts of two, the Palisades and Shoal Creek areas, encompass parts of Teton County.

“Why are the groups kissing ass about this?” Hocker asks.

The conservation groups, he says, don’t have anything to gain because they’re narrowly looking at wilderness study areas — already highly protected lands — and their recommendations may ultimately be tossed out or horse-traded in Congress if the endeavor ever amounts to a “grand bargain”-style legislative lands package. Calls for new wilderness throughout the process have been muffled, partially for fear of alienating motorized advocates and others sitting at the same table who must unanimously agree on the outcome.

Craig Benjamin, who recently stepped away from the Conservation Alliance after leading it for three 30

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years, says negotiating with Vice President Dick Cheney speaks decision-making officials is at a ceremony celebrating the often Plan B. It can be the Rockefeller family’s donation of the JY result of trying to affect a Ranch to Grand Teton National Park natural resource issue using in 2001. As a U.S. Representative, one tactic, failing, and then Cheney helped to craft the Wyoming switching course.

Wilderness Act of 1984.

Benjamin pointed to LUCAS J. GILMAN elk feeding. It’s a deeply engrained, politically charged way of managing wildlife that science suggests is ecologically pernicious, by abbreviating migrations, spreading disease and decimating plant communities like willow and aspen. Yet, for years, the Alliance has barely made a peep about wapiti feedlots.

“Fundamentally, the question is, ‘Who makes that decision to end feeding?’” asked Benjamin, today a National Wildlife Federation staffer. “Ten, 15, 20 years ago, a number of organizations tried to have a judge make that decision. Did it work? No. Did it waste a huge amount of resources? Yes. Did it damage relationships with huge and important constituencies and agencies that we need to work with on other issues? Absolutely.”

Elk feeding today is arguably more entrenched than ever.

When the Bridger-Teton National Forest sought renewal of a Wyoming-run feedground at Alkali Creek near the Gros Ventre River in 2015, the Alliance and GYC jointly “objected,” asking for smaller-scale changes to the operation. They requested and were granted a prohibition against killing scavengers, including wolves, gathered at feedgrounds, and compelled the Forest Service to require the state to explain why it starts feeding each year. But another coalition of environmental groups — the Sierra Club, Western Watersheds Project and Wyoming Wildlife Advocates — thought the forest’s proposal to continue elk feeding was so fundamentally flawed they should start from scratch.

The Bridger-Teton declined, and the groups sued this year. If

and Park Service-revoked pastureland near wolf dens that made it the courts rule in their favor, tossing out the Bridger-Teton’s Alkali hard to do business.

Feedground plan, it would also throw out the concessions lassoed Alongside his day job as a physician, Bruce Hayse has provided by the GYC and the Alliance: “All the things we got are now being a steady voice for protecting the Yellowstone Ecosystem and the litigated,” Benjamin said. planet’s remaining wild lands during his decades living in Jackson Jackson Hole Alliance board member Luther Propst agrees Hole. It is money now wound up in the advocacy world, he says, that the decades of battle on wildlife issues and insistence on that has softened once-firm stances on environmental issues. “keeping critters listed” has undermined groups’ ability to steer management decisions.

“In today’s world, we are woefully weak on working with the A diverse band of groups state and game commissions,” says Propst, founder and director “These groups have put themselves in the position of being of the Sonoran Institute before moving to Jackson Hole. “We have beholden to wealthy donors,” Hayse says, “and typically wealthy no influence on appointments and no influence on them as they’re donors don’t like controversy because they don’t want to be making decisions. That’s a long-term strategic failure.” buttonholed by other people.”

Infighting, he says, hurts the conservation movement’s efforts Hocker, who looks back fondly on his generation’s more to quash real threats that exist today. rough-and-tumble approach, agrees.

“We’re the weakest kid on the playground, so we have to “We were younger and stupider,” he says. “We didn’t have unite,” Propst says. “We often come across like the socialista payroll, so we couldn’t have lost any donors. That’s a workers party when they used to fight the workersreal problem today. We were less worried about pissing socialist party. It’s like, ‘what are you fighting over?’ We people off. We pissed each other off and that kept us have to create a bigger tent, and that sometimes requires on our toes.” us to set aside our more parochial issues.”

Advocacy groups, of course, don’t have to always Such a union was achieved — and it worked — agree or adopt the same tactics. The Greater Yellowstone when hook-and-bullet, wilderness and Ecosystem’s storied conservation outdoor recreation groups teamed up movement can progress and succeed to quash a run of legislative efforts to while hitting from different sides, and “THE APPROACH OF seize federal lands in the West earlier while using different weapons. Mike ENVIRONMENTAL this year.

Clark, the GYC director before Byrd, ORGANIZATIONS AT THAT Sue Lurie is a Jackson Hole doesn’t agree with Fish and Wildlife’s TIME WAS TO LEGISLATE, resident and semi-retired Oregon decision to delist grizzlies — the LITIGATE OR REGULATE. THAT State University researcher who science and trends beg for continued focused on natural resource policy and protection, he says — but he doesn’t WAS JUST THEIR TOOL KIT.” management. There was an increase fault his successor for taking an BRAD MEAD in collaborative problem-solving in alternative approach. the 1970s, she says, because of a “That’s what happens when you flurry of bedrock environmental laws, have new leadership,” Clark says. like the National Environmental Policy Act, that required public “I think that change is in the nature of how conservation groups participation. Agencies, to a degree, have become easier for advocacy pursue their mission and their goals.” groups and standalone citizens to work with and influence.

The diverse band of advocacy groups doing business in the 20-county ecosystem can and should work together to achieve conservation, he says. In an era of more people and more pressure Legislate, litigate, regulate on the Greater Yellowstone, the more voices the better.

“Personally, I think you’re more effective when you negotiate “People say to me, ‘We’ve got too many conservation groups,’” if you can find mutual-gain solutions,” Lurie said. “But it’s Clark says. “That’s like saying we’ve got too many birds. not always possible. And the problem is, if you use the word Conservation groups create themselves because there’s a niche not ‘collaboration,’ it’s almost like being the collaborator, which is a being filled. People move into it and they find money and they pejorative term. Collaborators are thought of as the ones that give form and they take a position. That’s good. We don’t need less up, but they do play a role.” conservation groups — we need more. And we need strong ones.”

The run in with the conservation community that Brad Mead Benjamin’s hope is that the conservation community can best recalls was during the debate about extending the Mead coalesce and fight together to confront important issues that the Ranch’s use of Elk Ranch Flats to run cows.

Greater Yellowstone and Jackson Hole lags behind on, like doing When his mother, Mary Mead, died in a horse accident in their part to curb climate change.

1996, the termination of the family’s Grand Teton National Park “It’s pretty clear that the days of fossil fuels are numbered,” grazing lease was supposed to have been triggered. During the fight he says. “You can either be the guy at the party who’s searching for for an extension, groups like the Alliance were dead set against the half-drunk leftover beers or you can move on. I’d really like for keeping cattle in the park. us to think about those issues, instead of bashing each other over “They had an agenda and they had a specific way of looking at whether or not we’re confrontational enough.” it,” Mead says. “The approach of environmental organizations at that Byrd has a similar aspiration: “If we can all just recognize that time was to legislate, litigate or regulate. That was just their tool kit.” out goals are the same and stop criticizing each other over different By 2001, the Mead Ranch pulled out of the park, partially tactics, we would be lot more powerful and effective.” because of the resistance, but also because of threats like brucellosis 2017 Headwaters

31

famous last words View of Jackson Hole from Snow King Mountain.

should aim for 100 percent renewable power. Grade: D

On the environment, We’ve got work to do

By Paul Hansen and Luther Propst // Photography by Ryan Dorgan

J

ackson Hole’s environmental track record could be much better.

We live in a recreationally rich, wealthy, talented and aware community, and pass frequent resolutions about national and global problems like climate change. But we can and should do better. Right now we have many plans, but little action.

Here is a brief review of efforts on a few key environmental issues. Our goal is to challenge complacency and to elicit discussion.

Land protection: Thanks to the likes of John D. Rockefeller Jr.,

the Antiquities Act and President Franklin Roosevelt, we have the National Elk Refuge, Grand Teton National Park and BridgerTeton National Forest. More recently, land trusts and landowners have done an exemplary job of protecting open space. Grade: A

Waste management: While our recycling program is good for a rural community, almost two-thirds of our waste is trucked 100 miles. The county has resolved to double the percentage of waste diverted from the landfill by 2030. Why not expedite that goal? We could follow the lead of communities that compost, have curbside pickup and incinerate trash to generate electricity to approach “zero waste” on a shorter timeline. Let’s put a fee on plastic bags to finance innovative waste management programs. Grade: C Energy: Jackson is an energy hog, and our per-person footprint is off the charts. While town, county and Lower Valley Energy run admirable, cost-effective programs, consumption is up overall, and we burn too much fossil fuel. We can do more to incentivize local renewable energy. Retrofitting Jackson Lake dam with run-off-theriver hydropower would provide enough renewable electricity for 1,200 homes with little impact on the river or park. Teton County 32

Headwaters issue #2

Wildlife-vehicle collisions: Last winter, cars killed hundreds of ungulates. Slower night speed limits at collision hot spots can curb carnage. Wildlife crossings are a good but expensive step. We need a comprehensive program: crossings, speed limits, education, real-time wildlife movement monitors and signs, and fewer automobiles coursing through prime wildlife habitat. Grade: D Planning: Jackson Hole lacks commitment to sound community planning. A decade-old comprehensive plan is waiting to be implemented with smart land development regulations. Last year, the Teton County School District hurt the cause by siting an elementary school 9 miles south of town. To make the best of this bad decision, let’s plan a complete neighborhood around the school and transfer development rights, with Hog Island as the recipient in exchange for protecting outlying parts of the county. Grade: D Water: Two major creeks flowing through Jackson Hole are polluted and suffer from excess E. coli. Flat Creek is treated like a stormwater sewer with minimal controls on sediment and runoff.

It’s rated “threatened.” The stream deserves an integrated system to channel runoff to rain gardens, infiltration trenches and settlement ponds — common elsewhere — to prevent and mitigate pollution.

Some $250,000 was set aside to fund a Flat Creek stormwater management plan, but three years later there is no plan. Outdated and leaky septic systems, lawn fertilizer, animal waste runoff and human sewage sludge degrade Fish Creek. This once-great trout fishery is algae-choked. The spectacular Snake River floodplain is vastly degraded due to dewatering by poorly designed and managed levees. Floodplain irrigation, as part of comprehensive restoration, could help recover and perpetuate this habitat. Grade: F

Transportation: Our transportation plan offers no alternatives to more highways and more automobiles. WYDOT is competent at building highways, but it should not determine our future. Let’s end free downtown parking in summer. Let’s acknowledge that a growing percentage of our workforce commutes from neighboring counties and provide better bus service, transit hubs with day care, bike share and bathrooms. We have a successful bus system in winter; let’s develop a system that caters to summer visitors. Grade: F We lag behind many other mountain communities. Let’s provide a shining example for the 5 million annual visitors to take home with their memories of our remarkable valley.

DON’T LET WYOMING’S ONCE ROBUST WILDLIFE POPULATIONS BECOME A PAST REALITY

With ungulate populations already below objectives, hundreds starved to death during the 2016/17 winter. Over 300 elk died on the National Elk Refuge; at least 200 were calves (a 20% mortality rate). Excessive losses of young replacements threaten the survival of the herd!

Management waited too long to start feeding!

It is still unknown how many moose, elk, deer, sheep and antelope perished. (It is estimated 80 to 90% of fawn deer died.) The Wyoming Game & Fish Dept. did not provide emergency feeding.

The Dept. says they are now taking significant

steps to ensure the future of Wyoming’s big game species. Hopefully this will include emergency feeding. Changes are definitely warranted!

Over 2,500 deer were killed on Wyoming highways last winter - the Game & Fish Dept. says they engaged many stakeholders at the Wyoming wildlife and roadways summit this spring in order to find ways to reduce wildlife collisions on the state’s highways. A wildlife underpass is now being constructed south of Jackson; this is great, hopefully more will be added soon.

We can encourage these changes by contacting management: National Elk Refuge Jackson Office 307-201-5409 Wyoming Game & Fish Dept. Jackson Regional Office 307-733-2321 Wyoming Game & Fish Dept. Cheyenne Headquarters 307-777-4600 Wyoming Transportation Dept. Administration Office 307-777-4301 Governor Matt Mead Office 307-777-7434

Concerned Citizens for the Elk is a non profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Wyoming’s native wildlife. Donations are tax-deductible and are much appreciated.

SaveTheElk.org

redefining conservation at its core

AMERICAN MARTEN PHOTO: TIM AUER WWW.4B.IO

We promote science-based progressive wildlife management through collaboration.

We value and protect: Wildlife as vital contributors to the health of our public landscapes.

The significant impact of wildlife watching on tourism — Wyoming’s 2nd largest industry.

Make trapping reform a reality — WyomingUntrapped.org

The intrinsic character and worth of all furbearing animals.