In the 1970s, this "pristineness" idea picked up support from wildlife biologists and ecologists who worried that the park was threatened by logging and other commercial activities on the surrounding national forests. Their concern ignited an effort by environmental activists in the early 1980s to protect the 'Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.' This, in turn, stoked an 'ecosystem approach' among land management agencies across the nation.
New conservation priorities took root: the protection of roadless areas, expanded efforts to curtail logging, mining, and livestock grazing on public lands; the embrace of outdoor recreation; the creation of conservation easements to protect open space on private land; and the reintroduction of the gray wolf. This latter event, which took place in 1995, was considered by many environmentalists to be a watershed moment in the movement’s history - and Yellowstone, once again, occupied center stage.
But something important had quietly changed in the meantime. Beginning with the Great Fires of '88, perceptions of nature and "naturalness" began to shift. The fires themselves demolished the myth of the park’s "pristineness" - because of the large role humans played in them. Not only was nature not static, the fires suggested, but the larger world itself was changing under the influence of humans. Climate change, for example, has profound implications for the park, as it does for natural systems across the globe. The hand of man, suddenly, seemed to be everywhere.
Rocky Barker, in his history of the park, titled "Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed America" puts it this way: "No matter what Park Service officials said, the fires destroyed a sense of innocence not only in the general public but in the environmental movement as well…All the spin in the world couldn’t make people love fire any more than they could love a tornado, a flood, a hurricane, or a volcano eruption. But they could learn to place it in the realistic concept of their lives on earth. The Yellowstone fires were, for many, the beginning of this lesson at the end of the twentieth century…. The fundamental dividing line between preservation and use in the environmental paradigm, in place since the days of Muir and Pinchot and Hetch Hetchy, was broken. Man and nature, civilization and wilderness, could not be separated neatly."
Once again, Yellowstone led the way. But let’s replace this prism with another for a moment. As I sat at the picnic table that day, I wondered: what can Yellowstone tell us about the Age of Consequences? How will it fare under climate change and energy depletion, for example - which I consider to be the two great challenges confronting us? What can it teach us about the possibilities of improving human well-being, which I believe will be the focus of conservation in the 21st century?
It’s too early to say. The refracted light from this prism is largely unfocused at this point, though some outlines are discernable. Higher energy prices will likely mean less tourists in the park, it’s safe to say, though it might mean more choppers! Less tourists means less economic activity in neighboring towns, which means less tax revenue to support essential services. If the
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