[…] lands. Currently, the National Park Service alone has $11.9 billion of deferred maintenance projects, severely impairing the agency’s conservation goals. Leaking wastewater systems have polluted streams in Yellowstone and Yosemite. Band-Aid repairs on Grand Canyon National Park’s water distribution system have caused water shortages and facility closures. From historic buildings that need rehabilitation to […]
Private ranch on the outskirts of West Yellowstone. Photo courtesy of Charles Barnhill. This article was originally published in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a series of talks at the Bighorn National Recreation Area is highlighting the benefits of public lands. It’s a worthy cause. But as […]
[…] in check. In the process, they expanded the range of the African lion by 2.5 million acres, an achievement on par with the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. The success in Coutada 11 is just one example of what will be lost should trophy hunting be banished as a conservation option, as […]
A podcast on the importance of Yellowstone‘s wildlife migration and how we can help preserve it.
MEETEETSE, Wyo. — On a recent visit to a ranch east of Yellowstone, the challenge of conserving wildlife migration corridors came into stark relief. For generations, ranchers here have grazed livestock on the vast, rolling hills outside America’s first national park—but they also do something far less profitable: provide crucial winter habitat for Yellowstone’s […]
[…] this vantage point, is a thoroughfare that 4,000 mule deer use seasonally to migrate from the South Fork of the Shoshone River into the high country of Yellowstone. For thousands of years, migration has been the key to survival for species like elk, mule deer, and pronghorn in this area. And Middleton is the […]
[…] such barriers. For instance, asserting that the standard should be higher “when a species is already listed,” a federal court recently struck down the delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly bear, despite extensive, bipartisan recovery efforts that enabled the species to exceed its recovery goal (and likely its ecosystem’s carrying capacity). But a heavy thumb […]
The surviving wildlife migrations of the Yellowstone region are wonders of nature. The key to saving them is enlisting private landowners as allies.
[…] bidders were allowed, would they prevent agencies from properly managing natural resources? Those questions are at the forefront of several debates playing out in my backyard near Yellowstone National Park, which spans parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. In one case earlier this year, a proposed timber sale on state trust lands in the […]
[…] to conservation—called free market environmentalism—that shuns regulation in favor of solutions focused on property rights, markets, and incentives,” he explained. “From our offices at the gateway to Yellowstone, our team has recovered fisheries using property rights, implemented adoption incentives to tackle the wild horse crisis, and partnered with National Parks leaders to address the […]