[…] value exceeding $150 billion. Despite this wealth of resources, there are serious infrastructure and environmental problems. There are billions of dollars in maintenance backlogs, sewage contamination in Yellowstone, and 90 to 200 million acres of federal land at high risk of catastrophic fire. The root of the problem is not a lack of funds […]
[…] recreation away from home and 30 percent more likely to participate in outdoor recreation close to home (Lee, Scott, and Floyd 2001, 439). The costs of visiting Yellowstone National Park illustrate the importance of travel expenses. If a family of four traveled from Washington, D.C., my calculations show that it would spend between $770 […]
[…] working on to stitch together easements on private land that historically has provided an important corridor for elk, deer, and bear through the Madison River Valley between Yellowstone National Park and the Spanish Peaks in the Gallatin Range. “We’re already starting to see elk moving out of Yellowstone Park,” says Long. It’s a sign […]
[…] a little moisture, a cool cloudy day, and in some cases a change of season are the way she snuffs out a fire. The 1988 fires in Yellowstone National Park only stopped burning when fall’s first snow arrived. Now, in the first week of summer, it is already starkly evident that all that money […]
[…] any other creature. I don’t wear a wolf hat, I don’t collect wolf pictures, and I don’t even own a wolf coffee mug. My passion is with Yellowstone’s natural system as a whole. I’m captivated by the intricate interplay of wolves with elk, aspen, beetles, ravens, fire, weather, and people–the part of the equation […]
[…] creative property rights solutions to overcome barriers to their goals. Hank Fischer, the Northern Rockies Representative of Defenders, has played a critical role in reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone National Park. Recognizing the power of incentives, he created a fund that compensated ranchers whose livestock had been killed by wolves. This privately funded project reduced […]
[…] to creating national parks by simply announcing them. The most notable designation is Utah’s new 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, (weighing in at just under Yellowstone National Park at 2.2 million acres), and the most recent is California’s Giant Sequoia National Monument. The Clinton administration is eyeing Idaho’s Great Rift near the […]
[…] recognize that private fences cannot always conserve the value of the wilderness. Great, wideopen spaces are valuable because they are great and open. A vital part of Yellowstone’s grandeur, and our own, is that it belongs not to Wall Street but to America. Value that inheres in citizenship, nation, patriotism: Such values cannot be […]
Tiny microbes living in the mud-pots and geysers of Yellowstone National Park have sparked a mammoth controversy. Scientists think the genetic materials of these microbes could lead to medical breakthroughs or, at the very least, improve consumer products. In 1997, park officials signed an agreement with a corporation that had previously been prospecting the […]
[…] the transfer of land from private ownership to government. The federal government’s track record for managing land is not a stellar one. To select a few examples: Yellowstone’s outmoded sewer system spews sewage into native trout streams and prehistoric dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park are disintegrating from a buildup of oils and airborne […]