Park County residents want wilderness landscape protected

Most of us with long ties to Park County, Montana, cherish our landscapes and the fish and wildlife that inhabit them. We’ve hiked, camped, hunted, fished and recreated. We’ve seen firsthand the inevitable changes that come to any place over 40 or 50 years or more — in our case, growth and more roads, houses and people.

Yet, still, we have wilderness and appreciate the wildlife that inhabit these protected areas; the clean water that the wilderness headwaters provide; the relatively undeveloped landscapes that dominate our viewsheds as we travel up Paradise Valley. We know that these protected areas are increasingly important in a time of widespread growth and increasing recreation use, when habitats are stressed from climate change, wildlife are moving in response to those changes, drought leaves more creeks dry and wildfires become more common. There is a welcome solace in knowing those Wilderness areas are there, that the whole landscape won’t be roaded and that the wild creatures will continue to have a place to live relatively free of the impacts of human mechanization.

We are dismayed with the proposal to reduce protections for lands eligible for wilderness in the Gallatin Range and allow more industrial-level recreation around these and adjacent areas. Let’s face it, designating only one-third of eligible lands as wilderness will likely lead to the remaining Wilderness Study Area lands being released from wilderness protection. Instead, we should be staunchly protecting the core habitat of all WSAs and wilderness areas to reduce habitat isolation, conserve biodiversity and help fish and wildlife populations flourish in the face of these stresses. These areas can help buffer the dramatic changes in land use we are seeing elsewhere.

There was no mention of climate change in promotional material for this proposal at a recent Livingston event; it’s unclear whether the plan considered the significant impacts of climate change when deciding how landscapes would be used. When asked, one spokesperson answered that was done deliberately to avoid alienating people who don’t “agree” that climate change is an issue. 

We were struck by a comment in a recent editorial supporting Greater Yellowstone Conservation and Recreation Act where the authors acknowledged growing recreation pressure and lack of Forest Service enforcement of wilderness study area standards, resulting in motorized recreation illegally expanding throughout the Gallatin Range in violation of Congressional mandate to maintain the wild character of the WSAs. They seem to suggest that not only should we appease recreational users by endorsing this ongoing illegal encroachment of WSAs and failure of the federal agency responsible for maintaining wilderness character, we should adopt this behavior and allow even more such recreational use. If we reward them for encroachment and failure to enforce, what’s next? Where will they go next? What will we lose next?

We have another perspective.

Let’s not grandfather in illegal uses. Let’s stop all the illegal motorized (and other) encroachment into WSAs. Let’s restore the WSA’s wilderness character and ecological integrity. Let’s demand that the Forest Service maintain and enforce the wilderness character of these landscapes as the WSA requires. And let’s make sure that any consideration of the future of wilderness and WSAs takes into account climate change.

We urge those proposing to permanently protect only a small part of the Gallatin’s Wilderness Study Areas to reconsider their approach, and work to protect all wilderness study areas and roadless lands. Instead of focusing on surrounding and invading our limited wilderness landscapes with more industrial recreation, focus on the crucial value of these wilderness areas for their biological diversity and the need to maintain all of it we can, particularly in the face of climate change. 

We have been members of some GYCRA organizations in the past, even serving on their boards. Protecting wilderness was what many of these organization were about. We still care about wilderness areas, which are already a very small portion of the landscape. They cannot be replaced once lost and they cannot be everything to everyone. As residents, we should not be part of the problem, but rather, part of the solution in a dramatically changing world. We should help protect what we still have.