Saving the ‘Mecca of the West’

Montana journalist Todd Wilkinson, who founded the Mountain Journal in 2017, and has been producing quality journalism, primarily about the environment, for 40 years, recently started a new online publication that focuses entirely on the Greater Yellowstone, called Yellowstonian. 

In its inaugural issue, Todd wrote a fabulous piece about Yellowstone Park that poses a fascinating question, one that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I read this piece, called Yellowstone is the Closest Thing We Americans Have to a Sacred Place: Why Don’t We Treat it That Way?

Wilkinson asks his readers to think about what the West would look like if Yellowstone Park had never happened. And I would add the second possibility of what would be different if the Yellowstone Park experiment, and most of you probably know it was the first national park in America, had been a failure. 

It wasn’t a popular decision in many quarters when it was established in 1872. The idea of setting aside such an immense amount of land, and making it off limits to development or its natural resources, ruffled the feathers of those who looked at the West primarily for its commercial potential. Little did they realize that Yellowstone would turn out to be the most popular attraction in our region. So it did have commercial value, but the reason it did and still does is because it was created with the complete opposite intent. 

Yellowstone was set aside because of its wonder and natural beauty, as well as its abundance of wildlife. The people who recognized how important it was to preserve those qualities had the foresight to realize that making it accessible to those who have exploited every resource they can get their hands on would have ugly consequences. But what they couldn’t have foreseen was how enduring and far-reaching that risk turned out to be. 

It’s not hard to imagine that if the public had turned out to be indifferent toward Yellowstone, or if it had been so poorly managed that it was eventually turned over to the money-grubbers, or if any other number of unforeseen circumstances had led to the experiment being a failure, most of the other national parks that attract millions of visitors every year probably would not have happened. Nor would the national forests or national wildlife reserves likely ever have been created. 

Looking at it from that angle, it’s not a stretch to call Yellowstone sacred, especially when you consider the number of people who come from all over the world to fulfill their life-long dream of visiting Yellowstone Park. It’s the West’s version of Mecca. 

But the main focus of Yellowstonian, the publication, is to raise people’s awareness of the dangers of ignoring the impact of progress on this sacred place. 

There has been a lot of concern about the rapid growth in Bozeman, and Gallatin County, and whether the region is prepared for that growth, not only in terms of providing the infrastructure necessary to meet people’s needs, but also in terms of the impact on the environment in Montana. 

There is another excellent article in Yellowstonian that explores the fact that Park County, right next door to Gallatin, is actually growing much faster than Gallatin County. In fact, it’s growing at an alarming rate of 40 times faster than Gallatin in terms of land development. This article, written by Randy Carpenter and Robert Liberty, points out that most of the land being purchased in Park County, which includes Livingston and Paradise Valley, consists of small ‘ranchettes,’ Carpenter and Liberty claim that nearly 40,000 acres of Park County, which translates to almost 60 square miles, was purchased by these small developers between 2020 and 2021 alone. 

And why is that important? Shouldn’t people be able to purchase available property whenever they like?

Of course they should.

But their article explains how much of an impact that kind of growth can have on the water supply in a region that is already facing a pending water crisis. But in an interview I did for my podcast, The State of Montana, Wilkinson also points out that the other long-term impact of this kind of growth is that it disrupts the natural migratory routes for wildlife, which ultimately threatens their very existence. 

Wilkinson explained that many people think that if you have a sparsely populated area, with houses that are miles apart, this provides plenty of space for natural wildlife to follow their natural routes for feed and water. But studies have shown that the reality is very different. The appearance of a single home, even on a larger tract of land, will deter wild animals from entering even what appears to be a wide open area. 

So according to Wilkinson, we would much better serve the Greater Yellowstone region by finding ways to create small clusters of homes surrounded by open space, which could be made available for recreation to those who seek that kind of opportunity, but also for the wildlife to continue their natural migration. 

It’s a contentious issue considering that it would require regulating the way people moving into the region create their dream homes, and we all know how well that goes over with people with money. But considering what’s at stake, Wilkinson believes it’s crucial to preserving what makes the Greater Yellowstone, and Montana, the desirable place that it is. 

If this is an issue that interests you, I would encourage you to subscribe to Yellowstonian, which will be reporting on any and all developments.