Many conservation groups have forgotten their histories and roots: Montana is a good example

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense.  It only needs defenders.”

Ed Abbey

Abbey was right.  There have been a number of books and articles over the last twenty or thirty years that have critically examined the ever-diminishing conservation ethics of those who work for environmental groups, both nationally and regionally.  One early critic I grew to admire was Michael Frome.  His classic, ‘Battle for the Wilderness’, still is in my bookcase, along with the newer ‘Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth’, a collection of essays by prominent scientists and conservationists, edited by Wuerthner, Crist and Butler.   I highly recommend these books. 

It is a disappointing fact that the ‘new environmentalists’ no longer engage in defending our dwindling natural world or the world-class laws enacted to protect wildlands and wildlife from degradation.   They do, however, engage in a profusion of hollow words that do not reflect the groups’ anthropocentric actions. All wildlands and wildlife used to be heartily defended by virtually all environmental groups.  Where is this defense now? 

The Merz Institute (New Zealand) published a paper in October, 2023, that broadens the view of the biodiversity and climate crises we face.  The authors provide evidence that current anthropogenic ecological ‘overshoot’ by humans is itself a symptom of a deeper, more subversive modern crisis of human behavior.  Knowingly or unwittingly, too many people, many of them with environmental groups, accept this overshoot and put human activity above the biosystem of Earth that supports us.  To many, the response is that human is smart and can fix these problems.  I am still waiting for a single substantive example to be given.

One region that may be the ultimate example of this problem is the northern Yellowstone ecosystem.  If ever there were a place in the continental US that deserved unmitigated defense, it is the Yellowstone ecosystem.  It is one of the very few essentially intact temperate ecosystems left on Earth.  To be okay with compromising away what remains of its wildness should just not be acceptable to anyone.  But it is happening.  Good conservationists should be up in arms with what is happening.

Three ‘environmental’ organizations in Bozeman, MT, are at the root of the problem of this abandonment of a conservation ethic.  Working with these environmental groups used to mean working tirelessly to protect the unparalleled natural values of the Yellowstone ecosystem.  The Wilderness Society (TWS), Wild Montana, the former Montana Wilderness Association (MWA) and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) are the culprits.  I would ask why it is okay to sell an amazing ecosystem out for a few shekels?   

Many of us remember when these groups in Bozeman actually supported sound conservation management.  Many of us worked with these groups to address the broad array of impacts on the wild lands, water and wildlife of the public lands of the northern Yellowstone ecosystem.

I and others in the Madison Gallatin Alliance worked hand in hand with The Wilderness Society and the Montana Wilderness Association on promoting Wilderness designation for the ALL roadless lands in the Gallatin and Madison Ranges.  We secured a politically pared back Lee Metcalf Wilderness in the early 80’s.   MWA shortly thereafter developed an Alternative W document that proposed additions to the Lee Metcalf Wilderness in the Madison Range and Wilderness designation for all roadless lands in the Gallatin’s.  The document also proposed Wilderness designation for all other WSA’s as established by Senator Lee Metcalf’s Montana Wilderness Study Act, S393, plus many more places throughout Montana. 

 I seriously doubt if anyone working for TWS or Wild Montana remembers those groups’ former strong support for Wilderness designation for the roadless lands in the Gallatin Range, and all of Montana for that matter. 

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) was formed by many individuals who had supported a minimum of a 155,000 acre Wilderness in the Gallatin Range based on Senator Metcalf’s Montana Wilderness Study Act.   Many of us think of it as his last, great gift to protect the natural values of Montana’s pristine wild lands.  The Gallatin Range was half of the original Lee Metcalf Wilderness Proposal. 

In 2013, TWS, MWA and GYC made a mockery of the legacy of Senator Metcalf with their ‘Summer of Lee’ events full of hollow words hiding the fact that they were actually working to degrade, not support, the legacy Senator Metcalf left for the people of Montana, and all people, by the interim protection of the Gallatin Range (and a number of other areas) until a formal study of the Wilderness values of the range were assessed and Congress acted, one way or the other.  A formal study, as required by the law, was never done.  The actions of these groups no longer support – as they darned well should – our nation’s bedrock environmental laws.  Their use of collaboration goes against the very basis of these laws and goes against the basic concepts of sound conservation.

These groups now put the short-term, me-now special interests of mechanized recreation first, which is incompatible with not just Metcalf’s Montana Wilderness Study Act, which protected the core of the Gallatin Range, but threatened and endangered species of wildlife which are the indicator species for the natural health of the ecosystem.   How can the actions of these 3 groups be justified given the basis of premise upon which they were founded?  Let me count the ways.

How many of those who support these three groups actually know that their actions may not be what they think the groups are doing.  One friend not long ago dropped his membership in Wild Montana when he learned just that, that the organization’s actions were not what he understood they were doing.

Recently, at a supposedly open public meeting sponsored by GYC about the Gallatin Forest Partnership a GYC staffer told Dorothy Bradley, an esteemed Montanan with lifelong involvement in Montana politics and conservation, to sit down and be quiet.  When she continued to question their information, a staffer turned the music up so high no one could hear her. 

This is more than shocking.  This is the disappointing reflection of the demise of three organizations with which many of us worked on issues for 25 years and more.  This bodes ill for conservation in Montana and the Yellowstone Ecosystem.  And the health of what is left of the natural values of our nation.

GYC’s vision stated “Our vision is a healthy and intact Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem where critical lands and waters are adequately protected, wildlife is managed in a thoughtful, sustainable manner and a strong, diverse base of support is working to conserve this special place as part of a larger, connected Northern Rocky Mountain Region.”  It is obvious from their actions of the last 15 or more years, they either changed the stated vision for the group or are simply ignoring it for short-term gain.

The Yellowstone Ecosystem is one of the largest nearly intact temperate ecosystems on Earth.  Why would groups that bill themselves as ‘conservation’ groups not recognize the importance of protecting the ecosystem?  We can already see how climate change is impacting humans, wildlife and the land itself.  It is critical to take steps to protect and preserve the Yellowstone Ecosystem, not promote it for uses that degrade the critical natural values.

The three groups mentioned above are not alone in the demise of sound conservation in our country.  My wife and I recently moved to northeastern Oregon after we retired.  We see the same sort of changes taking over historically strong conservation organizations in this state. 

During a discussion about conservation issues, a board member of an Oregon enviro group told me that the Native Americans on the Flathead Indian Reservation (MT) whose efforts established the Mission Mountain Wilderness, the nation’s first Wilderness on a reservation, were “bad Indians.”  His reasoning is based on some kind of current revisionist history applying some narrow standards of today to people he knows nothing about.   The group he works with now puts significantly more effort into recreation than conservation.   My wife and I no longer support that organization. 

These changes fit right into the new category of social demographics labeled ‘Anthropocene boosters’.  The Anthropocene is used to describe the current period in Earth’s history when human activity is having a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.   Anthropocene boosters accept this human-driven demise of our planet as something to accept, not rebel against.  It is all about the human, not the whole of the blue sphere Earth that is our very life support system.

There is no going back to the kind of global environment that was still ‘healthy’ just a handful of decades ago.  Many people are now saying this disappointing shift away from sound conservation by historically strong conservation groups is a reflection of the acceptance of the fact that we truly are in the Anthropocene epoch.  That is a bad sign for the natural world we, as humans, depend upon.  And all life as we know it in the long run.

It is time for folks who support sound conservation and our good environmental laws to speak out against the significant shift far too many groups have made.