Yellowstone and clever conservation
I Write this week from Yellowstone National Park, America's first national park, when it was established in 1872. It may as well be the world's first national park, as Americans like to assert. I believe that its current success, as well as its earlier setbacks, provide useful lessons for conservationists in our region. Besides being the oldest national park, Yellowstone is one of the most popular. Over three million tourists visit it, making it absolutely necessary to book in advance if you are planning a visit here.
Yellowstone National Park covers around 9,000 square kilometers, the size of a small country, located mainly in Wyoming State, but parts of it are located in Idaho and Montana. The park is part of a larger ecosystem that includes the Grand Teton National Park and a number of forests covering an area of about 72,000 square kilometers, larger than most countries.
Keeping Yellowstone Park running is no easy task, let alone managing this whole ecosystem. It takes nearly 3,500 staff to run the park, with the help of hundreds of volunteers. In addition, there are thousands working in private concessions, including hotels, restaurants and shops. Equally important are the scores of non-profit organizations and their volunteers who keep an indispensable, independent, non-official and non-commercial watch on the park that also lobby for its preservation and sound management.
Today, Yellowstone has the world's largest collection of geysers, grizzly bears, wolves, bison and elk, all in almost intact, unspoiled nature. But it was not always like that. In fact, the establishment of the park toward the end of the 19th century was a response to serious threats to this ecosystem.
At that time, Wyoming and the surrounding territories were not yet states and there was no law enforcement in the real sense. After defeating native Americans and pushing them to isolated reservations, new settlers and unregulated economic activities wreaked havoc on the new virgin territories. New settlers had little regard for conservation or preserving wildlife or the natural wonders of this area. Forests were devastated and entire species of animals had been ravaged, all in the name of progress and populating conquered territories. That state of affairs let to growing awareness in the rest of the country about the cost that the new settlement of the "wild west".
Although the Congress passed the law establishing Yellowstone as the first national park, and President Grant signed it into law in 1872, devastation continued in the park. The government was forced to move in military units to protect it. In 1886, the first cavalry arrived in the park, but they were no match for the private interests trying to exploit the park or for the harsh nature of the park's winters, and as such illegal activity continued in the park undeterred by the military. In fact, it may have been one brazen outlaw who, inadvertently, pushed the government into action to uphold the law in Yellowstone. In 1894 a poacher was observed by the press in broad daylight skinning a bison he had shot illegally in Yellowstone. He bragged that the most that the authorities could do to him was removal from the park, and perhaps confiscating his tools. The negative press coverage pushed President Cleveland in the same year to sign a law that put some teeth in the protection of Yellowstone. Private companies were forced to obey the law, more or less, and poachers were held at bay.
All this activity near Yellowstone sparked a nationwide movement for conservation, the most successful of which at the time where those which tried to leverage their efforts with those of enlightened business people. There were several such examples. John D. Rockefeller, heir to considerable wealth and Standard Oil, singlehandedly intervened and bought huge swaths of land and granted them to the government to preserve as national parks and forests.
Besides Rockefeller, many trace the origins of the American conservation movement to an unlikely alliance between John Muir, an idealistic preservationist, and Gifford Pinchot, a business tycoon. Muir considered forests almost sacred and wanted them treated as public spaces where logging, and even grazing and hunting are prohibited, while Pinchot was a pragmatic conservationist who believed the best way to protect the forests was to manage their use and provide "the greatest good for the greatest number." In other words, the two men differed strongly on many issues, but agreed nevertheless in 1896 to work together to save America's remaining forests from destruction.
Pinchot's business-friendly conservationism was supported by the Congress and President Grover Cleveland, who appointed him as first head of national forests. Muir parted ways with the establishment and abandoned such those practical approaches.
Later on, other environmental groups were established. They took on more aggressive tactics than those early environmentalists. They now form a formidable lobby and pressure group for the protection of the US's parks and forests. Politicians take them extremely seriously.
The history of Yellowstone National Park provides a realistic example of what preservation requires and what makes it work in difficult political and economic circumstances. It also points out why environmental protection has not been as successful in other parts of the world.
In its early stages, environmental protection requires assertive action by the authorities against narrow-minded business interests. But that is not enough. It also needs to build coalitions and form pragmatic alliances with the community and especially the business community. Businesses in our region have been almost completely absent from any preservation or conservation efforts.
As one could see in Yellowstone today, preserving the park has been a boon to the region. Three million visitors visit the park annually and bring in billions of dollars to the region's economy, providing jobs for tens of thousands of workers. By contrast, illegal mining, poaching or logging would have depleted the park's natural resources long time ago and provided only temporary gain for a small number of people.
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