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PARKS AND WILDERNESS,
THE FOUNDATION FOR CONSERVATION
PROTECTING THE WILD
PROTECTING THE WILD: PARKS AND WILDERNESS,
THE FOUNDATION FOR CONSERVATION
Edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler
Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology and Island Press
Distributed by Island Press | www.islandpress.org
Requested citation: G. Wuerthner, “Yellowstone as Model for the World,” in
Protecting the Wild: Parks and Wilderness, the Foundation for Conservation,
ed. G. Wuerthner, E. Crist, and T. Butler (Washington, D.C.: Island Press,
2015), 131–143.
GEORGE WUERTHNER is the ecological projects director for the
Foundation for Deep Ecology. He has visited and photographed hundreds of
national park units in the United States, including all Alaskan park units, and even more wilderness areas,
to gain first-hand knowledge of their ecology, and to see natural landscapes that operate with a minimum of
human influence. A coeditor of, and contributor to, Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth, he
has published 36 books on a wide variety of topics including national parks, natural history, wilderness areas,
and environmental issues.
Yellowstone as Model for the World
GEORGE WUERTHNER
PARKS AND WILDERNESS,
THE FOUNDATION FOR CONSERVATION
PROTECTING THE WILD
Edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler
2 GEORGE WUERTHNER
T
HE IDEA OF SETTING ASIDE LANDS from most
commercial development and settlement start-
ed almost as an aerthought in 1872 when the
United States did something extraordinary. In an
age of unbridled westward expansion in the post–Civil
War, and at a time when Manifest Destiny was a widely
held expression of American conviction in the morality
and value of expansionism, the United States Congress
withdrew the Upper Yellowstone River region from com-
mercial and private development establishing Yellowstone
National Park. Nothing like that had ever been done any-
where before on such a grand scale.
Historically, hunting preserves held by royalty and
sacred realms where people were forbidden to go had
existed, but the idea of setting aside a large parcel of the
landscape for permanent protection as a wildlands re-
serve—and of making that landscape available to the pub-
lic, not just the private preserve of the wealthy or elite—
was something new.
Yellowstone became the nation’s and the world’s rst
national park. e act of March 1, 1872, set the area apart
as a “pleasuring ground for the benet and enjoyment of
the people,” and at the same time required “the preserva-
tion, from injury or spoliation of all timber, mineral de-
posits, natural curiosities or wonders within said park and
their retention in their natural condition.”1
e creation of Yellowstone National Park set a new
standard for land management where preservation, rather
than exploitation, of nature became the guiding philoso-
phy. It is an idea that has been emulated by more than a
hundred countries around the world.2 Indeed, its creation
story and ongoing history is a reection of the issues that
conservationists have faced in the formation and manage-
ment of nearly all national parks.
In a sense, the history of Yellowstone is the history of
every park everywhere. It is not dicult to see the pro-
found eect that the creation of Yellowstone National
Park had on the world’s thinking about wildlands, and
conservation strategy. Yellowstone has been at the fore-
front of conservation eorts since its very inception.
It is the rst place where an endangered animal was
saved (bison). One of the rst places where another spe-
cies was restored (wolf). It was the rst place in the United
States and perhaps the world that ended predator control.
It was one of the rst places where naturally occurring
wildres were restored. It was the rst place where rang-
er-led interpretative talks and walks were implemented.
It was one of the rst places to implement catch-and-re-
lease shing. It was the rst place where the concept of a
“greater ecosystem” came into popular support. And it is
now the anchor for an even more ambitious plan to link
a series of protected parklands from the Yukon to Yellow-
stone. Yellowstone has remained a philosophical model of
how to preserve natural processes by minimizing resource
exploitation and internalizing self-restraint.3
Critique of the Yellowstone model
Some critics deplore the fact that the so-called Yellowstone
model is widely adopted around the globe, suggesting that
it is yet another form of “imperialism” or “colonialism.”4
Such an argument falls at, however, when one consid-
ers that human culture has always borrowed and adopted
good ideas from many places. e Greeks invented partic-
ipatory democracy that has been widely adopted around
the globe, and no one decries the widespread adoption of
democracy as a valid and desirable form of political dis-
course just because the Greeks were the rst to initiate the
concept. Good ideas are always emulated and transferred
from culture to culture.
One can nd fault with democracy, but as is oen
pointed out, it is better than any other form of political
enterprise. Similarly, while one can poke jabs at the Yel-
lowstone model, the reason it is widely adopted is because
it works better than any other form of conservation.
It works so well that the park was declared an Inter-
national Biosphere Reserve in 1976 and a World Heritage
Site in 1978.5
Locals almost always oppose parks
e park’s creation was a radical idea at a time when the
majority of the public domain within the United States
was open to hunting, trapping, homesteading, mining,
logging, farming, ranching, and other exploitation.
Indeed, there was much local opposition to remov-
ing any land from potential exploitation and settlement.
Upon learning of the creation of Yellowstone National
Park, the Helena Gazette in Montana opined: “We regard
the passage of the act as a great blow to the prosperity of
the towns of Bozeman and Virginia City.”6
Local opposition to new conservation designation is
nothing new or unique. By denition, creation of a park or
other reserve means restrictions on human activities that
previously were permitted or tolerated. However, that should
never be a reason to avoid advocacy for new parks and wild-
YELLOWSTONE AS MODEL FOR THE WORLD 3
lands. Subsequent generations nearly always are thankful
that earlier citizens have set aside lands for protection.
In the years following its establishment, Yellowstone’s
naysayers introduced a number of bills into Congress to
reduce the park size or completely dismantle it. When
these attempts to dissolve Yellowstone National Park
failed, park opponents tried other mechanisms to elimi-
nate the park, including an attempt to split o the north-
ern part of the park so a railroad could be built. To jus-
tify removing this area from the park, Montana’s delegate
characterized the Lamar Valley as “wholly unattractive
country,” hence not worthy of park protection. Today the
Lamar Valley is one of the most popular attractions due to
the easily observed wildlife found there. Others proposed
damming the Yellowstone River just below Yellowstone
Lake for hydroelectric power. is too was prevented, but
only by the intervention of dreaded “outsiders” from the
eastern United States.
To appreciate how contrary to ongoing government
policy the establishment of Yellowstone National Park
was, keep in mind that in the post–Civil War era it was the
general policy of the United States government to encour-
age western development and American occupation. e
1864 Homestead Act encouraged settlement of the fron-
tier by giving free land to anyone who would farm and de-
velop vacant government territory. At the same time the
U.S. government, through its railroad land grants legisla-
tion, bestowed more than 185 million acres of land upon
railroads as an incentive to build transcontinental tracks
across the country. Add to these laws other prodevelop-
ment legislation, like the Mining Law of 1872 that en-
couraged mining claims and the 1878 Timber and Stone
Act designed to assist lumber companies through the sale
of western forestlands, and it is easy to understand how
contrary it was to national policy in that era to create a
national park o-limits to privatization and development.
Human-free zones?
Some critics of nature reserves suggest that park advocates
consciously created the idea of human-free wilderness to
facilitate the removal of indigenous peoples. A number of
interpretations of Yellowstone’s early history suggest that
the settlement of Native Americans on reservations was
advocated by park advocates as a ploy to create the illusion
that parks were vacant lands with no human historical use.7
at is a strawman designed to sully the idea of parks,
not to mention that, in most instances, it is simply not
true. e tribal people who lived near or traveled through
what is now Yellowstone National Park were resettled on
reservations before the park was created as part of national
Indian policy to set the stage for America’s rapid western
expansion, not park creation.
As early as 1851 with the signing of the Fort Laramie
Treaty, various tribes inhabiting the lands surrounding
Yellowstone were being assigned to reservations. For in-
stance, the Crow tribe was given a reservation centered on
the Upper Yellowstone near what is now Livingston, Mon-
tana, downstream from present-day Yellowstone National
Park. In 1855, other tribes of the region like the Flathead
Indians agreed to a reservation north of present-day Mis-
soula, Montana. In the same year, the Blackfeet Indians
signed a treaty and agreed to reside on a reservation east
of present-day Glacier National Park.
By 1868, four years before anyone had voiced support
for setting aside Yellowstone as a park or other reserve, the
tribes most immediately associated with the Yellowstone
country were settled on reservations. e eastern Shosho-
ne Indians and northern Arapahos settled on the Wind
River Reservation in Wyoming, and the Crow Reserva-
tion was shrunk and shied eastward to the lower Yellow-
stone in Montana. e “Sheepeater” Indians, an isolated
band of the Shoshone tribe who inhabited the mountains
surrounding Yellowstone, joined their brethren on the
Wind River Reservation by 1871.8
ough the designation of reservations was supposed
to eliminate conict between Indians and whites, not
all relationships went smoothly. Oen there was bloody
resistance to these policies. Some have suggested that
300 Shoshone Indians were slaughtered by a U.S. Army
to clear the way for Yellowstone National Park creation.
However, the only major conict with the Shoshone tribe
anywhere close to Yellowstone occurred in 1863 near Bear
Lake on the Utah-Idaho border. e Shoshone were killed
in retaliation for the the of some cattle and in response
to several earlier conicts where white settlers had been
killed (never mind the Indians were starving due to ap-
propriation of their territory).9
As with many other conicts around the West, this
event had nothing to do with park creation. Bear River
is several hundred miles from Yellowstone, and the mas-
sacre occurred nearly a decade before anyone even sug-
gested there should be a park.
Events like the Bear River Massacre convinced many
of the remaining tribes that settlement on reservations was
preferable to war with the far superior U.S. Army forces.
4 GEORGE WUERTHNER
ere were additional skirmishes between whites and
Native Americans that took place in the Yellowstone re-
gion for years aerward, but none of these battles were
designed to create the illusion of human-free wilderness
as some suggest. General George Custer and his men were
killed in 1876 by Sioux warriors on the Little Big Horn
River, a tributary of the Yellowstone not more than a few
hundred miles from what is now Yellowstone National
Park. e following year, in 1877, a band of Nez Perce In-
dians led by Chief Joseph passed through Yellowstone in a
failed attempt to evade the U.S. Army while eeing Idaho
en route to Canada. But the Nez Perce were not “driven”
from the park to make it a human-free wilderness; rather,
the Nez Perce were merely traveling through the park to
evade the military units that were in hot pursuit.
Similar reserves for tribal people in the more remote
parts of the Amazon Basin and in parts of Africa, Austra-
lia, and Asia continue to this day, and few in fact are es-
tablished to depopulate the land for park creation. Rather
as with the American West, these reserves are designed to
assimilate tribal people into the larger culture, and to free
up land for resource exploitation.
Like the Yellowstone experience, the settlement of in-
digenous peoples on reserved lands or the movement to
villages or towns to take advantage of schools and jobs has
resulted in a de facto depopulating of some areas. But this
population shi typically has little to do with the forced
removal of people explicitly for park creation. We see the
same demographic shi occurring in many parts of the
world, such as the Great Plains where population decline
has been occurring for decades as residents migrate from
rural areas toward jobs and big city lights beyond their
primary region.
Far more people have been removed from their homes
for reasons related to resource development than for nature
reserves. We regularly remove people of all backgrounds to
make way for mines, oil elds, logging, highways, trans-
mission lines, or hydroelectric dams. e ree Gorges
Dam in China, for instance, displaced more than a million
people living in 13 cities, 140 towns, and 1,350 villages.10
e human inuence
Others suggest that the Yellowstone model excludes the
inuence of indigenous peoples from the land, suggest-
ing that humans are part of nature too. Certainly human
presence can be shown to have aected wildlife and plant
communities. Humans-as-predators no doubt had an in-
uence upon big game numbers, just as other top preda-
tors do today, such as wolves, lions, hyenas, and cougar
(puma). And in some plant communities, regular burning
set by human ignition favored certain plants over others
and changed the structure of plant associations.
But many who champion the human inuence apply
this universally and fail to understand that human manip-
ulation and impact was generally local and had distinct
geographical limits. For instance, in Yellowstone National
Park, most of the landscape is high-elevation forest of
lodgepole pine and subalpine r. ese forests do not burn
and cannot burn in most years because they are more or
less reproof due to climatic conditions. It takes extensive
drought combined with low humidity and high winds to
burn these forests. Fire ecologists oen joke about these
being “asbestos” forests due to their general inammabil-
it y.11 As a consequence, though Native Americans may
have regularly camped, traveled, and hunted on the Yel-
lowstone Plateau, it is doubtful that they signicantly al-
tered the re regime due to the inherent resistance to re
found in these forests.12
Similarly, in the days before the advent of the horse,
hunting large game animals was dicult. Except for spe-
cial circumstances like bison jumps (driving animals over
clis) as they crossed the Great Plains, spearing caribou as
they swam Arctic rivers, catching salmon as they darted
over falls on rivers, and other methods, mass killing of large
game and sh was impossible. Furthermore, if you must
carry a bison carcass back to camp on your back or with the
help of dogs, you are not going to hunt far from your home
location. erefore, there were huge areas where little or
no hunting occurred, providing refuge from human preda-
tion. And because of the ecological demands of humans for
wood, water, and other resources, many areas of the land-
scape were simply unusable for large human groupings.
Groups did hunt Yellowstone; in particular, the Shee-
peater Indians used dogs to corral and trap bighorn sheep
on clis where they could then shoot them with arrows,
but again the locations where such methods worked are
geographically limited. e inuence of humans as preda-
tors and their eect upon game populations was not uni-
form in either time or space.
But this fails to recognize two truisms.
Given the limited technology and low population
density of their time, indigenous peoples’ ecological foot-
print was relatively modest in comparison to the footprint
of today’s industrial culture. ough native people were
perfectly capable of wiping out species on small islands
YELLOWSTONE AS MODEL FOR THE WORLD 5
and in other unusual circumstances, in general their inu-
ence of the landscape and wildlife was minor.
at, however, is not true today. Even the most isolated
indigenous peoples now rely on technological innovations
to some degree, which increases their ecological footprint
well beyond historic conditions. e acquisition by indig-
enous peoples of ries, trucks, motorboats or snowmobiles,
chain saws, axes, and even something as simple as a metal
knife, not to mention modern medicine that has increased
survival rates, increases greatly the potential human foot-
print, posing threats to native plants and wildlife.
As we humans have occupied more of the world, and
as we’ve come to commandeer even more of the globe’s re-
sources, it has become clear there is both an ethical and sci-
entic justication for creating, supporting, and enlarging
parks and protected areas. Just as speed limits are necessary
to avoid chaos and harm when people adopted modern
transportation methods, parks and reserves are needed to
curtail the unbridled human species as it colonizes and ap-
propriates much of the global Net Primary Productivity.
Yellowstone’s real value—wildlife preserve
e original legislation establishing Yellowstone National
Park’s borders was rather arbitrary with the U.S. Congress
imposing a square boundary upon the Yellowstone Pla-
teau designed to encompass most of the major geother-
mal features in the park. e primary purpose of the Yel-
lowstone legislation was to protect “natural wonders” like
Old Faithful, the biggest regularly erupting geyser in Yel-
lowstone, and other geological features. In this regard the
park has lived up to its original goals—conservatively, Yel-
lowstone contains about 10,000 thermal features includ-
ing more than half of the world’s geysers.
Yet within a short decade aer the park’s establishment
in 1872, it became clear that perhaps the greater value of
Yellowstone was as a sanctuary for wildlife and natural
processes. When Yellowstone was created by congressional
action, most of the surrounding land was part of Montana
and Wyoming territories—the states did not yet exist. In
fact, other than a few trapper brigades in the 1820s and
1830s, as well a number of prospectors bent on discovering
the next El Dorado in the 1860s, much of the Yellowstone
country remained largely a mystery to non-Indians.
Because the high elevation discouraged settlement
and its geology did not favor gold or other mineralization,
there was little interest in the region. One civilian expedi-
tion known as the Cook-Folsom expedition explored Yel-
lowstone in the summer of 1869. But the scenic wonders
were so beyond the imagined or known realities to date
that when one of the expedition members attempted to
publish an article on their experiences, the manuscript
was rejected by a national magazine because they claimed
they did not publish ction.
Two additional exploratory expeditions, the Wash-
burn in 1870 and Hayden in 1871, documented the ma-
jor geological features of what would soon be Yellowstone
National Park. Members of the Hayden expedition, in
particular, had political connections in Washington, D.C.,
and other inuential eastern cities, and they brought na-
tional attention to the region’s special features. eir lob-
bying eorts convinced Congress to set aside the area as a
national preserve.
Establishment of the park was just in the nick of time.
Rapid changes were closing in on the Yellowstone coun-
try. Gold was discovered: in Emigrant Gulch, a tributary
of the Yellowstone River, just 30 miles north of the future
park boundaries, in 1864; in Bear Creek near Gardiner,
in 1867; and at the headwaters of Soda Butte Creek, near
present-day Cooke City, Montana, in 1870. Indeed these
last two gold discoveries dened the north and northeast
boundaries of the park.
As these and other developments started closing in
on what would become Yellowstone National Park, it be-
came clear that Yellowstone’s value was at least as signi-
cant for wildlife as it was to protect the geological wonders
that inspired the park’s creation. Like many new national
parks in developing countries today, Yellowstone was
more a park on paper than in reality. When Congress rst
set aside the park, there were no funds to sustain a sta
or operate any facilities. Yellowstone was the “wild West”
where anything goes, and did. Market hunting for the
park’s wildlife was not only legal but popular.
In 1875, Captain William Ludlow with the U.S. Army
led another military expedition to the park and reported
widespread slaughter of wildlife, particularly of elk. Phi-
letus Norris, the rst superintendent of the park, traveling
through Yellowstone that same summer, wrote that he wit-
nessed more than 3,000 elk slain in the park.13 Another visi-
tor, General William Strong, in the same year also reported
that nearly 4,000 elk had been killed in or near Yellowstone
for their hides (worth $6 to $8 a piece).14 Just as poachers
today kill elephants for their tusks or snow leopards for
their hides, local people in the late 1800s readily exploited
wildlife for money. And, as in many poorer countries to-
day, there were no rangers to patrol the new park.
6 GEORGE WUERTHNER
Because of this ongoing slaughter of wildlife, voices
were raised to make Yellowstone a wildlife preserve—and
just in time. By the year 1900, elk were nearly extirpated
from most of the West and persisted only in a few places
like Yellowstone National Park. Again, this is not unlike
the situation today in other parts of the world, where
national parks remain critical as the last stand for many
wildlife species. Indeed, Yellowstone became the source
for transplants that established many of the elk herds in
the American West.
Like so many other rsts associated with Yellowstone,
the park was the rst place in the world where large char-
ismatic megafauna, the American bison, was saved from
extinction. Bison, which some estimate numbered in the
tens of millions, were slaughtered for their hides, rst by
Native Americans armed with ries and horses, then later
by market hunters, until one of the last remaining wild
herds resided in Yellowstone. Attempting to preserve this
vestige of wild bison against poachers became one of the
prime goals of the newly established park, just as parks
in other parts of the globe today protect some of the last
Russian tigers, snow leopards, black rhinos, and other en-
dangered megafauna.
At a time when bison were threatened with potential
extinction, even elk were overhunted both inside and out-
side of the park.
Although no one even knew anything about genet-
ics when Yellowstone bison were saved from extinction,
today protection of the “wild” genome is recognized as
yet one more value of Yellowstone’s establishment. Unlike
most other domesticated bison herds around the West,
Yellowstone’s bison are one of only a handful of bison
herds with the original wild genome (most bison have
some cattle genes in their genetic code).
Yet within a decade of the park’s designation, it was
apparent that Yellowstone’s boundaries were insucient
to protect the wildlife that was increasingly under duress
outside of the park. Slaughter for hides and market trade
decimated bison herds. Destroying the bison herds was
seen as desirable public policy as a way to reduce resis-
tance from Plains Indians by eliminating their food sup-
ply. By 1874, just two years aer Yellowstone’s establish-
ment, a bill was introduced into Congress to stop the
slaughter of bison, but President Grant pocket vetoed the
bill agreeing with his military strategists who argued that
extirpation of the bison would reduce the resistance of the
plains tribes.
Aer a visit to Yellowstone in 1882, General Phil
Sheridan, appalled by the market hunting that was deci-
mating Yellowstone’s wildlife, recommended that Con-
gress expand the park 40 miles to the east and 10 miles
further to the south to protect the migration routes of elk
that summered in the park’s high country. Sheridan’s rec-
ommendation languished for nearly a decade due to lo-
cal opposition, but in 1891, President Benjamin Harrison
proclaimed a 6-million-acre area east of the park as the
Yellowstone Forest Reserve, what was to become the rst
national forest, followed six years later with the Teton For-
est Reserve to the south of the park.15
But like most national parks, Yellowstone was a po-
litical creation, not based on sound conservation science,
and at least at rst, inadequately staed and funded. e
rst superintendent, Nathaniel Landford, did not even
have a salary and had no sta. Eventually, in 1886, ad-
ministration for the park was transferred to the War De-
partment, and the U.S. Army was brought in to patrol the
park, protect the wildlife from poachers, and build a ru-
dimentary infrastructure of roads and ranger stations. It
was not until 1916 that a professional core of park admin-
istration was created when Congress created the National
Park Service to manage and oversee the nation’s growing
collection of national park units. Just as Yellowstone faced
during its early years, many national parks established to-
day face similar conicts with poachers, and sometimes
they respond with armed rangers to protect wildlife.
Spare the vandalism of improvement
For decades private interests worked to open the park to
business interests, always arguing that the public experi-
ence would be improved with greater development. How-
ever, by 1886 park supporters in Congress had won the po-
litical debate that parks require “retention in their natural
condition” as originally envisioned by the 1872 legislation.
e idea that Yellowstone should be managed to maintain
natural conditions was yet another philosophical transi-
tion that has dened national parks everywhere. A con-
gressional committee reported to Congress expressed this
position by concluding: “e park should so far as possible
be spared the vandalism of improvement. Its great and
only charms are in the display of wonderful sources of na-
ture, the ever varying beauty of the rugged landscape, and
the sublimity of the scenery. Art can not embellish these.”16
Yellowstone initially suered the same fate as many
newer national parks do today. At rst it was largely a pro-
tected area only in name—a problem repeated through-
YELLOWSTONE AS MODEL FOR THE WORLD 7
out the world where “paper parks” exist on maps but have
little actual protection on the ground.
Market hunters freely accessed the park, killing elk, big-
horn, and bison. Tourists came and dismantled or damaged
thermal features. Hucksters set up camps claiming owner-
ship of the land. Despite a goal of protecting park wildlife,
bias against predators still dominated the early park admin-
istration’s agenda, and wolves, mountain lions, and coyotes
were killed regularly. At the same time, natural ecological
processes like wildres were suppressed and unsavory prac-
tices like feeding bears for public display were condoned.
But attitudes and ideas about management changed
over time. By the 1930s the biologist Adolph Murie was
questioning national park predator policies, calling for
the protection of coyotes, bears, and cougars rather than
killing them.17 Viewing predators as equally important to
park natural landscapes as elk, bison, or bighorns soon
was emulated in other national parks. Today, around the
world, most park areas at least tolerate predators and some
parks are established to specically protect predators like
snow leopards, tigers, wolves, and jaguars. But this change
in attitude about predators had its origins in Yellowstone.
By the 1950s and 1960s, due to killing of large preda-
tors like wolves, elk numbers in Yellowstone had grown to
the point where some suggested elk were having a nega-
tive impact on woody vegetation like aspen and willows
(much as some suggest elephants are doing in African
parks). In response, the National Park Service initiated an
elk culling program, using rangers to kill thousands of elk.
e spectacle of elk being slaughtered in a presumed sanc-
tuary created a public outcry and backlash.
e National Park Service then commissioned an
outside review committee to oversee and advise the Park
Service on not only its elk management but its overall
mission and policies. e committee was chaired by the
eminent ecologist, A. Starker Leopold, son of the late con-
servationist and ecologist Aldo Leopold. e Leopold Re-
port, as it came to be known, recommended among other
things that the goal of national parks should be restoring
natural processes to the greatest degree possible.18
Among the more notable lines in the report was the
armation that: “As a primary goal, we would recom-
mend that the biotic associations within each park be
maintained, or where necessary recreated, as nearly as
possible in the condition that prevailed when the area was
rst visited by the white man. A national park should rep-
resent a vignette of primitive America.”
e Leopold Report noted that such a benchmark is
both dicult and elusive; in many parks some species are
extinct, there is natural variation in species composition due
to climatic change, or invasion by nonnative species has al-
tered the natural regime. It was the pursuit of this ideal that
was important even if it could not be fully realized. e com-
mittee concluded: “Yet, if the goal cannot be fully achieved
it can be approached. A reasonable illusion of primitive
America could be recreated, using the utmost in skill, judg-
ment, and ecologic sensitivity. is in our opinion should be
the objective of every national park and monument.”
e Leopold Report had a profound eect upon Yel-
lowstone’s management as well as national parks around
the globe. Wildres, which previously had been sup-
pressed in Yellowstone as well as other national parks,
were now welcomed as a natural ecological process. In
Grand Canyon National Park, where natural ood re-
gimes on the Colorado River were destroyed by upstream
dams, restoration of periodic high water oods to emu-
late the natural water ows were reestablished. In Olym-
pic National Park, several dams on the Elwha River are in
the process of being removed to restore salmon runs and
natural hydrological processes. In Everglades National
Park, natural water ows are being restored by removal
of dikes and canals and restitution of upstream wetlands.
And recognizing the importance of top predators for eco-
system health, instead of rangers shooting elk to reduce
populations, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone and
Grand Teton National Parks to achieve the same goals, but
through selection by native predators.
Yellowstone is also one of the rst freshwater wild-
lands reserves established, setting the stage for the later
creation of global marine reserves. Commercial shing
in the park was banned early on (originally guests were
treated to trout caught in park waters). Over time, even
sport shing was limited, with catch-and-release shing
implemented for most park waters. And slot size limits
were put into place, eectively protecting the largest sh.19
Just as with marine reserves now being designated in
oceanic waters, the banning of commercial shing and
placing limits on sport shing had a profound eect upon
the park’s sheries. Spawning runs of trout increased dra-
matically and were utilized by many other park species
from grizzly bears to bald eagles. Otters, loons, white peli-
cans, minks, and even wolves have enjoyed the bountiful
sh populations that serve as an important part of the food
chain. (Unfortunately, the introduction of nonnative lake
trout into Yellowstone Lake has led to a profound decline
in native cutthroat trout, which lake trout prey upon.)
8 Yellowstone as Model for the World © 2015 George Wuerthner
Greater ecosystem
Given that parks cannot oen by themselves sustain bio-
diversity, Yellowstone acts as the centerpiece of the Great-
er Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), a 28-million-acre land-
scape consisting of Yellowstone National Park, adjacent
Grand Teton National Park, plus other surrounding fed-
eral lands including national forest wilderness, national
wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Land Management lands.
e recognition of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has
led to greater coordination of land management agencies
to achieve protection of the whole landscape.20
Together these public lands form the vital heart of the
much more ambitious Yellowstone to Yukon initiative that
seeks to link up protected lands along the spine of the Rock-
ies from the Alaskan border to the GYE in Wyoming.21
Yellowstone continues to stand at the forefront of
global conservation. As the world’s rst park, it contin-
ues to inspire people around the world. A country’s true
wealth is not what it can develop and consume, but the
degree to which it can preserve its natural heritage. In
that regard Yellowstone is the gold standard by which the
world’s conservation eorts are measured.
1. L. C. Cramton, Early History of Yellowstone National Park and
Its Relation to National Park Policies (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Library, 1932).
2. National Parks Worldwide, http://nationalparksworldwide.
com/.
3. G. Wuerthner, Yellowstone: A Visitor’s Companion (Harrisburg,
PA: Stackpole Books, 1992), pp. 24–31.
4. E. Marris, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post–Wild
Wor l d (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), pp. 18–25.
5. G. Wuerthner, Yellowstone: A Visitor’s Companion, p. 4.
6. R. Bartlett, Yellowstone: A Wilderness Besieged (Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1985), pp. 12–73.
7. M. D. Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal
and the Making of the National Parks (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999).
8. A. L. Haines, Yellowstone National Park: Its Exploration and
Establishment (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, U.S.
Dept. of the Interior, 1974).
9. G. Black, Empires of Shadows: e Epic Story of Yellowstone
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012), pp. 109–10.
10. “ree Gorges Dam,” on the website of International Rivers,
http://www.internationalrivers.org/campaigns/three-gorges-
dam.
11. G. Wuerthner, “e Yellowstone Fires of 1988: A Living
Wilderness” in Wildre: A Century of Failed Forest Policy
(Covelo, CA: Island Press, 2006), pp. 46–70.
12. T. R. Vale, “Fire and Native People: Natural or Humanized
Landscape?” in Wildre: A Century of Failed Forest Policy,
ed. George Wuerthner (Covelo, CA: Island Press, 2006), pp.
13–16.
13. W. Ludlow, Report of a Reconnaissance from Carroll, Montana
Territory to Yellowstone National Park Made in the Summer
of 1875 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Oce,
1875).
14. W. E. Strong, A Trip to the Yellowstone National Park in July,
August and September 1875 (Norman, OK: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1968).
15. R. B. Keiter, To Conserve Unimpaired: e Evolution of the
National Park Idea (Covelo, CA: Island Press, 2013), p. 204.
16. L. C. Cramton, Early History of Yellowstone National Park and
Its Relation to National Park Policies (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Library, 1932).
17. A. Murie, Fauna of the National Parks of the United States:
Ecology of the Coyote in Yellowstone, National Park Fauna
Series 40 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Oce,
1940).
18. A. S. Leopold, S. A. Cain, C. A. Cottam, I. N. Gabrielson, T.
L. Kimball, Wildlife Management in the National Parks: e
Leopold Report, 1963, http://www.nps.gov/history/history/
online_books/leopold/leopold.htm.
19. J. D. Varley and P. Schullery, Freshwater Wilderness:
Yellowstone Fishes and their World (Wyoming: Yellowstone
Library and Museum Association, 1983), pp. 100–107.
20. R. F. Noss et al., “A Multicriteria Assessment of the
Irreparability and Vulnerability of Sites in the Greater
Yellowstone Ecosystem,” Conservation Biology 16, no. 4 (2002):
895–908.
21. Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, http://y2y.net/.
NOTES