Overview: The Threatened Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Part 3

Wilderness areas, such as the vast Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness just northeast of Yellowstone National Park, represent America’s highest level of landscape protection. Undeveloped chunks of public lands qualify for Wilderness designation by Congress under the Wilderness Act of 1964. According to the Wilderness Act, a Wilderness Area is “untrammeled”, meaning unregulated or un-manipulated. It is wild, left on its own, where humans practice restraint and where “the impact of man’s works (sic) are substantially unnoticeable.” In designated Wilderness, there is no road or building construction, no resource extraction, and no mechanized transportation. The area is wild and natural, and although Wilderness areas represent great guided backpacking opportunities, their multi-faceted contribution toward maintaining a healthy planet is more important. For example, native biodiversity conservation and clean water are two iconic Wilderness values. Our guided Yellowstone Ecosystem backpacking treks visit the Absaroka-Beartooth, Gros Ventre, Fitzpatrick, Washakie and Jedediah Smith Wilderness areas.

In addition, Congress has designated a number of “Wilderness Study Areas” in which the decision to designate the areas Wilderness (or not) is delayed, usually for political reasons. The Palisades (straddling the Wyoming/Idaho border near Jackson), Shoal Creek (a potential addition to the Gros Ventre Wilderness) and the Wyoming High Lakes potential addition to the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness are the three major WSA’s in the Wyoming Yellowstone region, and the northern Gallatin Range is the big WSA in the Montana portion of the greater Yellowstone. All of these areas are now vulnerable to extreme anti-conservationists in Congress and in the Trump Administration who are attempting to strip them of protection!

I also mentioned a couple million acres of unprotected national forest road-less areas, which still have at least some limited protections under the Clinton Roadless Rule. Unfortunately, though, they are also the target of radical off-road vehicle abusers — not to mention the oil and timber industries. A big part of wild land conservation is the effort to keep these vulnerable areas wild.

Of course, Yellowstone and Grand Teton are national parks, which generally are protected from resource extraction or livestock grazing (with a grazing exception for part of Grand Teton). But until the back-country areas of these two iconic national parks are protected as Wilderness Areas under the 1964 Wilderness Act, new roads, tourist facilities and the potential for opening the back-country to mechanized transportation loom as threats even to these world famous icons of the still living but ever fading American wilderness.

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