National Geographic has now given Greater Yellowstone its greatest captive audience ever.

In the yellow magazine’s May 2016 edition — a special issue devoted entirely to Yellowstone National Park and environs — science writer David Quammen calls attention to the natural amenity that distinguishes our region from almost every other on Earth.

That amenity: a still largely intact and functioning ecosystem, supporting not only abundant populations of wildlife but, in terms of megafauna, every major species that was here prior to the arrival of Europeans on the continent, including grizzlies and wolves.

It’s a swath of terra firma still holding geothermal phenomena that haven’t been ruined by reckless human development. A sweep of the northern Rockies still containing unfragmented landscapes that accommodate long-distance elk, deer and pronghorn migrations. Wild rivers that haven’t been destroyed by water diversion and pollution. An expanse of mostly public land covering 22.5 million acres that miraculously escaped the wreckage and taming of Manifest Destiny.

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem stands alone and apart. Thriving by protecting nature, it’s a paradoxical hard-won feat Quammen celebrates, and yet he touches upon a third-rail issue almost no one wants to talk about.

Certainly federal and state land managers don’t, nor business leaders, nor elected officials in the 20 counties composing Greater Yellowstone (now among the fastest growing rural areas in America), nor conservation groups, recreationists, hunters, anglers and private property owners nor, quite frankly, most of us who live here.

The NatGeo May issue already ranks among the hottest selling editions of the magazine in years, but it is, in many ways, a shot across the bow of our own denial. Precisely what makes it an opportunity to ignite a regional discussion that may never come around again.

The sobering, almost stupefying truth is that we don’t want to confront the very reality staring us in the face: Unless we think and behave differently, unless we force ourselves to embrace self-restraint, personal sacrifice in how we live and play, and adopt regional transboundary strategies for land management and growth, much of what defines Greater Yellowstone today will be lost.

Greater Yellowstone, as we know it, cannot withstand rising population pressure, being exerted in the form of record visitation to the national parks and unprecedented waves of migrants moving to the region.

Although the public landscape is vast, the health of wildlife populations depends upon habitat provided by a few million acres of private land.

Some leadership ostensibly is supposed to come from the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee, composed of senior managers from the main federal land agencies in the region — national park superintendents, Forest Service supervisors and senior officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Confidentially, GYCC members past and present tell me GYCC lacks both the spine and vision to spearhead the kind of ecosystem-minded conversation that needs to occur. Instead it is dominated by short-term thinking bureaucrats who are either incapable or unwilling to broker serious discussions with state agencies, city and county commissions.

Critics believe the GYCC is a waste of money and should be disbanded, forced to start over. Similarly, there is a serious lack of leadership among the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s national, regional and local conservation organizations.

There is no regional dialogue occurring about wildlife diseases and the root causes of them; no strategy for confronting the impacts of population growth; no strategy for dealing with the effects of rapidly expanding outdoor recreation on wildlife and habitat; no strategy for addressing energy development and expansions of road and powerline grids; no strategy for thinking regionally about the effects of climate change on water availability, rangeland and forest health, and rising incidence of wildfire.

In the absence of coordinated strategies informed by science and smart people, landscapes will unravel. Scattershot development will continue to whittle away at the fabric of wildness that defines the region.

We may very well be enjoying the Golden Age of Greater Yellowstone. In his story, Quammen interviewed David Hallac, Yellowstone’s former chief scientist, who spoke to the dangers of apathy: “I think we’re losing this place. Slowly. Incrementally. In a cumulative fashion. I call it sort of a creeping crisis.”

This article appeared on the Jackson Hole News & Guide website on May 11, 2016.

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