Yellowstone National Park became the nation’s first designated national park in July 1872 under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Touted as our most iconic complex of public wild lands and one of the most recognized biological gems in the world, renowned for its wildlife and 10,000 geothermal features sprawling across three states, the magnificent Yellowstone ecosystem is in peril.
How healthy is Yellowstone and what is its prognosis? The first extensive look at that question was published in 2018 in the scientific journal EcoSphere. The study focused on 35 key “vital signs” that ranged from snowpack and rivers, fire, wildlife and aquatic species such as fish.
To the untrained eye, Yellowstone National Park appears healthy and virally immortal. The underlying truth, however, is that the region is falling under the influence of serious stressors.
Dr. Andy Hansen, professor of ecology at Montana State University in Bozeman and colleague Linda Phillips wrote in Ecosphere, “Greater Yellowstone’s ecological health is challenged by growing use by people and changing climate. The human population has doubled, and housing density has tripled in greater Yellowstone since 1970 and both are projected to double again by 2050. Human development now covers 31 percent of the ecosystem. Temperature has warmed 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950 and is projected to increase 4.5 to 9.4 degrees by 2060.”
The researchers noted that a paradox involving simultaneous forces that, if left unaddressed, will result in one dramatically negatively affecting the prognosis of the other. While large mammal populations, like elk, deer, antelope, moose, bison, grizzly bears and wolves have increased and are expanding their range beyond their historic human caused lows, the growth is complicated by a gigantic collage of trends occurring at the landscape level.
“…changes in land use and climate have reduced snowpack and stream flows, increased stream temperatures, favored pest outbreaks and forest die-off, fragmented habitat types, expanded invasive species, and reduced native fish populations,” Hansen and Phillips note.
While the public lands of Yellowstone, the Tetons, and surrounding federal wilderness areas have the highest level of protection, and still serve as vast refuges for wildlife, that is not the case in the lower elevations, which provide critical winter habitat and are privately owned.
“On private lands, in contrast, vital signs relating to snow, stream flow and temperature, river condition, native fish, and wildlife habitat were rated as deteriorating,” they conclude.
In the paper’s abstract, it says, “The Earth's remaining tracts of wild lands are being altered by increased human pressure and climate change. Yet, there is no systematic approach for quantifying change in the ecological condition of wild land ecosystems.”
“Even within designated protected areas, wild lands are being reduced due to downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement. Currently, 33 percent of the global protected area coverage is under intense human pressure,” the EcoSphere article notes.
Protections bring their own set of problems for the Yellowstone region. The dividends of landscape protection in Greater Yellowstone have been enormous. The annual value of nature tourism to the region, for Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks alone, and led by growing interest in wildlife watching, is more than $1 billion. Add in the value of outdoor recreation occurring on national forests, landscapes administered by the Bureau of Land Management and federal wildlife refuges, economists say nature supports yearly economic activity several times the number above.
Additionally, the attractiveness of the region also has fueled a multi-billion-dollar real estate industry, a flood of entrepreneurial-minded job creators, and a high quality of life enjoyed by most of Greater Yellowstone’s estimated 472,575 permanent residents. In 30 years, at current trends (which many demographers say are conservative) Greater Yellowstone will have around 850,000 permanent residents and a large number may also be living just at the ecosystem’s periphery.
In a mere 45 years the number of homes has tripled from 79,000 to 2228,000. By 2050, that number is expected to surpass a half million and the ecological footprints will expand equivocally the farther outside urban boundaries they occur.
The paper also highlighted that the rising number of outdoor recreationists inundating public lands and, through advances in machine technology, from motorized to mountain biking, being able to reach into areas previously beyond reach are increasing dramatically.
River traffic has swelled, too. From 1984 to 2016, angler days on the upper Madison River rose from 51,000 to 178,000 promoting the Montana Department of Fish and Wildlife and Parks to consider implementing restrictions. And this vast growth in numbers does not include rapidly expanding numbers of non-fishing recreationists, including boaters, pack rafters and stand up paddle boarders.
One must wonder at what point the phenomenon of humans loving the Greater Yellowstone to death trying to capitalize on its amenity values impair the very foundation of the nature-based economy, including its wealth of fragile, intangible wonders and sense of place that does not exist anywhere else in the world.
Meanwhile, even as ski areas have pushed expansion, many of them on public lands, to support their profitability and using it to bolster the value of their real estate plays at the base of mountains, climate trends are for markedly shorter seasons. And summers are going to be hotter, meaning more fires and impacts on wildlife. Large ungulates can be negatively affected by impacts to what they eat and where the food is found.
More people, more expansion, more development, and changing environmental conditions are affecting the greater Yellowstone area at a faster pace than ever. Hard questions will have to be answered in the coming years.
