The western slope of the Cascades contains some of the greatest concentrations of old-growth Doulgas Fir forests in the United States. Photo George Wuerthner 

Some of the most spectacular forests of Douglas fir in the West are found on the west slope of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. Though heavily logged by the timber industry for its straight-grained wood over the years, some important examples of these once-extensive old-growth forests can still be found in western Oregon.

Mature Douglas Fir forest along Middle Santiam River. Photo George Wuerthner 

The Friends of the Douglas Fir National Monument are working to preserve all the remaining old-growth stands on federal lands in the North, Middle, and South Santiam watersheds. A map of the current proposal boundaries can be found here.  On lands previously logged and turned into plantations, restoration forestry would seek to restore the forests and eventually preclude the logging of these areas.

Unlike a national park which only Congress can designate, a national monument can be created by executive decree of a president under the 1906 Antiquities Act. Designation of a Douglas Fir National Monument by President Biden would help achieve several of the President’s stated goals of protecting 30% of the American land base by 2030 and meeting climate change targets by preserving the best carbon storage “machines” we have—old growth forests.

Previous efforts to preserve specific vegetation as national monuments or parks include the Giant Sequoia National Monument, Sequoia National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Saguaro National Park, and Organ Pipe National Monument.

Mount Jefferson in Mount Jefferson Wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner 

Some of the area’s old-growth forests are currently preserved in the Mount Washington, Menagerie, Mount Jefferson, and Middle Santiam Wildernesses within the Douglas Fir National Monument proposal. However, many stands are threatened by logging, and their continued existence as intact ecosystems is not assured. For instance, the Sweet Home Ranger District recently unveiled the Quartzville-Middle Santiam timber sale that would affect 7900 acres.

The Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) is named for Scottish botanist David Douglas who first explored and documented the trees in western Oregon. Douglas wrote of the western Cascades forests “A forest of these trees is a spectacle too much for one man to see.”

Douglas traveled extensively in western North America between 1825 and 1830, and more than 80 species of plants bear his name. But the one species that most impressed Douglas was the mighty tree which is only second to redwood in height and girth.

View of subalpine meadow on Brower Ridge within the proposed national monument. Photo George Wuerthner 

Mature Douglas fir can reach heights of 300 feet and 10 feet in girth. In addition, Douglas-fir can live for 1,000 years, earning the moniker “old growth” or “ancient” forest. Representative examples of these ancient forests can be found in and around the Middle Santiam Wilderness, Crabtree Valley, and Millennium Grove near Gordon Meadows within the proposed national monument.

The 702,000-acre proposed national monument would have numerous benefits for ecosystem health.

Mature old growth Douglas fir. Photo George Wuerthner 

First, it would preserve the last great stands of Douglas fir and associated species found along a sizeable portion of the Oregon Cascades. Old-growth forests have long been recognized as critical for numerous species of wildlife from the spotted owl to important spawning and rearing habitat for salmon.

These giants store incredible amounts of carbon, thus contributing to carbon storage. By precluding the logging of these virgin stands, the national monument would ensure that carbon will continue accumulating in the growing trees and the large woody debris (down logs) that characterize the ancient forests.

Old growth Douglas fir continue to store carbon throughout their long lives up to an age of 1000 years. Photo George Wuerthner 

Contrary to some assertions, mature and old-growth forests continue to store carbon throughout their lives. Once they die, the snags and large down trees (what biologists term down woody debris) continue to store carbon for centuries. By contrast, logging removes the carbon from the forest storehouse and releases much of it into the atmosphere.

Logging old-growth forests releases nearly 60% of their stored carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Indeed, in Oregon, 35% of the carbon emissions in the state are attributed to the timber industry.

Representative old growth forest along the Upper McKenzie River within the proposed Douglas Fir National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner 

Indeed, in a recent 2021 paper, a number of prominent scientists called for creating strategic reserves to preserve and protect forest carbon. One of the study’s authors, Bev Law, was surprised to find that only 10% of Oregon’s forests are protected at the highest levels such as wilderness or national parks, which restrict extractive activities such as mining and logging.

Despite its reputation as a “progressive” state, another recent study found that Oregon has protected the lowest percentage of protected forestlands of any western state. The proposed Douglas Fir National Monument would go a long way toward protecting some of Oregon’s most carbon-rich forests.

From a climate change point of view, the best thing we can do is to preserve old-growth forests intact and to allow previously logged areas to regrow into mature forests.

Clear Lake at the Upper McKenzie River within the proposed Douglas Fir National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner 

The monument proposal takes its name from the dominance of the giant Douglas fir; however, the area supports one of the finest examples of western conifer forests to be found anywhere, including western red cedar, western white pine, noble fir, Pacific silver fir, grand fir, sugar pine, ponderosa pine, Alaska cedar, western hemlock, mountain hemlock, Engelmann spruce, lodgepole pine, and subalpine fir.

Middle Santiam River, one of numerous rivers proposed for Wild and Scenic status within the Douglas Fir National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner 

The Douglas Fir National Monument proposal would also protect some of the finest waterways in western Oregon, many supporting salmon, bull trout, and native cutthroat trout, among other species. A portion of Quartzville Creek is designated as a Wild and Scenic River. Most of the remaining significant streams and rivers in the proposal are included in the River Democracy Act of 2021, which would protect them under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. You can see the Monument rivers nominated for inclusion in the Act here.

Subalpine meadows abound in wild flowers. Photo George Wuerthner 

The monument would ensure that these watersheds would heal from past logging abuses and continue to provide clean water essential for healthy aquatic ecosystems, salmon, and recreation. Plus, drinking water for many Willamette Valley communities. Numerous recreational opportunities for hiking and camping exist within the proposed monument. Go to this link to read Q and A about the monument proposal that responds to numerous issues.

The “Old Cascades” from Echo Peak Basin. Photo George Wuerthner 

To learn more about the numerous special places within the proposal, check out this link.

I only have one quibble with the proposal; it should be larger, including the upper Willamette River and its tributaries on the McKenzie and Middle Fork Ranger Districts, extending south to the Umpqua River divide.

You can connect with Friends of the Douglas Fir National Monument here or on Facebook.

Bighorn sheep petroglyph Bridge Canyon Wilderness within the new Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner 

Today President Biden used his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to create two new national monuments. The larger of the two, Avi Kwa Ame, in southern Nevada, encompasses 506,814 acres, while the Castner Range near El Paso, Texas, covers approximately 7000 acres.

Together these national monuments are the President’s second and third Antiquities Act declarations.

Avi Kwa Ame is the tribal name for Spirit Mountain, a granite outcrop that rises to 5,963 feet. Photo George Wuerthner 

Avi Kwa Ame is the tribal name for 5,963 feet of Spirt Mountain. The highest peak in the new monument is 7,026 feet at the summit of the southern end of McCullough Mountain.

The Avi Kwa Ame monument is the more significant of the two designations, not only because of its size at a half million acres but also because it links several other large conservation tracts.

Avi Kwa Ame, located near Laughlin, Nevada, includes portions of Lake Mead National Recreation Area and adjacent BLM lands that border the Mojave National Preserve in California.

Joshua Tree in Wee Thump Joshua Tree Wilderness, now part of the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner 

The Avi Kwa Ame NM includes several designated wilderness areas, including Spirt Mountain, Wee Thump Joshua Tree, Bridge Canyon, Ireteba Peaks, South McCullough, and Nellis Wash wilderness areas.

The area in blue is the new national monument. Yellow is Lake Mead NRA.

In addition, the western boundary of the new monument borders the Mojave National Preserve, the Castle Mountain National Monument, Mojave Trails National Monument, and the Dead Mountain Wilderness, all in California.

These protected landscapes are an excellent example of where the sum of the whole is greater than the individual designations. In addition, these specially designated federal lands represent millions of acres of the Mojave Desert now in conservation status.

Brittlebrush near the Colorado River within Lake Mead National Recreation Area but now part of the Ari Kwe Ame National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner

The dominant vegetation is typical Mojave plant communities that include blackbrush, Mojave yucca,buckhorn cholla, creosote bush, white bursage, banana yucca, bunch grass, matted cholla, and prickly pear cactus. At some higher elevations, there are juniper and shrub live oak.

Desert bighorn sheep. Photo George Wuerthner

The area sustains desert bighorn sheep, Arizona toads, desert tortoises, and Gila Monster, all sensitive species.

Other species within the new national monument include reptiles such as western chuckwalla, fence lizard, Great Basin gopher snake, leopard lizard, Southwestern speckled rattlesnake, large spotted leopard lizard, Great Basin whiptail, desert iguana, zebra-tailed lizard, yellow-backed spiny lizard, Great Basin collared lizard, Mojave patch-nosed snake, Mojave rattlesnake, desert banded gecko, Western long-nosed snake, Mojave shovel-nosed snake, red coachwhip.

Birds one can spot include spot-gilded flicker (known to occur in Nevada only in this location), northern flicker, ladder-backed woodpecker, black-throated sparrow, red-tailed hawk, crissal thrasher, golden eagle, loggerhead shrike, and cactus wren. Other wildlife roaming the new monument includes coyote, desert cottontail, black-tailed jackrabbit, valley pocket gopher, and desert wood rat.

Petrogryph at Grapevine Canyon. Photo George Wuerthner 

The land within Avi Kwa Ame is part of the ancestral homeland of a number of tribal people, including the Southern Paiute, Mojave, and Chemehuevi. There are some significant petroglyph sites within the monument.

The Castner Range is a former weapon testing site for the Department of Defense and an example of turning swords into plowshares. The Castner Range National Monument borders the 27,000-acre Franklin Mountains State Park, adding to their combined effectiveness in preserving biodiversity.

Yucca frames Spirit Mountain. Photo George Wuerthner 

Given the significant biological and ecological importance of the Avi Kwa Ava National Monument, establishing this protected landscape is a positive action by the President. But he must get moving and designate many more national monuments to save 30 percent of the United States by 2030.

Among the better candidates are the Sutton Mountain and Owyhee Canyonlands in Oregon, Gila Bend in Arizona, Range of Light in the California Sierra Nevada, Pryor Mountains-Bighorn Canyon in Montana, an expanded Craters of the Moon in Idaho, an expanded Great Basin National Park in Nevada, the Gila in New Mexico, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, Bristol Bay and a significant portion of the Naval Petroleum Preserve in Alaska.

The most significant conservation achievement he could contemplate is expanding the protection of Yellowstone National Park by creating a national monument that would include much of the surrounding national forest and other public lands. A Greater Yellowstone National Monument would preserve the world’s most significant temperate ecosystem.

The Biden administration just approved the Willow Project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.

Analysis by the Bureau of Land Management suggests this project will release annually the equivalent of 2 million gas powered cars.

Map of the National Petroleum Reserve. 

The 23 million acre reserve is the largest undeveloped and unprotected areas in the United States To give some perspective, the entire state of Maine is 20 million acres.

Development will likely include a minimum of 200 drill rigs, and miles of new roads, not to mention methane leaks, and yet another intrusion into the Alaskan wildlands.

The political decision the Biden Administration is weighing is how to foster good relations with Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski who has shown herself to be more independent than the average GOP senator. She voted, for instance, to impeach Trump.

Oil development on North Slope of Alaska. Photo George Wuerthner

The other person the Biden Administration is attempting to placate is newly elected Mary Peltola who is half native and half white.  Though Peltola is a Democrat, she is supportive of oil development in Alaska, in part, because many native groups also want the oil and other exploitation. Biden needs to help her get re elected to maintain the close division in the House.

Though most of the conservation media neglects to mention or only in passing suggests that Alaskan native people overwhelming support development of lands where they have a financial stake. In the case of the oil development on the North Slope, native groups own the subsurface rights and earn royalties from oil development.

Plus, in many cases, native groups outside of the Arctic also support the Willow Project because they have oil field subsidiary companies that provide services, which in turn provides income for native people.

There also is “majority consensus” in support in the North Slope region, said Nagruk Harcharek, president of the group Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, whose members include leaders from across much of that region. Supporters have called the project balanced and say communities would benefit from taxes generated by Willow to invest in infrastructure and provide public services.

While there is opposition to development within any group, including native people, the majority of people in Alaskan villages have limited economic opportunities, and mining, oil, logging, and other development projects are welcomed.

While the Biden Administration suggests that it will put limits on development of 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve, as well as place the Beaufort Sea off limits to new oil drilling, the effect is a net loss of wilderness and wildlife habitat.

It’s important to recognize that every new development and its attendant air strips, roads, and work communities increases the chance for expansion.

Map of proposed Ambler Road. 

We see a similar expansion occurring with regards to the Ambler Mining District which lies just south of the Noatak Preserve along the Kobuk River. A 211 mile long road is proposed that would branch off the existing Dalton Highway (pipeline haul road) along the southern edge of the Brooks Range to carry equipment and ore to and from the mining site.

Again, both Mary Peltola and Lisa Murkowski support the mining venture as do many native people, including the Inuit folks in NW Alaska who own many of the mining claims at Ambler.

Kobuk River, Alaska. Photo Geoge Wuerthner

The Biden administration has yet to make a final decision on the Ambler Road, but given the support of both the Democratic and Republican Congressional delegation, I believe they will approve the road—of course, with the usual blather about strict guidelines to limit environmental impacts.

In yet another dangerous position, Secretary of Interior Haaland is supporting the decommission of wilderness at Izembek National Wildlife Refuge on the Alaskan Peninsula to facilitate construction of a road between the village of King Cove and Cold Bay. There is a large full scale air strip at Cold Bay that road advocates believe will increase the profitability of salmon fishing by making quick access to markets possible.

If Secretary Haaland can simply declassify wilderness than no place is safe.

The Izembek proposal may be an even biggest threat to Alaskan wildlands than the Willow Project and Ambler Road. If allowed to stand it would permit the Secretary of Interior (any Sec of Interior) to declassify wilderness and park protections for resource development. But thus far, Haaland is supporting the road development likely because it involves Aleut commercial interests.

Izembek NWR on the Aleutian Peninsula. 

When combined with other proposals such as a gold mine in Lake Clark National Park (also native owned), potential transfer of Tongass National Forest to native groups (who after previous land transfer logged the old growth), and other projects, Alaska’s wildlands may be under great threat of compromise and development under the Biden/Haaland administration than any previous time.

Meanwhile though the Biden Administration has reinstated the Roadless Rule on the Tongass, reestablished expanded boundaries for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante NMs, it has been slow to protect new national parks, wilderness, and national monuments.

There isn’t much time left for Biden to reach or even come close to his much vaulted 30 x 30 protection plan for setting aside 30 percent of the United States from resource development by 2030.

Many foresters want to be able to cut large grand fir like the one in this photo. Photo George Wuerthner 

Recently  Jim Petersen expressed in a March 1, 2023 Chieftain commentary that the Blue Mountains region needs more “active” forest management in the form of logging to preclude tree mortality due to drought, insects, disease and wildlife.

The biggest problem with Petersen perspective and that of many in the Industrial Forestry cabal (which includes many at OSU and other forestry schools) is their insistence on creating what they define as “healthy” forests.

In their view, any mortality from anything other than chainsaws is a sign of decay and waste.  And of course, their solution is chainsaw medicine to “fix” what is ailing the forests.

However, this perspective ignores, climate change, evolution and natural ecological function.

The mosaic of the Bootleg fire, Oregon’s largest fire in 2021, driven by high winds with extensive drought. Photo George Wuerthner 

We are witnessing higher mortality from natural processes primarily due to warming temperatures and significant drought. The on-going drought across the West is the most severe in 1200 years. Extreme drought drives all other mortality factors. It makes some trees more vulnerable to insects or disease and it is absolutely the reason we are seeing large wildfires.

The continued myth that fire suppression is causing wildfires ignores the overriding role of climate/weather in wildfires.

A look at the climate/weather of the last century shows that there were millions of acres that were charred by wildfire in the first part of the century during a particularly warm and dry spell. Indeed, in 1929 wildfires charred a record 50 million acres of the West. Then in the late 1930s we entered a cooling period. In fact, glaciers began to advance throughout the Cascades during this period. In the 1970s some scientists predicted we were entering another Ice Age.

During the 1940s through 1980s, climate was cooler and moister and glaciers grew on peaks like Mount Hood. Photo George Wuerthner 

The 1940s-1980s is the same period that proponents of logging claim fire suppression was so successful. Oh, indeed. Do you think that cool, moist climate had nothing to do with limited fire activity?

Was it more than coincidence that the largest wildfire in western history—the 1910 Big Burn that charred 3.5 million acres of the northern Rockies occurred during a major drought fanned by high winds? And this was well before anyone could suggest anything was approaching “effective” fire suppression.

It is exactly these same factors, drought, high temperatures, low humidity, and most importantly high winds that drive ALL large wildfires today. I do not know of a single exception. And all these factors have increased significantly since the 1970s, primarily to C02 increase as a result of human burning of fossil fuels.

Ironically, proponents of chainsaw medicine never count the trees they kill with machines as a problem, but if the trees die from insects or fire, that is a “loss.”  But they fail to acknowledge that “healthy forest ecosystems” require dead wood, snags and other physical biomass in the forest. In essence, logging is strip-mining the forest biological legacy that sustains forest ecosystems.

It is critical to understand that natural evolutionary processes like drought, fire, insects, and other sources of mortality select the most vulnerable trees, leaving behind the individuals who are most adapted to the current climate/weather conditions.

Lodgepole Pine varies in its resistance to bark beetles due to genetic differences. Foresters marking trees for cutting have no idea which trees possess these genetic characteristics. Photo George Wuerthner 

A forester with his paint gun marking trees for cutting has no idea which individuals in a tree stand have a genetic resistance to drought or insects. And we know that this kind of genetic variation does exist.

In truth, logging reduces the natural ability to resist environmental variation. Logging creates “unhealthy” forests and degrades forest ecosystems.

Peterson bemoans that drought, insects, and other natural sources of morality are selectively killing grand fir, Douglas fir, and other species—the very species he complains are unnaturally “too dense” in the Blue Mountain ecosystem. These natural agents are doing a good job of balancing forest stands with the current, and likely future climatic conditions.

Logging is by far the largest contributor to CO2 emissions in Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner

Finally, let’s not forget that the forest products industry is Oregon’s biggest source of CO2 emissions, even bigger than transportation. The more we log, the more CO2 we put into the atmosphere, contributing to warmer temperatures, drought, and wind, which are the conditions driving current wildfires and other sources of tree mortality.

Yellowstone bison are among the least “domesticated” buffalo in the United States, and, thus of significant ecological value. Photo George Wuerthner 

There is some debate about whether bison were ever found in Yellowstone National Park in any numbers. Richard Keighley, a former biologist in Yellowstone, in a paper in Rangelands, argues that there are few references to bison within Yellowstone Park before the 1860s. Other researchers also question whether Yellowstone had any significant bison presence.

Part of this debate centers around whether the observed number of bison now residing in Yellowstone are “natural” or somehow a result of park mismanagement. Some researchers believe bison are degrading the park ecology due to overabundance. However, Yellowstone National Park staff believe the park could sustain as many as 10,000 bison.

Gut piles left by tribal bison slaughter of hundreds of animals on the border of Yellowstone National Park. Photo George Wuerthner 

One thing is certain is that Yellowstone bison are unique among the nation’s bison herds having been influenced primarily by natural ecological and evolutionary processes like predation, drought, harsh winters, disease, and other factors. The current on-going bison slaughter occurring at the park’s northern border by Gardiner is a threat to the Park bison’s long-term genetic and evolutionary viability.

I discuss the long-term biological threat resulting from continued bison depopulation from capture and slaughter programs and tribal hunting.

Older bison protect calves from predators by encircling them. Photo George Wuerthner 

How you interpret bison occurrence and distribution can influence how you view current bison numbers.

I decided to check on early historical references to bison in Yellowstone. Starting with the archeological record. Cannon et al. argued that bison remains have been located in what is now Yellowstone Park and other nearby areas like the Sunlight Basin just east of the Park on the Shoshone National Forest. While bison remains are not numerous, Cannon suggests reasons for this having to do with the poor preservation quality of Yellowstone’s acidic soils, among other factors.

Timing is an important aspect of the debate. Keighley and his supporters acknowledge that bison may have been present in Yellowstone by the time the park was established in 1872, but suggest that before the 1840s, they were absent or limited to lone bison bulls.

There is good reason to suggest that bison were absent or in small numbers because overall the Yellowstone Plateau averages 8,000 feet, and snow depths in winter can be as much as 10 feet. Winter survival, especially for large herds, would be problematic except for some thermal regions.

The absence of historical references for wildlife in Yellowstone is not evidence of the absence of wildlife.

However, there is an abundance of historical references pre-1840s for large concentrations of bison in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem surrounding what is now the park.

Pierre’s Hole, below the Tetons near present day Driggs, Idaho, was a favorite trapping ground for the fur trappers of the 1820-1840 who often recorded large bison herds. Photo George Wuerthner 

My article Indian Influence  On The Extinction of Bison In Southeast Idaho and Adjacent Areas documenting the decline and extirpation of bison in SE Idaho, likely from Indian Overkill, has numerous first-hand accounts and observations of pre-1840s bison in that region. Although my article focused on SE Idaho, there are many other references to large bison herds to the north and east of Yellowstone Park.

One reason there are almost no references to what is now Yellowstone Park before the 1860s is due to the limited number of people in the region to record any wildlife observations. Prior to the 1860s, about the only white people who ventured into what is now Yellowstone Park were fur trappers. One estimate suggested that at the height of the fur trade (1820-1840), there were no more than 1000 trappers and traders in the entire Rocky Mountain West from Mexico to Canada, and most of these people were illiterate and left no record of their passage.

Since they were seeking beaver pelts, they tended to spend most of their time at lower elevations in major river valleys outside of what is now the park. To the degree they noted wildlife observations, it was focused primarily on beaver.

The upper Gallatin River was trapped by a party that included Bill Sublette, David Jackson and Robert Campbell who noted bison along their pathway. Photo George Wuerthner 

In 1827, trappers Bill Sublette (Sublette County, Wyoming is named for him), David Jackson (Jackson’s Hole is named for him), and Robert Campbell traveled to the headwaters of the Snake River and crossed to the Gallatin River and followed it to what is now Three Forks, Montana. Without knowing their exact path, it’s likely they crossed what is now Yellowstone Park. During their journey, they noted that “On our trip we were abundantly supplied with buffalo, bear, elk, deer and bear all the time.

Upper Green River and Wind River Range where Warren Ferris noted an abundance of bison during his travels in the region during the 1830s. Photo George Wuerthner 

One of the more insightful journals is that of Warren Ferris (after whom the Ferris Mountains In Wyoming are named). Ferris traveled extensively around the Yellowstone Ecosystem between 1830-1835. He makes numerous references to large herds of bison he observed in Pierre’s Hole (present-day Driggs, Idaho), the Upper Green River (near Pinedale, Wyoming), and other locations surrounding what is now Yellowstone Park. However, Ferris never ventured into what is now Yellowstone Park.

Another trader, Nathaniel Wyeth also encountered significant numbers of bison on the Upper Green River. In 1833, Wyeth found the “country covered with buffalo.”

Only a few trappers, like Osborne Russell, even went into what is now Yellowstone, and his time within what is now Yellowstone was limited to a few days to a week at a time. He was even attacked and wounded by Blackfeet Indians by Yellowstone Lake and walked with an arrow through his leg across the Tetons to Fort Hall near present-day Pocatello in ten days. I can guarantee he was not taking notes on wildlife he might have seen during such a journey.

Crazy Mountains near Big Timber, Montana where Osborn Russell recorded seeing thousands of buffalo. Photo George Wuerthner

However, Russell recorded bison outside Yellowstone in many parts of the GYE. On the Yellowstone River near what is now Big Timber, Montana, he saw “thousands of buffalo may be seen in almost every direction.”

At least some historians argue that it is almost inconceivable to believe that if bison were observed in surrounding lands, they would not have been found in what is now Yellowstone Park itself—at least seasonally. One must keep in mind that in the pre-1840s, with no settlement, fences, or other agents to block movement, there was no reason why bison or other wildlife wouldn’t migrate to summer seasonal pastures in the high country, including in Yellowstone, and move to lower elevation winter ranges.

I’ve read numerous historical accounts which occasionally mention the presence of bison in the ecosystem, but the best review is the History of Mammals in Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem 1796-1881 by Lee Whittlesey and Sarah Bone, is a fantastic collection of references from numerous sources. There are two volumes.

Although there is much to digest throughout the two-volume sets, a section on bison in Volume TWO, pages 941-996, contains dozens of first-hand accounts of bison in and around GYE. Most are references to bison seen or observed outside of the park, but some are so close to Yellowstone’s present boundaries as to be absurd, not to mention.

For instance, prospector Bart Henderson who spent a dozen years exploring the GYE and was one of the first miners to find gold in present-day Cooke City, kept a journal of his travels.

View of Hellroaring Creek where it joins the Yellowstone River. Prospector Bart Henderson encountered thousands of bison here in 1866. Photo George Wuerthner 

When traveling from the Gardiner area to Cooke City in 1866, he encountered “thousands” of bison in Hellroaring, Buffalo Fork, and Slough Creek in the AB Wilderness. Given that all these drainages flow down into Yellowstone, it isn’t easy to imagine that at least some of these animals didn’t spend some time in Yellowstone Park.

Bison graze at the confluence of Soda Butte Creek and Lamar River where Bart Henderson killed two bison in 1871. Photo George Wuerthner 

In 1871 Henderson noted that he killed two bison at the junction of the Lamar and Soda Butte Creek in the park.

Another example is Pauly LeHardy (LeHardy rapids on the Yellowstone River near the lake is named for him) saw “quite a number of buffalo” in the Lamar Valley in 1873.

Watler DeLacy (DeLacy Creek, which flows into Shoshone Lake, is named for him) traveled through the SW corner of what is now the park in 1863 with a band of miners heading to Virginia City and reported near Lewis Lake that there “were many game trails made by the wood buffalo, whose tracks appeared numerous and fresh.”

Another explorer 1870, traveled from the Gardiner River to Mount Washburn and reported “herds of buffalo.”

In 1872, an observer near Gardiner, noted the area would be “covered with bison.”

Bison grazing in the Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park. Photo George Wuerthner 

Another traveler in 1872 commented that the Lamar Valley is “a favorite winter resort of mountain buffalo.”

George Bird Grinnell (Grinnell Glacier in Glacier Park is named for him) reported visiting Yellowstone in 1875 and found bison “abundant in the Yellowstone Park.”

Another visitor who crossed Mount Washburn in 1874 “saw way off in a valley a large herd of grazing buffalo.”

Superintendent Norris (Norris Geyser Basin is named for him), in 1875 near Soda Butte, encountered the “bones of a herd of bison probably frozen or starved amidst the deep snows of the preceding winter.”

Bison in the Upper Geyser Basin where the Washburn Expedition recorded bison sign in 1870. Photo George Wuerthner 

And the Washburn Expedition camped in the Upper Geyser Basin in 1870 reported numerous fresh sign of buffalo.”

Another traveler, Horatio Maguire, in 1876 rode up Specimen Ridge and described the ” “country filled with elk, antelope, deer, and sometimes buffalo.: In another place, he says, “immerse herds of buffalo come up to the foot of Specimen Mountain.” Specimen Mountain frames the Lamar Valley where bison are found in large numbers today.

Superintendent Norris riding through Paradise Valley in 1878, mentions the “countless bleaching horns and bones … attests to the recent occupancy of the valley by curly bison or mountain buffalo.”

Meadow along Slough Creek where in 1880, Superintendent Norris noted a herd of several hundred bison. Photo George Wuerthner 

In 1880, Superintendent Norris reported that 200 bison summered in the Crevice Creek, Hellroaring, and Slough Creek areas and wintered in the Lamar Valley. A second herd of 100 lived on the Mirror Plateau and wintered in the Pelican Valley, and a third herd of 300 summered on the Madison Plateau, but wintered outside of what is now the park.

Lt Doane (Mt Doane in the park is named for him) noted numerous buffalo skulls in Paradise Valley.

The fact that bison remains were seen all along Paradise Valley just outside the park makes it difficult to believe that bison didn’t at least migrate up into the park in the summer months.

Though all the above demonstrate that by the time Yellowstone was established as a park, there were bison residing within its boundaries, it still doesn’t settle the basic debate about how many animals may have lived seasonally or year-round in the Park.

It’s difficult to know “how many” bison a quote like “quite a number of bison” or “immense herds” of bison translates into numerically.

And whether the quotes are accurate or exaggerated can be challenging to determine. For instance,  Bart Henderson’s estimate that there were “thousands of buffalo” in the upper drainages of Hellroaring, Slough, and Buffalo Fork drainages may be accurate or just mean he saw a lot of bison. Still, whether this was 500 or 5000, you can’t tell.

However, Henderson spent about ten years in and around Yellowstone all over the ecosystem and noted bison in numerous other places like the Upper Wind River, Greybull River, and Yellowstone River near Big Timber, Montana, etc. he knew something about wildlife distribution.

There is sufficient evidence from these quotes to argue that bison were indeed in Yellowstone Park at its inception, but whether a few hundred, as opposed to the present 6,000, is not easy to determine.

One thing is certain : bison were part of the regional landscape. As I have proposed in another commentary, Expansion and Restoration of Bison to Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, we now have an opportunity to create a meta population by restoring to the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Yellowstone bison are a globally unique animal. Harsh winters can drive bison out of the park where they are often killed. Photo George Wuerthner 

Yellowstone’s bison are unique, essentially influenced by natural evolutionary processes since the Park’s early days. Today the herd has grown to approximately 6,000 animals. Still, the ability of these bison to migrate out of Yellowstone National Park is severely limited by hunting, capture, and slaughter practices.

Since 1985 nearly 10,000 Yellowstone’s bison have been killed or removed from the park ecosystem.

The biggest obstacle facing Yellowstone bison is the freedom to roam. Unlike all other wildlife in the Park, bison are systematically slaughtered when they attempt to migrate north of the Park near Gardiner, Montana.

The heads of bison killed by tribal hunters adjacent to Yellowstone NP. Photo George Wuerthner 

The current bloodbath severely affects Yellowstone’s bison evolution and genetic diversity—at least 1200 bison have been killed so far this winter.

Yellowstone’s founding population of 25 bison means the herd has gone through at least one genetic bottleneck. The periodic removal of bison by slaughter further reduces this genetic diversity, providing to the problem of genetic drift and the increase of maladaptive alleles in the bison population.

This genetic bottleneck is further complicated by bison being tournament breeders, meaning one bull may contribute to the genetic makeup of many offspring.

Bison grazing near Gardiner, Montana just inside the boundary of Yellowstone National Park. Photo George Wuerthner 

Also, the annual killing of bison eliminates the animals most inclined to migrate. Bison, as herd animals, transmit “cultural knowledge” across generations about where to migrate, how to avoid predators and other survival information Over time this selective factor could reduce bison’s natural mobility tendencies if it hasn’t already.

Bison slaughter is taking food out of the mouth of the Park’s native wildlife. Hunting and slaughter remove bison carcasses availability from Yellowstone’s other wildlife, from scavenging ravens to grizzly bears. As Bozeman conservationist Phil Knight has characterized it, the slaughter is a strip-mining of the Park’s biomass.

Notably, nearly all bison herds outside of Yellowstone have been domesticated, with many possessing various degrees of cattle genes. Most bison in the lower 48 states are found on private ranches where they are managed like livestock.

Bison herd at Ted Turner’s ranch near Gallatin Gateway are among the many private herds managed more like livestock than wild animals. Photo George Wuerthner 

There are only 17 conservation herds with approximately 17,000 animals. But even these “conservation herds” are managed in multiple ways that results in domestication of them, including annual population reductions (aka, National Bison Range, for instance).

The Yellowstone bison are the least compromised of all bison found in the United States. While early management emphasized feeding and protecting the few remaining bison, for the most park, the Park’s bison were shaped by natural evolutionary processes like predation, drought, harsh winters, disease, and other factors that shape the genome.

James Bailey has written a book American Plains Bison: Rewilding an Icon arguing for preserving Yellowstone’s unique genetic traits and maintaining wildness as an essential trait.

He argues effectively that the genetic composition of all our bison has been and is being changed by six processes: 1) continental and local founder effects limiting genetic diversity to that of very few animals; 2) crossbreeding with domestic cattle genes; 3) inbreeding; 4) genetic drift; 5) artificial, human-determined selection; and 6) natural selection.

Together, the first five weaken or replace natural selection, especially in commercial bison herds where domestication is underway. But all five processes exist in our conservation herds of bison as well.

Tribal members butcher a Yellowstone bison killed just outside of Yellowstone NP. Photo George Wuerthner

The domestication of most non-park bison herds makes the Yellowstone bison even more unique and of global significance. The fact that they are slaughtered regularly by public agencies and/or tribal hunters, even if the animals are eaten, would be analogous to cutting down centuries-old redwoods to build decks.

Part of this debate concerns the state of Montana’s brucellosis policy, which limits the movement of bison outside of the Park due to fears that bison can transmit the disease to livestock. This disease transmission fear is primarily a bogus argument since elk can move freely and have transmitted brucellosis to livestock but are not shot or limited to Yellowstone Park.

In the past few decades, while there has been an overall decline in elk wintering in the Park, bison numbers have increased.

There are concerns that the current Park bison population of 6,000 is too high, with some range ecologists suggesting the high numbers are harming the vegetation, particularly in the Lamar Valley.

Other biologists, including Yellowstone Park staff, suggest that bison are ecosystem engineers shaping the Park’s vegetation and that the Park could sustain as many as 10,000 bison. A good book on Yellowstone bison is Yellowstone Bison: Conserving an American Icon in Modern Society.

I won’t go into the nuances of this debate, but a couple of points to consider. First, when the Park was established, the climate was considerably colder and snowier. It was the tail end of the Little Ice Age, so the capacity of what is now Yellowstone to sustain any large ungulate herds year-round was likely lower.

Bison migrating through Roosevelt Arch entrance at Gardiner, Montana. Photo George Wuerthner 

In the pre-settlement era, wildlife, including elk, bison, and pronghorn, were not restricted to the park boundaries and could easily migrate to lower-elevation winter ranges outside of what is now Yellowstone Park.

Archeological evidence shows that bison occasionally roamed higher elevations of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Still, this use of high country varied with climate, as did the human population dependent upon them. For instance, during a particularly drought period about 7,000 years ago, archeological evidence for human use of Yellowstone increased significantly but declined with cooler temperatures. So the temporal period is critical to understanding both wildlife and human history in what is known as Yellowstone.

Bison herd in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone NP. Photo George Wuerthner 

There is no doubt that bison utilized high country at least seasonally throughout the ecosystem. I have found bison tracks and dung at elevations of over 10,000 feet in the North Absaroka Wilderness along Yellowstone’s eastern border, so it’s not inconceivable that bison utilized all available habitat in the pre-settlement era from lower elevation snow-free winter range to alpine meadows.

Part of this debate on the appropriate number of Yellowstone bison should focus on where the animals are found. In other words, there is more habitat for bison within Yellowstone that is currently unused such as the extensive meadows in the Bechler region. However, even if bison were able to colonize all these nooks and crannies, it eventually would exceed the Park’s capacity to sustain bison.

Tribal members have killed hundreds of bison as they seek to migrate to snow-free areas near Gardiner, Montana. Photo George Wuerthner 

Even with the expansion of habitat use within the Park, there is a desperate need to expand Yellowstone’s bison numbers and distribution. The best way to accomplish this is to foster the recolonization of suitable habitats throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).

We must consider restoring bison across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and other larger public lands entities like the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR) in Montana. To learn more about the potential for bison restoration along the Missouri River/CMR, see the Wild Bison Coalition.

Notwithstanding the numerous opportunities to establish native wild bison in other parts of the West like the Charles M. Russell NWR, there is equal opportunity to expand bison herds in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to create a “meta-population” of linked herds. Such a meta-population would be sufficiently large enough to reduce the problems of inbreeding depression, random genetic drift, inbreeding depression, and other issues associated with smaller populations.

Bison herd in Yellowstone NP. Photo George Wuerthner 

The area north of Gardiner, Montana, lies in a rain shadow of the Gallatin Range. Annual precipitation is approximately 11 inches, less than Tucson, Arizona, while precipitation of 70 inches (translating into many feet of snow) has been recorded on Yellowstone’s Pitchstone Plateau.

While snow may be piled 2 feet deep in Bozeman, there is often no snow at all at Gardiner, even though it exists at a higher elevation than Bozeman. Indeed, in the 1930s, agricultural lands north of Gardiner were added to Yellowstone to increase the winter range. So, expanding the park boundary to accommodate wintering wildlife is not new.

The largely snow-free lands surrounding the Dome Mountain Wildlife Management Area north of Yellowstone NP. Photo George Wuerthner 

The “tolerance” area for bison north of Yellowstone Park is currently limited. This tolerance area could be expanded northward by approximately 20 miles, to include Tom Miner Basin, Dome Mountain, the Dome Mountain State Wildlife Management Area, and adjacent Custer Gallatin National Forest areas. Enlarging the tolerance area would significantly open up much-needed lower elevation winter range for bison use.

One way to accomplish this would be to legislatively “expand” Yellowstone Park north of Yankee Jim Canyon to include lands currently managed by the Custer Gallatin National Forest. Indeed, a good argument could be made that the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem should come under the NPS management since it is one of the few temperate ecosystems that is still relatively intact, thus of global significance.

Other legislative proposals like the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act that would designate wilderness status for all roadless lands surrounding Yellowstone are also a step in the right direction.

Some bison survive the winter by frequenting Yellowstone’s thermal basins, where snow is lower, and temperatures can be warmer. Photo George Wuerthner

However, even without legislation, many other parts of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem could sustain small to medium bison herds. Connectivity between these herds would be necessary to ensure long-term genetic diversity preservation. Collectively these herds could comprise a metapopulation of 10,000 to 20,000 bison.

Many of the following areas are high-elevation regions, with snowy and harsh winter conditions, but similar to the existing bison habitat in Yellowstone National Park.

Among the prominent areas that could sustain bison recolonization are the following areas:

1. Hebgen Basin/Upper Gallatin River and adjacent tributaries, Montana. The area from Big Sky south to West Yellowstone has numerous sites, like the Taylor Fork in the Madison Range and the Buffalo Horn-Porcupine area of the Gallatin Range, suitable for bison recolonization.
2. Island Park/Sand Creek, Idaho. The Island Park area and adjacent Sand Creek Wildlife Area could provide a migratory bison herd’s summer and winter habitat.
3. Centennial Valley/Gravelly Range/Snowcrest Range, Montana. This area to the West of Yellowstone NP has substantial public land holdings, including Red Rock Lakes NWR, and significant proposed wilderness in the Centennial Mountains, Gravelly Range, and Snowcrest Ranges. In addition, several state wildlife management areas like the Robb Ledford WMA exist.
4. Mount Leidy Highlands/Teton Wilderness/Gros Ventre River/Wilderness, Wyoming. A small bison herd already exists in Grand Teton National Park. Expansion of this herd’s habitat use to the mountains east of the Tetons would permit a much larger population to utilize the area. Overall, this is snowy country, and the size of any herds would naturally be limited by harsh winters.
5. Upper Shoshone/Greybull Rivers, Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. These rivers that flow eastward off the Absaroka Mountains lie in the “rain shadow” of the peaks and thus tend to have shallow snow conditions that could sustain wintering bison.
6. Clark Fork of the Yellowstone/Pryor Mountains/Bighorn NRA, Montana/Wyoming. This region lies in the lee of the Beartooth Mountains, which exceed 12,000 feet. Consequently, one of the most arid locations in all of Montana and adjacent Wyoming is found in this area.
   The Pryor Mountains are Montana’s Utah–very arid and snowfree at lower elevations. A superb place for bison restoration. Photo George Wuerthner 

Indeed, the lower elevations of the Pryor Mountains and adjacent Bighorn NRA are sometimes called Montana’s Utah due to the red rock/limestone geological features. The area is mainly snow-free in winter but with access to much higher summer pastures in mountain areas like the Pryor Mountains.

The Upper Green/Union Pass area offers tremendous opportunity to reestablish a major migratory bison herd. Photo George Wuerthner 

7. Union Pass-Upper Green River, Wyoming. The Union Pass/Upper Green River/Red Desert is a second Lamar Valley in terms of wildlife potential. The area is already home to elk, pronghorn, grizzlies, wolves, and moose. The only large mammal it lacks is bison. The Upper Green River was once the location of extensive bison herds documented by many fur traders and trappers in the 1820-the 1840s. Restoring bison to this region would permit migration southwards from the high country in the Wind River and Gros Ventre Ranges into the Red Desert area. The Red Desert is the largest unfenced area in the western US.

If bison could be established throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as one meta-population, it would preserve much of this population’s evolutionary and genetic diversity.

Increasing bison numbers across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem would have other ecological benefits.

For instance, weak or dead bison numbers would increase across the landscape, making them available to predators like grizzly bears and wolves, substantially increasing overall survival. To a sow grizzly with cubs finding a dead bison in the spring is like winning the lottery; it is an abundance of high-quality food at a time when other sources of sustenance are limited. For instance, Yellowstone’s grizzlies eat more meat than almost any bear subpopulation. In the past, this was primarily elk. However, an increase in bison would provide a substantial additional food resource when other dietary options like whitebark pine nuts are declining.

Although not my intent, if bison numbers across the ecosystem were substantially increased, limited hunting by tribal people and others could conceivably be instituted without harming the overall bison genotype or evolutionary behavior.

One obvious obstacle to the recolonization and restoration of bison across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is the presence of domestic livestock on public lands. Bison dietary preferences are similar to cattle, and no doubt, beyond even the alleged fear of brucellosis transmission, livestock producers do not relish the idea of forage competition between bison and cows.

The best way to alleviate this competition for public forage is to remove domestic livestock from all proposed bison restoration areas. Although grazing on public lands is a privilege, not a right, the political influence of the livestock industry makes any reduction in livestock grazing difficult.

The Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement Act could elimiante public lands cattle grazing seen here on the Bridger Teton National Forest, Wyoming. George Wuerthner 

The Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement Act entices ranchers to abandon public lands grazing lands. The proposal would pay ranchers to give up grazing privileges in exchange for an agreed-upon cash payment.

Other potential problems that could be foreseen are the issue of bison movement through fences or the occupation of private lands. These issues can be dealt with case-by-case, including lease agreements with ranchers to tolerant bison grazing or movement across private lands. Such an agreement was negotiated with the Church Universal and Triumphant Church (CUT), who own significant lands just north of Yellowstone near Gardiner.

Groups that are advocating for restoration of wild bison including Wild Bison Restoration Coalition, Roam Free Nation, and the Gallatin Wildlife Association.

Restoring Yellowstone bison to the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is a worthwhile project analogous to restoring wolves, grizzlies, and other wildlife. We can repair what was previously degraded and diminished to the ecosystem by restoring bison across the landscape. It’s time to get started.

Hell Hole West Fork Gila River, Gila Wilderness, New Mexico. Photo George Wuerthner

Good news in New Mexico. The Gila National Forest has decided to remove feral cattle from the Gila Wilderness and surrounding areas, either by non-lethal or lethal means.

It is remarkable for the FS to do anything about destructive livestock, so this decision by Forest Supervisor Camille Howes deserves special recognition for putting the public interest and public lands first.

Officials have given a kill order to wildlife experts in southwestern New Mexico as part of an effort to eliminate feral cows in the Gila Wilderness.

The Forest Service approved a plan to use helicopters and shooters to eliminate feral cattle from public lands.

Feral cattle are degrading the Gila Wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner

Supervisor Howes said: “The feral cattle in the Gila Wilderness have been aggressive towards wilderness visitors, graze year-round, and trample stream banks and springs, causing erosion and sedimentation,”

Ranchers, however, opposed the decision and argued the plan to shoot cows from a helicopter should be regarded as animal cruelty. In addition, they said the action violates federal regulations and will result in a problematic situation in dealing with the left-behind carcasses.

In an almost laughable statement, the livestock claims killing cattle starving to death from drought conditions is “cruel.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

This action will result in cleaner water, healthier riparian zones, and a more intact Greater Gila Ecosystem.

The wild beauty of the Little Missouri badlands within Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota. Photo George Wuerthner 

Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) has proposed eliminating feral horses and domestic livestock from the Park. Unlike the fiasco at Point Reyes National Seashore, where the NPS appears to support maintaining domestic livestock within the park unit, the staff at TRNP recommends reducing the number of domestic animals to zero. Management of feral horses and domestic cattle across the West has been contentious for decades.

TRNP has a small herd of domestic cattle which it plans to eliminate. Photo George Wuerthner

Opposition to the proposal comes from the Governor Burgum of North Dakota, the state legislature, and the United Tribes of North Dakota. Burgum, speaking on behalf of the hospitality industry, suggests that horses and cattle are a draw for tourists and are part of the ranching “heritage” of the state.

The state legislature is also considering a resolution that would oppose the removal of livestock from the Park. But, of course, this would only be advisory since federal authority trumps state laws.

The United Tribes of North Dakota consider feral horses as “sacred” and oppose their removal from TRNP. Photo George Wuerthner

The tribes, for their part, argue that horses are “sacred” and part of their cultural heritage.

Although the Park described the horses for decades as “wild horses” or “feral horses,” park officials recently classified them as livestock and maintain they have “no basis” to keep livestock in the Park under laws and regulations.

Park officials, including Angie Richman, the park superintendent, have said the Park’s enabling legislation and other federal laws don’t allow them to keep livestock in the Park. The Park’s mission, Richman has said, is to preserve native species and ecosystems.

 TRNP’s mission is to manage for prevation of natural values and biodivesity. Tiger swallowtail on thistle Theodore Roosevelt NP ND.  Photo George Wuerthner

The cattle management within the Park relies on a 1970s plan, while the feral horse plan was adopted in 1978. The 1978 plan called for 35-60 horses. Today there are more than 200, well above the original plan.

The Park has tried to limit the number of horses through periodic roundups and even birth control. But the horses say the NPS are “efficient breeders.”

The NPS says that based on new science, and ecological insights, the removal of horses and domestic cattle should be the priority of park management.

A new cattle borne disease poses a risk to the park bison herd. Photo George Wuerthner 

A further issue is that TRNP is home to bison, and in 2022 a bacterial disease of cattle, Mycoplasma bovis, was discovered in the Park. Mycoplasma bovis poses a threat to the Park’s bison.

Three preliminary alternatives are under consideration by the NPS. Alternative A (No Action Alternative: continued herd management under the 1978 EA and 1970 Management Plan), Alternative B (Action Alternative: expedited reduction of herds to no livestock), and Alternative C (Proposed Action Alternative: phased reduction of herds to no livestock).

Bison at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Photo George Wuerthner 

The expedited alternative would eliminate all horses and cattle within two years. Part of the reason for the quick removal of livestock is the risk of disease transfer they pose to the park’s bison herds.

However, since releasing a plan draft, feral horse and cattle advocates have rallied to flood the NPS with letters denouncing the move.

HISTORY OF THEODORE ROOVELT NATIONAL PARK

Teddy Roosvelt cabin Theodore Roosevelt NP ND. Photo George Wuerthner

Theodore Roosevelt first came to ranch among the beautiful badlands along the Little Missouri River in  North Dakota in 1884 after his mother died from typhoid fever and within hours his wife, Alice, also died from kidney disease.

Roosevelt was distraught; some say, he went west seeking solace over the loss of his family.

Prairie flowers in Theordore Roosevelt National Park. Photo George Wuerthner 

He established two ranches—the Maltese Cross Ranch near Medora and the Elkhorn some 35 miles north of Medora. After the devastating winter of 1886-87 that killed tens of thousands of cattle on the northern plains, Roosevelt decided to get out of the ranching business and focus on politics. He sold his last interests in the Elkhorn Ranch in 1898.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park was first proposed in 1919 shortly after TR died to honor the former President. However, it went nowhere until Franklin Roosevelt proposed in 1942 to add the area to the national park system.

In 1945 North Dakota Congressman William Lemke introduced a bill for a Little Missouri Badlands. But, unfortunately, it failed to get President Truman’s signature. So Lemke tried again in 1947 and got a Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park managed mainly as a historical site.

Feral horses were present when the memorial Park was established in 1947.

The NPS mission is to preserve the natural environment. Little Missouri River, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND. Photo George Wuerthner 

In 1978, the area was upgraded to full national park status, and the NPS began to manage the site more for its natural values. The presence of exotic feral horses has never met the overriding principle of managing native species.

DO FERAL HORSES BELONG IN A NATIONAL PARK?

National Park Historian Robert Utley suggested that the horses have historical value and may be descendants of horses once bred by Sitting Bull and other native people.

A feral horse grazes in the Pryor Mountains of Montana. Photo George Wuerthner

Of course, all horses are descendants of domestic livestock, whether ridden by Roosevelt or Sitting Bull.

Feral horses are found on other national park units, such as Assateague Island National Seashore. And domestic cattle and horses are currently the subject of a controversial plan to maintain private farms within Point Reyes National Park. In addition, there are about 300,000 feral horses on the Bureau of Land Management and National Forest lands and state, private and tribal lands across the West.

Many scientists believe feral horses pose a threat to native ecosystem, plants and wildlife. However, feral horse advocates believe that domestic livestock pose a greater threat to the West’s ecosystems.

However, the national park service has a different mandate than these other federal land management agencies. As noted by the TRNP Superintendent, the Park Service’s mission is to preserve native species and ecosystems.

FERAL HORSES RELICTS OF SPANISH COLONIZATION

The cultural appropriation of the horse by Native Americans provided greater mobility, leading to more warfare, and the adoption of the bison hunting culture of the Great Plains. Photo George Wuerthner 

Horses are not native to North America and were introduced by the Spanish in 1519. Cultural appropriation by the tribes began in the 1600s. Horses reached tribes in the northern plains by 1750-1780, setting the era of mobile bison hunting tradition in motion. The adoption of the horse by Native Americans had both positive and negative influences for them. It also had severe consequences for bison herds, and tribal hunting for the hide trade may have contributed to the demise of the once vast bison herds.

This debate gets to the heart of the matter. Do we need to “preserve” domestic animals in our national parks?

Approximately 300,000 feral horses roam the West, do we need to have them in our national parks as well? Photo George Wuerthner 

Given that there are hundreds of thousands of feral horses, not to mention about 95 million domestic cattle in the United States, there is no need to keep either cattle or horses in any national park unit.

Kids view on prairie dog town Theodore Roosevelt NP ND. The NPS goal is to preserve native wildlife like bison and prairie dogs. Photo George Wuerthner 

I commend Superintendent Richman and the TRNP staff for having the courage to recommend removal of domestic animals from the park.

However, with the pressure exerted on the TRNP from North Dakota politicians, wild horse advocates, and the United Tribes of North Dakota who suggest feral horses are “sacred” animals,  I suspect the NPS will bow to the political influence.

TRNP livestock management plan will be open for public comment later this spring and summer when it comes out with a finalized proposal.

Pondoersa pine forests dominate the lower elevations of the Blue Mountain Ecoregion. Photo George Wuerthner

The Blue Mountains Complex of Oregon stretches east to west from the Snake River to the Cascades. The Blue Mountain Complex is made up of sub-ranges, including the Wallowa, Elkhorns, Strawberries, Aldrich, and Ochoco.

The Wallowa Mountains near Enterprise, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner 

These forests must be preserved for biodiversity, and carbon storage. Notwithstanding that the Eagle Cap Wilderness, Oregon’s largest protected area, lies within the complex, the Blue Mountains Complex still has some of the lowest percentages of designated wilderness or other protected landscape of any ecoregion in the state of Oregon.

Protected landscapes like wilderness preserve water quality, sustain biodiversity and are critical for carbon storage.

Trees larger than 21 inches only makes up 3% of the forests in eastern Oregon, but they account for nearly 50% of the above ground carbon 

Due to logging, clearing for agriculture, and other factors, researchers have found that only 3% of the trees in eastern Oregon exceed 21 inches. Yet this small percentage of the forests contains nearly 50% of the above-ground carbon storage in the region.

Furthermore, larger trees accumulate carbon at a more rapid rate than smaller trees, so maintaining as many large trees—either alive or even dead—in the forest ecosystem is critical to keeping carbon in the forest ecosystem.

In 1936 86% of the forests in the Blue Mountains were considered old growth. Pine Creek, Hells Canyon NRA. Photo George Wuerthner 

A 1936 inventory in the Blue Mountains (today’s Malheur, Ochoco, Umatilla, and Wallowa- Whitman National Forests) found that forests containing a significant proportion of ponderosa pine occupied about 80% of commercial forestlands. The great majority of pine forests consisted of old growth (86%). By the mid-1960s, however, the proportion of commercial forests…had dropped to 40%, primarily due to logging, a loss of half over a 30-year period.

Wenaha River, Wenaha Tucannon Wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner 

To protect large trees, in 1994, the Forest Service enacted the 21-inch policy, known as the Eastside Screens, which prohibits logging trees larger than 21 inches.

However, in recent years, the Forest Service, along with its collaborators, has recommended the elimination of the 21-inch rule. The Trump administration approved the modification of the Eastside Screens which would allow the logging old and mature trees throughout eastern Oregon. A lawsuit challenging the decision was filed by six conservation groups.

The Forest Service wants to log many of the old growth grand fir pictured here. Photo George Wuerthner 

In particular, the Forest Service wants to target grand fir for removal, even though the species accounts for the greatest carbon accumulations in eastern Oregon forests.

For a good analysis of why the 21-inch rule should be maintained, arguing that they are biocultural legacy, see this overview by Dominick Dellasalla and William Baker.

Old growth ponderosa pine along the Imnaha River, Wallowa Whitman National Forest, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner 

The Forest Service and its supporters suggest that eastern Oregon’s forests “need restoration”. Unfortunately, the main way they accomplish this restoration is with bulldozers, chainsaws and clearcuts in the name of wildfire prevention.

Research suggests that chainsaw medicine (logging) often enhances fire spread by opening up the forest for greater wind penetration and drying, both of which are major factors in large wildfires.

Some researchers question whether thinning and other “active forest management” are really effective to limit high severity blazes under extreme weather conditions.  As they note: “Policy and management have focused primarily on specified resilience approaches aimed at resistance to wildfire and restoration of areas burned by wildfire through fire suppression and fuels management. These strategies are inadequate to address a new era of western wildfires.”

Dellasalla and Baker suggest that: “Fear of megafires is driving forest management policies throughout the region that call for reducing tree density and removing large shade-tolerant firs thought to increase fire hazard, even though firs were historically common in Eastside mixed-conifer forests.”

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View of  Blue Mountains region from Monument Mountain Wilderness, Malheur National Forest. Photo George Wuerthner 

One of the issues of debate is the historical frequency and severity of wildfires in the dry forests of eastern Oregon. Some researchers suggest that frequent wildfires kept fuels low, forests more park-like and high severity fires were unusual. They usually advocate more chainsaw medicine (logging) to reduce forest densities.

A fire scar on old growth ponderosa pine, Lookout Mountain Proposed Wilderness. Ochoco National Forest. Some researchers argue that fire scar studies misrepresent the historical fire conditons.  Photo George Wuerthner 

By contrast, other researchers using Government Land Office survey reconstruction showed that only about 40% of the Blue Mts. had exclusively low-severity fire, with 43% mixed severity and 17% high severity where the majority of trees were killed.

Indeed, Dellasalla and Baker report the reliance of fire scar studies tends to misrepresent the historical fire conditions. As they note: “Limited fire-scar sampling (fire return intervals extrapolated from small unrepresentative stands to landscapes often without reconstructing fire severity) result in fire return intervals that are too short, and misrepresent the occurrence and ecological importance of mixed- and high-severity fires.”

Western larch, Glacier Mountain proposed wilderness addition, Strawberry Mountains, Malheur National Forest, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner

They go on to say: “This has led some researchers and the agency to falsely conclude that Eastside forests were predominately open park-like pine forests, when, in fact, fire regimes and forest structure and composition were much more complex.”

Another study came to similar conclusions: “These extensive montane forests are considered to be adapted to a low/moderate-severity fire regime that maintained stands of relatively old trees. However, there is increasing recognition from landscape-scale assessments that, prior to any significant effects of fire exclusion, fires and forest structure were more variable in these forests. Biota in these forests are also dependent on the resources made available by higher-severity fire.”

Map showing Oregon forests and carbon priority rank. Much of the Blue Mountains is ranked medium to high. 

In a recent paper, Oregon State Scientists and colleagues argue that protecting forests is the lowest-cost climate mitigation option to reverse climate change.

Oregon has the highest percentage of forested landscape of any western state, yet has the dubious distinction of the lowest proportion of protected forest ecosystems.

Old growth ponderosa pine in Joseph Canyon roadless area. Such places should be designated wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner 

Currently, only 7% of Oregon’s forests have permanent protection from logging, grazing, and other extractive industries.

The wood products industry (green) accounts for 35% of the carbon emissions in Oregon. 

There is good evidence that an inverse relationship exists between “forest management” and carbon storage with greater carbon losses due to logging and thinning, and a consequent increase in carbon emissions. Indeed, the greatest contribution of Greenhouse Gas emissions in Oregon comes from the wood products industry.

This brings me back to the Blue Mountains ecoregion. It is Oregon’s largest sub-region and contains some of the most carbon-dense forests on the planet. In addition, the ecoregion is a critical wildlife corridor that connects the Cascades to the Rockies.

Silvies River proposed wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner 

Unfortunately, in the Blue Mountains Ecoregion, wilderness areas are typically small, with large distances between each protected area. There is a great need for a well-designed, intergraded system of new wilderness reserves with connected corridors. Currently, approximately 2.2 million acres (about the size of Yellowstone National Park) need protection as wilderness, wild and scenic rivers, and other designations that can improve connectivity and ecosystem function across the Blue Mountains.

The North Fork of the Malheur River is one of the many roadless lands in the Blue Mountains that should be preserved as designated wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner 

One of the current pieces of legislation that would protect important aspects of the Blue Mountain ecoregion is the Oregon Rivers Democracy Act introduced by Oregon Senators Merkley and Wyden. Writing these senators to support their legislation would help ensure some of this spectacular region gains some permenant preservation. Permanent preservation of all roadless lands in the Blue Mountains and protection of corridors needs to be implemented across all eastside forests.

Canyon by Pot Creek, Blue Mountains, Umatilla National Forest, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner 

To learn more about the potential wilderness in the Blue Mountains, a good overview is found in Andy Kerr’s Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness. Groups working to protect the region include the Nez Perce tribe, the Blue Mountain Biodiversity Project, Greater Hells Canyon Council, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, and Oregon Wild.

A tribal warden caught on camera shooting bison from pick up truck. The bison are being cut down while running to reach the safety of Yellowstone Park.  Photo Bonnie Lynn

As I write this essay, sources I trust estimate that at least 600 of America’s magnificent national animal, the bison, have been slaughtered near Gardiner, Montana by tribal members. These people are butchering our national treasure in the name of “cultural” preservation. But let’s not dress it up. What is occurring is a travesty. It harms the evolution of bison and their dignity as an animal. It also does not reflect well on the Indian people or their supporters.

Heavy snow and cold in Yellowstone National Park are pushing bison out of the park seeking snow-free forage. I was in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley a few weeks ago. I typically encounter hundreds, if not thousands, of bison in the winter. However, this year I saw just a few small herds. However, thousands of bison were congregating in the lower elevations near Gardiner.

Loading bison heads on pickup. Photo George Wuerthner 

Unfortunately, almost as soon as they step over the invisible line that marks the Park boundary, they run into the lead wall (bullets) of tribal hunters.

These animals are used to tourists “shooting” them with cameras, not people blowing them away with rifles. As a result, entire family groups are being eradicated.

To see videos of this slaughter, go to Yellowstone Voices and watch the annual carnage.

Here’s a link to a video showing the “hunt.” https://yellowstonevoices.org/get-facts. In particular, watch minutes 4 and 7-9. Ask yourself if you believe this butchery represents anything worth supporting.

I hasten to add that many tribal members are uncomfortable with the spectacle of their people shooting bison from trucks or surrounding herds and cutting them down. But they are also unwilling to risk censure within their tribes by openly criticizing the slaughter of Yellowstone bison.

The worse part about this senseless bloodbath is the culpability of so-called “conservation groups.” Some organizations like the Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC) actively support the tribal killing of bison—indeed, they use the term “harvest” to characterize this bison holocaust.

BFC correctly identifies that the livestock industry as utimately the biggest problem for bison restoration. However, this should not obsure the fact that the unnecessary destruction of Yellowstone animals by Indian shooters harms bison restoration and genetics.

I used to be a big supporter of the BFC, but once they put human desires ahead of the preservation and sanctity of wild bison, I left the group. I encourage others to do the same.

Other groups like the Greater Yellowstone Coalition,  Sierra Club, and National Parks and Conservation Association, among others, implicitly give their approval through their silence in the face of the carnage.

The BFC even uses the term “hunt” and “harvest” when discussing Indian slaughter, as if the tribes are doing nothing more than mowing down some corn. I will not legitimate the massacre using these innocuous-sounding words.

All of these groups now put human desires and tribal interests ahead of the survival of bison, evolutionary processes, and ecosystem health. In the age of the WOKE, these groups have become human-centric instead of bio-centric to the detriment of the bison and the survival of wildness.

Bison heads in pick up truck. Photo George Wuerthner

There is no legitimate reason to kill these animals. If needless killing is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

ENDLESS SLAUGHTER

Bison have been regularly killed near the park border for nearly 30 years. The Park Service has participated in this disgraceful butchery through a capture and slaughter program, which it admits is “specific interests of the livestock industry.”

To the N.P.S. defense, this has been in response to orders from the very top of the agency to comply with the wishes of Montana politicians. Park rangers and biologists involved in the capture and slaughter express dismay and opposition to the program. Recently Park Superintendent Cam Sholly announced the N.P.S. is preparing an E.I.S. that will cease the capture and slaughter program. Secretary of Interior Deb Haalang could halt the slaughter.

Tribal hunting of bison began in 2012 with the support of state and federal agencies, who viewed it as a “management tool.”

Bison hoisted with a crane to faclitate butching. Photo George Wuerthner

But the tribal kill is totally a volunteer decision. No one has to shoot bison. There is no gun held to the head of tribal members.

The so-called hunt has never undergone any National Environmental Review Analysis (NEPA), even though it occurs on federal lands. This link to the Yellowstone Voices trailer gives a brief background.

IMPACTS MIGRATIONS

There appears to be no end to the slaughter, which discourages the movement of bison from the park. Bottling up bison in the park by systematic slaughter at the park border prevents the migration of these animals to other public and private lands where they can sustain themselves.

Unlike other wildlife, however, when bison leave Yellowstone National Park and migrate into Montana, they are killed. We do not kill wolves, grizzlies, elk, bighorn sheep, pronghorn, or any other wildlife simply because they leave the park sanctuary. Only bison are treated this way, and the cruel fact is that some of them are being exterminated by tribal people who claim that bison are their “brothers.”

I would hate to be a relative of these folks if the way they show fondness for a relative is to kill them.

WHY ARE RANCHERS OPPOSED TO BISON ON PUBLIC LANDS?

The origin of this massacre has to do with federal disease policy. Brucellosis is a bacterial disease that is occasionally found in livestock. It causes the abortion of calves and thus is a financial cost to any producer whose herd has the disease. In addition, ranchers selling cattle from “surveillance zones” must test their animals for the presence of the disease before shipment. And though there is a brucellosis vaccine, it is not 100% effective, nor is inoculation required.

However, ranchers oppose the bison movement outside Yellowstone mainly because of forage competition. Bison eat essentially the same plants as cattle. Therefore, if bison herds were to get established on public lands outside of the park, ranchers believe the public would demand that bison get the majority of forage now consumed by their cows. (I think they are correct).

So to nip this in the bud, the livestock industry opposes establishing bison herds on public lands in Montana. Right now, the livestock industry is fighting the American Prairie Reserve, which owns bison and large parcels of land along the Missouri River from grazing public lands adjacent to their private holdings.

The only documented wildlife to livestock transmission has been from elk. Yet elk are not slaughtered when they attempt to leave Yellowstone. Photo George Wuerthner 

Bison can allegedly spread the disease to domestic cattle, but thus far, there is not one documented case of bison-to-cattle transmission. The irony of this policy is that other wildlife can also carry brucellosis bacteria, including wolves, grizzlies, and elk. Every ranch infected by wildlife is the result of elk, not bison. Yet we don’t kill elk just for walking out of Yellowstone Park.

Tribal slaughter is doing the dirty work of the livestock industry keeping bison from moving to other public lands. If tribal bullets weren’t fencing in Yellowstone Park bison, the Dept of Livestock might be shooting the animals.

ORIGINS OF BRUCELLOSIS FREE CAMPAIGN

Brucellosis can also infect humans, termed Undulant fever, due to the rise and fall of fever in infected individuals. In the days before milk pasteurization, many people got the disease from drinking milk from infected cows. People consuming raw milk today also risk contracting the disease. Symptoms of brucellosis can include fever, chills, sweating, headache, low appetite, fatigue, and joint or muscle pain.

To reduce human health risks, the U.S. government began a campaign in the 1930s to eliminate brucellosis from all U.S. cattle herds. As a result, today, only those handling livestock, like veterinarians, get the disease. Nevertheless, it remains U.S. policy to make America brucellosis-free. One of the ways this is done is by killing the members of any infected cattle herds before they can spread the disease to other livestock.

Montana state officials and the Department of Livestock have banned transport of Yellowstone bison in the state. The only place bision  except for a small area adjacent to the park. Indeed, it is illegal even to transport live Yellowstone bison in the state, making it nearly impossible to transplant captured bison to start other herds.

There are a few exceptions to this total ban. For example, there are “bison safe” zones on the Custer Gallatin National Forest immediately adjacent to Yellowstone National Park where bison are free to wander—if they can get there after running the Indian lead bullet gantlet.

Some private landowners welcome bison on their property–but bison must run a gantlet of bullets to get there. Photo George Wuerthner 

And some private landowners, such as the Church Universal And Triumphant (CUT), have agreed to keep cattle off on their property after receiving a significant payment.

Over the years, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has loosened up the draconian response of total herd elimination. However, most ranchers still support bottling up bison inside Yellowstone Park.

Bald and golden eagles suffer from lead poisoning when they feed on gut piles. As many as 400 gut piles have been allengely left by tribal hunters. Photo Stephanie Seay

Bison killers regularly leave gut piles and have brucellosis that can infect other animals, including elk. These gut piles also contain lead bullets. As a result, other wildlife, including golden and bald eagles, ravens, and other scavengers in the ecosystem, suffer from lead poisoning typically obtained from gut piles. The gut piles also draw in grizzlies and wolves, who are also vulnerable to poaching and lead poisoning.

YELLOWSTONE BISON UNIQUE

Although there are more than a half million bison in herds in private, tribal, and public herds scattered around the West, most have some intergrade of cattle genes.

But the biggest difference is that all these herds are treated as domesticated animals. They are selectively slaughtered. They are often fed in winter. They are inoculated against the disease. They live without serious predators like grizzly bears and wolves. Then, they are moved and herded by cowboys.

By contrast, the bison in Yellowstone is the country’s longest continuously wild herd. During the early years, when there were no more than 25 bison in the park, they were fed in winter and protected from poachers (not predators). Yellowstone’s bison are the last evolutionary unit of the wild bison that roamed the western U.S.

The Yellowstone bison are also unique in that they are being reviewed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for consideration as a “Distinct Population Segment” worthy of protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Petitioners who requested the review “presented credible information to indicate potential threats to the (bison) from reductions of its range due to loss of migration routes, lack of tolerance for bison outside Yellowstone National Park, and habitat loss,” the agency stated in its findings last summer.

PRESERVATION OF WILDNESS

Wild bison are not the same as cattle. They have many evolutionary adaptations that should be preserved.

Biologist Jim Bailey has written an entire book American Plains Bison Rewilding An Icon on the importance of preserving the wildness of bison.

Yellowstone bison have gone through numerous genetic bottlenecks. Continued killnig of the bison harms their genetic fitness. Photo George Wuerthner 

The Yellowstone bison are descendants of 25 bison. This founder population means there was already a genetic bottleneck at the origins of the park herd. Since bison are tournament species where dominant bulls do most of the breeding, the genetic diversity is further restricted.

And for the past decades, there has been an annual culling of as much as a quarter to a fifth of the Yellowstone Park herd in some years. This further erodes the genetic diversity of the animals.

With all small populations, genetic drift can be problematic. Any maladaptive genetic trait may soon be eliminated in larger populations, but congenital abnormalities can spread rapidly through the entire population when you have smaller herds.

The Montana Wild Bison Restoration Coalition has a website that details bison wildness and its preservation.

DESTROYING EVOLUTION

The groups that support the tribal slaughter of bison ignore science. Some WOKE groups like the Buffalo Field Campaign even claim opposition to tribal slaughter by anyone is colonialism.

The Buffalo Field Campaign and other so-called conservation groups ignore the culpability of Indian people in the initial extirpation of bison in the West. Indeed, many of the tribes now slaughtering the Yellowstone bison were originally involved in the overhunting of bison that led to their demise across the West.

There are numerous evolutionary consequences to human-induced mortality.

The annual slaughter of bison attempting to leave Yellowstone Park harms bison evolution and wildness.

First, human bison killers do not select the same individuals that natural predators would take down. It’s a truism of biology that predators like wolves tend to choose the less fit individuals, usually calves and older animals. Human killers make no such distinctions.

Finding a dead bison is like winning the lottery for many species. Photo George Wuerthner 

Second, the Indian removal of bison from park populations harms other wildlife. Under natural conditions, a certain number of bison would die from predation, starvation, or whatever. Many animals, from coyotes to red foxes to ravens, scavenge these carcasses. Finding a dead bison is like winning the lottery for a sow grizzly bear emerging from hibernation with hungry cubs.

Removal of bison from the ecosystem could harm grizzly recovery. Photo George Wuerthner 

I could make a good case that Indian hunting harms the ecosystem’s grizzly recovery. Grizzlies who find carcasses may survive in better health than without bison carcasses. Plus, grizzlies are one of the few animals that can and do occasionally kill a live bison. But even as strong as grizzlies are, a healthy bison is still a problematic prey to bring down. So like all predators, grizzlies (and wolves) look for less than-fit animals like older animals starving to death.

When tribal members kill and remove bison from the herds, they are effectively reducing bison numbers and thus competition for forage and space. All these results make it less likely that a bison will be weakened and available as prey for predators like wolves and grizzlies.

Migratory behavior is the bison main adaptation to variable environmental conditions. Tribal hunting is selecting against migratory behavior.  Photo George Wuerthner 

Migration is one of the leading behavioral traits of bison that has sustained their herds since “time immemorial.”

Mobility is the bison’s primary strategy for survival. Moving frequently to find favorable grazing range and avoid predators, drought, or heavy snow has been the most notable feature of bison behavior for thousands of years.

But the bison most likely killed by tribal bison killers have the most significant migratory tendencies. Indeed, excessive human predation has been shown to alter elk habitat use, so it is reasonable to assume this is the case with bison.

Some scientists suggest lack of migration by Park bison is leading to habitat destruction in the Lamar Valley. Certainly, discouraging bison migration or total elimination of any bison with a migratory tendency by killing migrants is part of the problem.

The position of the front legs at the shoulder creates a fulcrum that allows bison to lope long distances. Photo George Wuerthner 

In response to migratory behavior, the bison has evolved with a hump near the shoulders that acts like a fulcrum that allows the bison to gallop effortfully for long distances.

Wild bison have also developed the ability to survive harsh winters by utilizing forage that has less nutrition than what a cow can survive upon.

Bison can survive harsh winter condition better than domestic cattle. Photo George Wuerthner 

Bison also use their massive heads like snow shovels, swinging them back and forth to expose grass hidden beneath.

Another evolutionary trait is the aggressive nature of bison bulls, which protects the herds. I have watched wolves attacking bison and running away as soon as one of the massive bulls ponderously starts marching in their direction. But the killing of bison bulls by the Indians (in part to get trophy heads) selects against bulls that attempt to protect the herd.

The practice of killing entire family groups is yet another evolutionary problem. Bison are herd animals for a good reason. The herd works together to assist the survival of all herd members. Much of their “cultural knowledge,” like where to migrate or how to defend against wolves, is learned by being part of the herd.

Recently it was reported that the killing of 26 park wolves had led to the social disintegration of the remaining wolf packs. Packs suffering high human mortality fell apart and were less able to hold on to their territories. And they were less able to take down large, difficult prey like bison.

Such social impacts also affect bison.

Just as the pack is the biological unit of the wolf, the herd is the natural unit of the bison. Human morality can harm social behavior.

Herd works to protect all members. With a herd, you have more eyes to spot predators. And more animals to defend against predators. It takes a larger wolf pack to take down bison, especially bison in large herds, successfully.

I’ve watched bison repeatably drive off wolf attacks, partly because a larger herd presents multiple defenders that would not exist if the animals were alone or in a small group. So breaking up family units increase bison’s vulnerability to predators.

Bison cow leading calves across the Madison River. Photo George Wuerthner 

For instance, I once watched a herd of bison crossing the flooded Madison River in Yellowstone National Park. The lead cow bison chose a place to swim the river and was followed by other cows. Then some newborn calves attempted to cross the flood. They were immediately swept downstream. A few of the female bison swam to their rescue.

An adult bison would swim upstream of the calf to break the current, while another would swim downstream to block it from being carried further downstream. And yet another swam behind the calf; I presumed to reassure it—”come on, you can do it.” The adults would stick with the calf until it scrambled safely up the river bank to dry land.

Then they would swim back across the river and help the next calf get across the stream.

Bison cow assisted calf in crossing flooded Madison River. Photo George Wuerthner 

I watch the herd members assist a half dozen calves to cross the river using this method. Unfortunately, this cultural knowledge is lost when bison or other animals are indiscriminately killed.

IMPACTS ON LOCAL RESIDENTS

View of trucks and horse trailers just outside of a private resident. Photo Bonnie Lynn

Some houses lie right across the road from Beatie Gulch and the location of tribal killing. Nearby residents, some of whom operate vacation rental facilities, fear for their own lives and visitors. At the very least, the road is often blocked with trucks and horse trailers.

TRIBAL JUSTIFICATIONS

The goals of Tribes for reservation bison restoration include nutrition and economic development. Management of tribal bison herds (as well as nearly all other private bison herds) leads to domestication of the animals. The goal of the Gardiner basin bison kill is maintaining and enhancing treaty rights to hunt off of reservation also degrades bison wildness. Unfortunately, all these goals produce management for production and human values to the detriment of bison wildness.

Indians are not only killing bison; they are killing evolution (as is the capture and slaughter practices of NPS and Dept of Livestock).

The Indians shooting bison suggest they are saving their culture. I might have more respect for their cultural goals if I saw hunters sneaking up on foot with bows and arrows and spears that they had made and later gutted the animal with an obsidian knife.

But, of course, the only part of their culture they are practicing is slaughtering bison.

 Modern weapons, pickup trucks and other cultural acculturation makes a mockery of cultural preservation. Photo Bonnie Lynn

The tribes practice cultural acculturation. They shoot with high-powered rifles, chase bison towards hunters with motorized vehicles, transport the dead animals in pickups and horse trailers, and use binoculars and spotting scopes. I have even seen drones used to spot animals that may be hidden in nooks and crannies.

Supporters of tribal killing say what they are doing is perfectly legal. It may be legal, but so was segregation in the south, the on-going annual wolf slaughter in Montana and Idaho, blowing away prairie dogs to see the “red mist,” running down coyotes in snowmobiles, and many other lawful practices. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.

There are other opportunities to kill bison on private ranches, and tribal lands without sacrifising the unique Yellowstone bison. Photo George Wuerthner

Another canard given by tribal supporters is that the bison killers are “feeding” their families. However, anyone who has witnessed the fancy expensive pickup trucks, ATVS, horse trailers, and other equipment used to transport the bison, much less the expense of staying in hotels, eating at restaurants and buying ammunition, etc., for the slaughter would find far more money is spent on hunting equipment than any savings provided by bison meat.

Furthermore, there are other opportunities to kill bison on tribal lands, private ranches, and so forth that do not involve killing one of the last wild bison herds in the country.

The tribes insist that treaty rights give them authority to hunt bison and other wildlife on “ceded lands” which lie outside of their reservations. However, some opponents of the bison slaughter assert that none of these tribes have “ceded lands” that include the Upper Yellowstone by Gardiner. This would mean that they have no authority to hunt the bison. (I leave that for others to argue-but merely note that there is a dispute about “ceded lands”. ) Here is the 1855 and 1863 Treaty with the Nez Perce. Here is the 1855 Treaty with the Umatila tribe as examples of treaty wording.

The map shows the Nez Perce Reservation in dark orange, and the “ceded” lands (light orange) that are off reservation lands, primarily Nez Perce/Clearwater National Forest that is available to off reservation hunting. Obviously this does not include Yellowstone National Park or anyplace near it. 

Tribal members who believe that animals should be valued primarily for their usefulness to humans, may conclude that humans should have a legal right to take the life of an animal for personal religious gratification or in this case treaty rights.

However, human beings who believe that animals have inherent rights such as an interest in continued survival, will conclude that humans have no right to subordinate the animal’s rights to human religious desires.

At one time, human sacrifices were justified for religious purposes. As most societies came to believe that all humans have intrinsic rights, human sacrifice ceased.

With the growing recognition of the intrinsic value of human beings, many relationships based upon utilitarian concepts, such as slavery, were relinquished.

There is a growing perspective that all life has intrinsic worth that must be respected. Photo George Wuerthner 

Today there is a growing philosophy that all life has some intrinsic worth, and perhaps it is time to acknowledge that Yellowstone bison have rights too.

We have had an evolution in our attitude towards killing wildlife for religious reasons. In theory, it is illegal for tribal members to kill migratory birds and Endangered Species—at least without special permits.

BE A VOICE FOR THE BISON

First stop donating money to all the organizations that support the tribal bison slaughter either explicitly like Buffalo Field Campaign or implicitly by their silence like the Greater Yellowstone  Coalition. There are other conservation groups who have previously voiced support for free-roaming bison, but thus far refuse to condemn the tribal bison slaughter. If you are a member of one of these organizations, please voice your concern. Silence is no option.

Next encourage Sec of Interior Haaland to terminate all NPS capture and slaughter of animals near the park boundary. Public outrage does work.

In addition, send messages to Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and demand that they prohibit tribal hunting of bison on federal lands. I suspect the tribes would object, claiming sovereignty, but ultimately, the tribes are supervenient to the federal government.

Although most of the Forest Service land immediately north of Yellowstone’s north entrance by Gardiner has no active livestock grazing allotments, there are active grazing allotments north of Corwin Springs, Tom Miner Basin, and  the Six Mile Allotments near the Dome Mountain WIldlife Management Area. Supporting the Voluntary Grazing Allotment Retirement passage in Congress could lead to closure of these allotments and the excuse they provide the state of Montana and ranchers use to justify keeping bison bottled up near Yellowstone National Park.

The bison have no alternative but to leave the park to obtain forage in deep snow years; people don’t need to kill bison. All people, including tribal people, have alternatives.

You can also support Roam Free Nation, the only organization working specifically on protecting wild Yellowstone Bison. Yellowstone Voices documents the slaughter and seeks donations to pay for their videos.

The other organizations to support are the Montana Wild Bison Restoration Coalition, which aims to establish a wild bison herd at the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Montana, and the Gallatin Wildlife Association, which protects Yellowstone bison and other wildlife migration opportunities.

The Gallatin Range south of Bozeman deserves to be preserved as wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner

Recently I skied into a Forest Service cabin in the Gallatin Range. Looking out on a meadow with glaciated peaks beyond gave me a chance to reflect on how lucky I was to have public lands available to enjoy.

I’ve been fortunate to explore much of the West’s natural landscapes, including every national park and preserve in Alaska. Yet, none of these experiences matches my love for Yellowstone and the surrounding Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

What is amazing to contemplate is how the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is one of the last functioning temperate zone landscapes where natural evolutionary and ecological processes still dominate a portion of the landscape. Yellowstone, for instance, still has all the larger mammals, including predators that have existed in the park region for thousands of years.

It is worth noting that this did not occur by accident. It was because there was a concerted effort by citizens across the country to recognize that this landscape was extraordinary and deserved protection. I am grateful for their efforts to leave some parts of the West close to their natural condition.

The original rationale for preserving Yellowstone National Park was to protect the huge collection of thermal features like geyser basins. Photo George Wuerthner

The original reason for setting Yellowstone aside in 1872 as a national park was motivated by the amazing concentration of thermal features (about 10,000).

Think about how unique this decision was. In the 1870s, the United States was dominated by the Manifest Destiny perspective that encouraged settlement and development. As a result, we had the Homestead Act, the Timber and Stone Act, the Mining Law of 1872, Railroad Land Grants, and other legislation designed to expand human presence and exploitation of the land.

And then we created Yellowstone, where we said, at least, we accept limits. Here we will not allow the on-going rush toward domestication of the West to occur. We drew a line in the sand and said we will do things differently here.

Against this backdrop of unrestricted development, the National Park Service has done an excellent job protecting Yellowstone’s unique features.

However, any analysis of the cumulative impacts of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem integrity would conclude that there is an on-going erosion of the land’s ecological function and wildness.

Places like the Upper Green River below the Wind River Range in Wyoming sufffers from livestock grazing. Dozens of grizzlies have been killed here over the years to protect private livestock grazing on these public lands. Photo George Wuerthner 

Degradation of the landscape from logging, roading, mining, and livestock grazing on other public lands is now joined by increased development of private grounds and recreational pressures.

I don’t blame people for wanting to live here.

But with this decision to live near a world-renowned ecosystem comes a responsibility to minimize personal and collective impact, or these superlative ecological values that make this area attractive will eventually become no better than everywhere else.

Land use planning and zoning is an anathema to many residents, but if you want to see elk and grizzlies into the future, we must avoid new housing tracts in THEIR backyards.

The concentration of housing in urban areas can reduce, though not eliminate, human impacts on wildlife, water, and natural processes.

We need to identify and protect corridors for the free movement of wildlife across the landscape.

The Buffalohorn drainage in the Gallatin Range immediately north of Yellowstone’s borders is one of the many areas in the ecosystem that deserve protection as wilderness or an expanded Yellowstone National Park. Photo George Wuerthner 

To the greatest degree possible, we must preserve all the remaining natural public lands surrounding Yellowstone. Therefore, places like the Gallatin Range, Lionhead, Crazy Mountains, Pryor Mountains, Gravelly Range, and other Custer Gallatin National Forest lands should be preserved as wilderness.

What we need is a Greater Yellowstone National Park.

One of the highest values we have collectively learned from creating national parks and other protected landscapes is that they work to preserve biodiversity, functioning ecosystems, and beauty.

There is a less tangible benefit as well. Wilderness and parks teach restraint and respect for others besides ourselves. In preserving places like Yellowstone, we are saying humans are obligated to give some attention to the plight of grizzly bears, bison, elk, trout, and a thousand other creatures and plants with whom we share the planet.

At some point, we must adopt limits. And parks and wilderness help us to accept limitations.

Bison migrating to snow-free grounds outside of Yellowstone Park. Such evolutionary processes as wildlife migration need to preserve. Photo George Wuerthner 

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is, in effect, the land of hope. If we can figure out a way to live here without eroding the values that draw us to this place, it will be a lesson we can transfer to the rest of the planet. And that is a lesson we desperately need.

With the cultural appropriation of the horse, Indians became effective predators of the West’s bison herds.

INTRODUCTION

It’s often repeated over and over that commercial hunting by white sharp shooters led to the demise of the large western bison herds.

However, there is plenty of evidence that Indian bison hunting led to the demise of the great bison herds and a decline in large mammals elsewhere. A similar decrease in bison occurred in Canada, with herds extirpated by the 1870s.

However, some of the best evidence for Indian extirpation can be found in Southeast Idaho and adjacent regions where by 1840 bison were extirpated. This was long before there was any significant white settlement or commercial bison hunting.

What happened?

Commercial hide hunting in the 1870s was the final nail in the coffin. Still, by that time, bison numbers were already diminished and even extirpated from many areas where they were once abundant just a few decades earlier.

A 1999 New York Times article reported a short overview of bison’s decline. For a more in-depth review, see my piece Indian Culpability in Bison Demise.

The idea that Indian hunting contributed to substantial bison decline is reiterated and documented by other authors like historian Dan Flores in his book American Serengeti who alludes to the decline of bison well before the 1870s bison hide hunting era.

Various other authors also noted the early destruction of bison. These include the following authors: American Plains Bison Rewilding an Icon, Jim Bailey, Andrew Isenberg’s The Destruction of the Bison, Douglas Branch The Hunting of the Buffalo, and Allen Asaphi History of the American Bison all provide background on the bison decline.

There were several factors contributing to bison decline, including climate change. The Little Ice Age ended in the 1800s, which resulted in drier conditions across the West. The resulting decrease in moisture led to a reduction in grass production and, thus, bison carrying capacity.

At least one author speculates that diseases introduced from domestic livestock in Texas cattle drives contributed to bison decline, but this was again late in the game, long after bison were already extirpated from numerous parts of their former range. .

Barbour notes in his book that bison decline was already being noted by the 1830s which is long before either commercial hide hunting or Texas cattle drives. He quotes Captain Raynolds, who had done a huge circuit of the prime bison grounds in the northern Plains between 1859-1860 lamented that the bison would be extinct in a generation.

HOW THE HORSE CHANGED INDIAN CULTURE

By the 1750s most plains tribes had horses and adopted a mobile bison hunting lifeway. Charlie Russell painting. 

However, perhaps the most crucial factor concerning the tribal contribution to bison decline was the introduction of the horse. By the 1750s, most tribes in the northern Rockies and northern Great Plains had acquired Spanish horses either through trade or by stealing them from other tribes.

With the adoption of the mobile horse lifestyle, many tribes converged on the plains to hunt bison. Despite the assertions that these tribes had lived in their present location since “time immemorial,” nearly all Native American tribes associated with the Great Plains, are recent immigrants from other parts of North America.

The Cheyenne, in the 1600s lived near the Great Lakes, drifted westward, and were fully mobile bison hunters by the 1800s when they colonized a portion of the Wyoming plains. Similarly, the Crow had origins in Ohio but, over time, were living as farmers along the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. The Shoshone drifted northwards from Mexico to occupy Idaho and adjacent parts of Wyoming and Montana. The Blackfeet originated somewhere on the eastern part of Canada and were living on the prairies of Saskatchewan by the 1700s. The Comanche, an off-shoot of the Shoshone, moved southwards from Wyoming to occur Texas, Oklahoma and adjacent regions.

Once these tribes obtained horses, they gave up the sedentary lifestyle for bison hunting and moved into the Lower Yellowstone River Valley and adjacent Big Horn Basin. Other tribes, including the Arapaho, Sioux, Blackfeet, and Gros Ventre, all adopted the typical plains Indian bison hunting culture on the northern Great Plains to hunt bison.

The Nez Perce, who resided in the Columbia Basin of Oregon and Washington, made annual trips across the Bitterroot Mountains to hunt bison. The Flathead, Pend d Oreille, Shoshone, Bannock, and Ute from the Intermountain West, also hunted bison locally in Southeast Idaho and later on the plains.

At one point, hundreds of thousands of tribal people converged on the Great Plains and surrounding bison ranges to engage in bison hunting.

Map from William Hornaday in 1889 showing the gradual decline in the distribution of bison in North America. The red line represents the maximum range of bison, and the concentric green lines mark the gradual range shrinkage over time. 

Although Lewis and Clark reported large herds of bison on their journey up the Missouri River in 1805, once beyond the Three Forks of the Missouri, near the town of the same name in Montana, they did not encounter another bison. From that point on, there were no more bison on their journey west to the Pacific Ocean, including in the Upper Salmon River of Idaho or Bitterroot Valley of Montana. There are various theories on why bison were not found further West, but suffice to say that in historic times, bison were primarily found on the Great Plains, and in a few larger valleys just west of the Continental Divide in Southwest Montana, Southeast Idaho, western Wyoming and northern Utah.

THE FUR TRADE IN BISON HIDES

Fort Union at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers became a major focus of the Indian bison hide trade due to the fact that the heavy bison hides could be easily transported downstream on boats. Karl Bodmer painting.

Bison decline was noted by some traders along the Missouri River as early as 1800. Prince Maximilian, who visited Fort Union in 1834 at the junction of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, noted: “Wild beasts and other animals whose skins are valuable in the fur trade, have already diminished greatly in number along the river, and it is said that in another ten years, the fur trade will be very inconsiderable.”  He says: “There is a park ten miles from Fort Union where I was told there were great numbers of the bones of these animals (bison). On such occasions, the Indians sometimes kill 700 or 800 buffaloes.”

The number of bison hides shipped east annually from trading posts throughout the plains was enormous.

For example, between 1874 and 1877, between 80,000 to 100,000 buffalo robes were shipped from Fort Benton in Montana annually, with 12,000 hides were contributed by the Blackfeet tribe alone. This was a period when the northern plains were still in control of the Indians, with only a few white traders living among them.

HOW THE HORSE TRANSFORMED INDIAN BISON HUNTING

The acquisition of the horse transformed Indian society. The horse increased mobility and hunting efficiency. The Shoshone, Nez Perce, Flathead, and Bannock tribes were among the first to obtain horses which were obtained originally from Spanish settlements in New Mexico. By 1720 these tribes had horses. Other tribes on the northern plains did not receive the horse until the late 1700s. Lewis and Clark noted Spanish bridles on the horses of the Shoshone Indians they met near Lemhi Pass on the Idaho-Montana border.

Map showing the spread of horses northward with the earliest acquisition by the Shoshone, Flathead, Bannock and Nez Perce in the early 1700s. 

Where formally, Indians killed bison by luck when the stars lined up right for them to push them over a cliff or when deep snow mired the bison so hunters could approach them to kill them, but bison under attack from hunters usually ran away.

This evolutionary predator avoidance strategy worked when human hunters were on foot but failed miserably when hunters were mounted on a horse that could outrun the bison.

Prior to the introduction of the horse, Indian bison hunting required special circumstances for success. Driving them over cliffs or creeping up close enough to kill them with bows and arrows limited the number of animals that could be effectively slaughtered. George Catlin painting. 

In essence, mounted hunters were a new and effective bison predator. This new predator situation lasted only about a century, from the late 1700s to 1870s, however, bison did not have time to evolve new predator avoidance strategies before they were extinct.

Compounding the new ability of humans to kill bison, Indians preferred to kill cow bison, whose meat was tastier and whose hides were softer and easier to tan. Thus, selective hunting of cow bison disproportionally removed a significant portion of the reproductive segment of the population. As modern wildlife managers know, if you want to reduce the overall population of any game animal, kill the females.

Hundreds of thousands of Indians lived or hunted bison on the plains. It is estimated they needed 20-25 bison per person for teepees, food, and other personal needs.

Bison were killed for food, shelter (teepees) winter bedding, and many other purposes. One estimate is that each individal Indian consumed 20-25 bison annually for these purpoes. Thus across the plains millions of bison were killed for direct Indian consumption and this does not count the bison wounded or simply killed and left where they died.

Bison was not only the principal food item for many tribes, but by the 1800s, bison hides had become a valuable trade item that enabled Indians to obtain goods that they desired and, in most cases, could not produce themselves like metal pots, knives, axes, wool blankets, guns and ammunition, and brightly colored cloth.

Bison hides were also traded among the tribes for horses, even to purchase a slave or wife. In essence, bison hides became the currency of the plains tribes.

Guns and ammo because necessary for survival in the numerous wars between tribes. Warfare was central to many Plains Indian cultures and was the primary way young males achieved stature in the group. In addition, guns were essential for fighting enemy tribes and for the acquisition of slaves that often were traded for other necessities of life.

RIVER TRANSPORT BY STEAMBOAT ACCELERATED BISON HIDE HUNTING

Steamboats were able to assend the Missouri River by 1832, revolutionizing the hide trade because they could economically transport tens of thousands of hides. 

Geography played a role in the hide market. Bison hides were heavy and could not be transported readily by canoe, as was the standard means of travel in the Canadian fur trade. But with the coming of trading posts along rivers of the plains like the Missouri, Arkansas, and Platte, hides could be moved by water to downstream markets. Trade in bison hides increased after steam-powered boats successfully ascended the rivers starting in the 1830s.

By the 1870s, trade in bison hides increased dramatically with the coming of the railroads that permitted even larger shipments of hides to eastern markets.

Also, in the aftermath of the Civil War (1865), many former soldiers had no jobs or homes to return to and sought a new life in the West. Their sharpshooting skills developed during the Civil War made them effective bison hunters on the plains.

After the Civil War, displaced soldiers, and others skilled in sharp shooting, invaded the Great Plains to kill bison for their hides.

OPPOSITION TO BISON COMMERCIAL SLAUGHTER 

It should be noted that it becomes “common knowledge” that destroying bison herds was a government-authorized activity. Indeed, some military leaders and settlers wished to see bison destruction to break the back of hostile tribes. For instance, General Phil Sheridan, head of western US Army troops in the West in the 1870s advocated “destroying the Indian’s commissary.” However, not all Americans agreed with that goal.

A good review of this opposition to any policy of bison extirpation to subdue the Indians can be found in Douglas Branch’s book The Hunting of the Buffalo.

For example, Arizona Congressman R.C. McCormick called the bison slaughter “wantonly wicked” and considered it “vandalism .” As a result, McCormick introduced legislation in 1871 to halt the butchery: “excepting for the purpose of using the meat for food or preserving the skin, it shall be unlawful for any person to kill the bison or buffalo found anywhere upon the public lands of the United States; and for the violation of the law the offender shall, upon conviction before any court of competent jurisdiction, be liable to a fine of $100 for each animal killed”.

Major General Hazen added his objection to the butchery. He wrote: “The theory that the buffalo should be killed to deprive the Indians of food is a fallacy, and these people are becoming harmless under a rule of justice.” Lieutenant Colonel Brackett, another military officer, added his objections, saying: “The wholesale butchery of buffaloes upon the plains is as needless as it is cruel.”

In 1874 new legislation was introduced by Rep. Fort of Illinois, which declared it would be unlawful for anyone, not an Indian, to kill, wound, or in any way destroy any female buffalo of any age found at large within any Territory of the United States.

In the Congressional debate that followed Fort’s legislative effort, another member of Congress argued that killing off the bison was the only means to “civilize” the tribes. Fort bellowed: “I am not in favor of civilizing the Indian by starving him to death, by destroying the means which God has given him for his support.”

Fort’s legislation passed the House and Senate, but President Ulysses Grant allowed the bill to die in a pocket veto.

As recorded in P. Norris’s Report on Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of Interior in 1879, the Montana territorial government passed an legislation to protect bison in certain counties in Montana Territory.

The legislation held: “that any person who shall willfully shoot or otherwise -kill, for the period of ten years from and after the passage of this act, any buffalo or bison, within the counties of Madison, Jefferson, Deer Lodge, and Lewis and Clarke, Montana Territory, shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two hundred dollars, or imprisoned in the county jail not less two months and not more than six months, or both such fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court.”

Unfortunately, all of this concern for the fate of the bison was too little, too late.

Unfortunately the destruction of bison by tribal people still goes on. More than four hundred bison have been slaughtered by tribal members thus far this winter just outside of Yellowstone National Park. Photo George Wuerthner 

By 1870s, bison herds were already fragmented, and in many cases, gone from their former habitat. The remaining bison were relegated to the best bison habitat, such as the lower Yellowstone River in Montana and other favorable locations.

With bison more concentrated, locating and slaughtering the relict herds was readily accomplished.

It is essential to pay attention to dates. In the 1860s and 1870s, most of the best bison habitat was in firm control of hostile Indian tribes who presence precluded any significant white exploitation.

White settlement of Montana and Wyoming, for instance, was limited to small mining camps and towns like Virginia City, Helena, and Bozeman. Other than a few trading posts, there was no white settlement on the plains, which was effectively controlled by tribes like the Sioux and Blackfeet (as Custer’s demise in 1876 demonstrated).

THE RAILROAD INFLUENCE ON BISON

The commerical hunting of bison for hides by white hunters accelerated in the 1870s with the coming of the railroads to the Great Plains. Painting Charlie Russell

Yet by the early 1880s, bison were essentially gone from the Montana and Wyoming plains. The railroad, which was essential in bison decline further south, did not reach Montana until 1881. While white hunters may have finished off the last remnants of the Montana herds, it is clear that the vast numbers that once cloaked the plains were largely gone due to Indian exploitation.

In his book The Extermination of the American Bison, William Hornaday provides a glimpse into the final days of free-roaming plains bison. By that the late 1880s, bison were effectively gone from Montana where just a decade earlier tribes like the Blackfeet were still killing thousands for the hide trade annually.

Since many Indian tribes believed that bison came from a hole in the ground, they could not conceive that they could overhunt the animals. Therefore, if bison were no longer found in former haunts, it was assumed that the mobile bison were just over the next ridge in another valley. Nevertheless, by the 1850s, if not sooner, many tribes began to recognize that bison numbers were declining.

EXTIRPATION OF BISON IN IDAHO AND ADJACENT AREAS

Fort Hall was built as a trading post in 1834 near what is now the present city of Pocatello. Originally established for the Indian fur trade, the fort played a prominant role as a resupply hub for travelers on the Oregon Trail. Photo George Wuerthner 

One of the first places in the West where bison were extirpated by Indian hunting was in Southeast Idaho and adjacent parts of northern Utah, western Wyoming and southwest Montana. By 1840, bison were essentially gone from this region where they had once been relatively abundant.

This region West of the Continental Divide was an area controlled and hunted by Flathead, Nez Perce, Shoshone, and Pend d Oreille tribes with occasional intrusions by Blackfeet intent on raiding and killing the before-mentioned tribes.

Since there were no white hunters other than a few hundred fur trappers roaming the entire West, whose primary purpose was to trap beaver, this regional bison’s demise is almost certainly due to Indian hunting.

A number of journals provide some historical insight and first-hand accounts.

Fish Creek Summit near Soda Springs, Idaho. Photo George Wuerthner 

In 1826, trapper Jedediah Smith and his men camped on the Portneuf River near Soda Spring in SE Idaho for three days to secure meat for a proposed journey southwest that eventually led to California. In his journal, Smith notes: “Here I encamped for the purpose of drying meat as the buffalo were quite plenty and in fine order.” He goes on to say he remained for three days, “during which time the party had dried three horses loads of the most excellent meat.”

The 1825 Journal of William Ashley has references to bison in the region. For example, on June 20, Ashley writes, “Buffalow have been here a few days past in great number.” And a few days later, he says: “ great numbers of buffaloe have lately been through these hills but now are scarce. They have traveled from the Lake River (Henry’s Fork of today) over to the Green River.”

WARREN FERRIS JOURNAL

Another journal published by Warren Angus Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains: A Diary of Wanderings on the Sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado 1830-1835, provides a great deal of detail about Southeast Idaho and surrounding areas. The Ferris Mountains in the Great Divide Desert of Wyoming are named for him.

Ferris was a member of several fur trapping brigades that traveled Southeast Idaho and adjacent regions in the first part of the 1830s decade, and his journal is meticulous in detail.

His account contains references to bison throughout the region he roamed, though, like with any mobile animals; there were also locations where they did not see any bison. But taken as a whole, he makes numerous references to bison in the region.

For instance, in early April 1831, near what is now Pocatello, Idaho, Ferris recorded: “we camped this evening near the sources of the South Fork of the Porteneuf (his spelling) having seen along our route great numbers of buffalo, and many with calves.” Later he notes: “large herds of buffalo were driven over to us before the Flathead.”

Fur trappers like Warren Ferris reported numerous bison herds in and around the Blackfoot River in eastern Idaho during the 1830s, but by the 1840s, they were all but gone. Photo George Wuerthner 

Near the mouth of the Blackfoot River by today’s Fort Hall Indian Reservation north of Pocatello, Ferris notes, “we found this valley covered with buffalo.”

On January 3, 1832, Ferris and his party of trappers camped with some Flathead Indians on a tributary of the Salmon River and noted that he and the Indians “killed up to a hundred bison, which were numerous for sometime after we arrived.”

Traveling across the Snake River Plains north of what is today known as “Big Southern Butte,” he noted, “we saw large herds of buffalo during our march.”

While traveling across Gray’s Hole near what is now Gray’s Lake NWR in eastern Idaho, Ferris says, “we saw great numbers of buffalo running all directions.”

Pierre’s Hole below the Tetons near present-day Driggs, Idaho. Pierre’s Hole was the site of the 1832 Fur Rendezvous. Photo George Wuerthner 

In June of 1832, Ferris’s party joined with some Indians to hunt bison in Henry’s Fork (near present-day Ashton, Idaho) below the Tetons. In preparation for the 1832 rendezvous gathering at Pierre’s Hole (by Driggs, Idaho), his men and the accompanying Indians killed “hundreds daily during our stay on Henrie’s Fork.”

In 1833, Ferris and his party were camped along the Salt River on what is now the Idaho-Wyoming border. “On the 1oth, a party of us went up to the Boiling Kettles to procure buffalo meat: we found the valley quite covered with them (bison) but killed a few bulls only.”

On the 25^th, Ferris was in the Upper Green River Valley near the New Fork River, where he saw “immense herds of bison were seen in every direction.”

And so it goes, Ferris continuously observes large herds of bison throughout the region.

Though the fur trappers killed bison, it was primarily for food. At the time of Ferris’s engagement as a trapper, he estimated there were no more than 300 men and their camp keepers roaming the northern Rocky Mountains. And while they killed bison for food, their impact on bison numbers would have been negligible.

By comparison, there were hundreds of thousands of Indians of various tribes whose territory overlapped the same region or like the Nez Perce of eastern Washington, who made annual migrations across the mountains to hunt bison. Not only were the tribes killing bison for food, but as part of the hide trade. Records of trading posts like Fort Union and others on the Missouri River and Yellowstone rivers document that hundreds of thousands of bison hides were traded annually by various tribes.

By 1835 Ferris was aware that bison were in steep decline. He wrote, “Beaver and other kinds of game become every year more rare; and both the hunter and the Indians will ultimately be compelled to herd cattle, or cultivate the earth for a livelihood, or in default of these starve. Indeed, the latter deserve the ruin that threatens their offspring, for their inexcusable conduct, in sacrificing the millions of buffalo which they kill in sport for their skins only. The robes they obtain, in the latter case, are most frequently exchanged for whiskey with the traders at their establishments on the Missouri, Arkansas and Platte rivers.”

OSBORN RUSSELL JOURNAL

Traveling in the same general region of the Rocky Mountains from 1834-1843 was fur trapper Osborn Russell. Like Ferris, his book Journal of a Trapper presents a reasonable account of wildlife and Indian encounters in the region. Russell traveled west in 1834 with Nathaniel Wyeth who founded the Fort Hall trading post near what is now Pocatello, Idaho.

Russell encountered numerous bison in S.E. Idaho. He writes: “fell on to a stream called Portneuf. Here we found several large bands of buffaloe.

On the Salt River on the Idaho-Wyoming border he recorded seeing “thousands of buffaloe carelessly feeding in the green vales contributing to the wild and romantic splendor of the surrounding scenery.”

Traveling down the Blackfoot River near Fort Hall Indian Reservation just north of Pocatello, Idaho, at the end of May 1835, Russell notes his party “found thousands of buffalo bulls and killed a number of them.”

The Tetons as seen near Driggs, Idaho, and on the edge of Pierre’s Hole. Photo George Wuerthner 

Traveling to Pierre’s Hole below the Tetons, Russell noted: “This beautiful valley consisting of a smooth plain intersected by small streams and thickly clothes with grass and herbage and abounds with buffaloe, elk, deer, antelope, etc.”

Near Camas Lake on the edge of the Snake River Plain, by what is now Dubois, Idaho, Russell was “full of buffaloe.”[i]

In the same area, south of Camas Lake, Russell “came upon several large bands of buffaloe.”[ii]

A few days later, Russell wrote: “The next day being the 4^th, I lay all day and watched buffaloe which were feeding in immense bands.” And the next day he traveled about 5 miles and observed that: “The buffaloe were carelessly feeding on the plain as far as the eye could reach.

Near what is now Idaho Falls, Idaho, Russell observed the slaughter of several thousand bison in a single day by the Bannock Indians. Russell described the scene: “I walked out with the chief to a small hillock to watch the view of slaughter after the cloud of dust had passed away in the prairie which was covered with the slain several thousand cows were killed without burning a single grain of gunpowder.”

A few years later, along the Portneuf River near present-day Pocatello, Idaho, Russell noted: “In the year 1836, large herds of buffalo could be seen in almost every little valley on the small branches of this stream: at this time the only traces which could be seen of them were the scattered bones of former years, deeply indented in the earth, were overgrown with grass and weeds.”

In the appendix of his journal, he makes a gloomy prediction about the future of the bison. He wrote: “The vast numbers of these animals which once traversed such an extensive region in North America are fast diminishing. The continual increasing demand for robes in the civilized world has already and is still contributing in no small degree to their destruction, whilst on the other hand the continual increase of wolves and other 4 footed enemies far exceeds that of the buffaloe when these combined efforts for its destruction is taken into consideration, it will not be doubted for a moment that this noble race of animals, so useful in supplying the wants ofman, will at no far distance period become extinct in North America. The buffaloe is already a stranger , although so numerous 10 years ago, in that part of the country which is drained by the sources of the Colorado, Bear, and Snake Rivers and occupied by the Snake and Bannock Indians.

JOHN FREMONT JOURNAL

In 1843, John Fremont, known as the “Pathfinder,” traversed the same general part of  SE Idaho as Ferris and Russell had traveled. Fremont was a meticulous note-taker and was guided by Kit Carson.

On the North Platte River of what is now Wyoming, Fremont reported bison as “abundant.” And he goes on to say the “surrounding country appears to be well stocked with buffalo.” However, he notes his party decided to kill some bison to stock up on their food supplies as the region they were entering (over South Pass and Continental Divide) “was said to be nearly destitute of game.” [i]

As Fremont moved up the Sweetwater River towards South Pass, he noted they encountered a “few straggling buffalo bulls.” [ii]

This is the Green River country of Wyoming which in the previous decades was well known to host large herds of bison.

The Upper Green River below the Wind River Range was prime bison habitat, and numerous fur trappers noted extensive herds here, but by 1840s when John Fremont traveled through this valley, he found no bison here or anyplace else west of the Continental Divide. Photo George Wuerthner 

Once he left the east side of the Continental Divide, he does not mention encountering any bison at all, including in the Upper Green River of Wyoming, then the Smith’s Fork and Thomas’s Fork, which are tributaries of the Bear River country of Idaho, and adjacent areas.[iii]

This is the same area where Ferris, Osborne Russell and other trappers, a decade earlier, repeatedly recorded abundant bison herds.  

On August 30, in the Bear River country of SE Idaho, he encountered a Shoshone Indian village and tried to obtain some roots from them to vary their diet.

He notes that the villagers “had no game of any kind; and it was difficult to obtain any roots from them, as they were miserably poor, and had but little to spare from their winter stock of provisions. Several of the Indians drew aside their blanks, showing me their lean and bony figures: and I would not any longer tempt them with a display of our merchandise to part with their wretched subsistence when they gave as a reason that it would expose them to temporary starvation. A great portion of the region inhabited by this nation formerly abounded in game; the buffalo ranging about in herds, as we had found them on the eastern waters, and the plains dotted with scattered bands of antelope, but so rapidly have they disappeared within a few years that now, as we journeyed along, an occasional buffalo skull an a few wild antelope were all that remained of the abundance which had covered the country with animal life.” [iv]

Fremont goes on to write: “The extraordinary rapidity with which the buffalo is disappearing from our territories will not appear surprising when we remember the great scale on which their destruction is yearly carried on.” [v]

A few lines further, he notes: “… the Indians deriver their entire support from them (killing bison) and slaughter them with thoughtless and abominable extravagance.” [vi]

Fremont then recounts how abundant the bison were in the region a few decades before he traversed the region. “Our knowledge does not go farther back than the spring of 1824, at which time the buffalo were spread in immense numbers over the Green River and Bear River of the Gulf of California, and Lewis’s Fork (now South Fork of the Snake) of the Columbia; the meridian of Fort Hall then forming the western limit of their range. The buffalo then remained for many years in that country, and frequently moved down the valley of the Columbia on both sides of the river as far as the Fishing Falls (just west of Pocatello, Idaho.) Below this point, they never descended in any numbers. About the year 1834 or 1835, they began to diminish very rapidly and continued to decrease until 1838 or 1840, when, with the country we have just described, they entirely abandoned all the waters of the Pacific north of Lewis’s Fork of the Columbia. At that time, the Flathead Indians were in the habit of finding their buffalo on the heads of the Salmon River and other streams of the Columbia; but now they never meet with them farther west than the Three Forks of the Missouri or on the plains of the Yellowstone River.”

Fremont goes on to say: “In the course of our journey, it will be remarked that the buffalo have not so entirely abandoned the waters of the Pacific, in the Rocky Mountain region south of the Sweet Water, as in the country north of the Great Pass (South Pass).”

Fremont recounts: “In traveling through the country West of the Rocky Mountains, observation readily led me to the impression that the buffalo had, for the first time, crossed that range to the waters of the Pacific only a few years prior to the period we are considering and in this opinion, I am sustained by Mr. Fitzpatrick and the oldest trappers in that country. In the region West of the Rocky Mountains, we never meet with any of the ancient vestiges which, throughout all the country lying upon their eastern waters, are found in the great highways, continuous for hundreds of miles, always several inches and sometimes several feet in depth, which the buffalo have made in crossing from one river to another or in traversing the mountain ranges.”[vii]

Fremont summarizes these observations by saying: “The extraordinary abundance of buffalo on the east side of the Rocky Mountains (on the Great Plains) and their extraordinary diminution will be made clearly evident from the following statement: At any time between the years 1824 and 1836, a traveler might start from any given point south or north in the Rocky Mountain range, journeying by the most direct route to the Missouri River; and during the whole distance, his road would be always among large bands of buffalo, which would never be out of his view until he arrived almost within sight of the abodes of civilization.”[viii]

However, it was not just west of the Rocky Mountains that bison were declining (see my overview of bison decline here), as early as the early 1800s, traders along the Missouri River and elsewhere on the plains noted that bison were declining in the northern Great Plains region.

Fremont notes: “In 1842, I found the Sioux Indians of the Upper Platte demmles, as their French traders expressed it, with the failure of the buffalo; and in the following year, large villages from the Upper Missouri came over to the mountains at the heads of the Platte, in search of them. The rapidly progressive failure of their principal and almost their only means of subsistence has created great alarm among them; by which they see a good prospect for escaping starvation: one of these is to rob the settlements along the frontier of the States, and the other is to form a league between the various tribes of the Sioux nation, the Cheyenne, and Arapahoe, and make war against the Crow nation, in order to take from them their country, which is now the best buffalo country in the West. This plan they now have in consideration, and it would probably be a war of extermination of the Crow.” [ix]

It is important to note that this was written decades before the coming of the railroads and significant white commercial bison hunting that began post-Civil War in the 1870s, which many assert led to the extirpation of bison in the West. In fact, bison were in steep decline long before there was any white settlement or hunting.

RAYNOLDS EXPEDITION

Further credence to this decline is found in the meticulous journal notes of Captain William Franklin Raynolds. Raynolds was accompanied by the famous mountain man Jim Bridger as guide and Dr. Ferdinand Hayden as the chief scientist. Hayden would later become famous for his explorations of what is now Yellowstone National Park. In 1859-1860 they traversed through the heart of the bison ranges on the northern plains and mountains in what are now the states of South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and North Dakota.

It is important to remember that except for a few trading posts like Fort Benton and Fort Union, and the occasional white man who was married to an Indian woman, there were no white settlers, trappers, or other non-native people living or traveling through the entire region Raynolds explored. Therefore, any bison decline in this region can only be attributed to Indian hunting.

Beginning at St Louis on May 28, 1859, the Reynolds Expedition traveled by steamer up the Missouri to Fort Pierre (present-day Pierre, South Dakota), where he embarked and began his expedition by horse travel. He proceeded across South Dakota, through NE Wyoming to the lower Yellowstone in what is now Montana, and thence south along the Bighorn River to the North Platte River, where his party wintered. From there, in the spring, they circled up around the Wind River Range, into Jackson Hole, over Teton Pass to Pierre’s Hole (present-day Driggs, Idaho), up the Henry’s Fork to Henry’s Lake, over Raynolds Pass (named for him) down the Madison River to Three Forks, Montana and onward down the Missouri past Great Falls, past Fort Benton, and on the rest of the Missouri to its confluence with the Yellowstone River at Fort Union on the North Dakota-Montana border. From Fort Union, he completed his circuit of the region, arriving back in Fort Pierre on September 7, 1860[x]

In traversing South Dakota, he did not see one live bison, and this was the heart of the plains bison country in previous decades. He did note some tracks near the Black Hills but did not observe any live animals.

On July 20, 1859, on the Little Missouri River, they encountered the first bison on the border of western South Dakota and NE Wyoming. Raynolds wrote: “We are now in the buffalo region and small herds are to be seen in all directions.”[xi]

Indeed, he enthusiastically noted the fact that they finally had fresh meat. “Bridger and some of the soldiers also went out after encamping and returned having killed three cows each. We are, therefore, abundantly supplied with choice bits of this celebrated game, and roast ribs and hump are the order of the day in camp.”[xii]

On July 21, Raynolds describes the Little Missouri country and says, “Naked hills describe the country through which we have passed today, the latter having been apparently once covered with grass, since eaten off by the buffalo which have been today seen in large numbers upon all sides.”

The Raynold’s party first encountered bison along the Powder River in NE Wyoming. Photo George Wuerthner 

By July 27, Raynold’s party entered the Powder River of NE Wyoming and reported, “When we did reach the valley (Powder River), it was found to be filled with buffalo.”

On July 28, the abundance of bison is confirmed when Raynolds found, “This scarcity of grass has become the leading feature in the country and can, of course, be partially explained by the presence of the buffalo in such large numbers.”

He attributes the abundance of bison to the absence of Indian hunting. “The presence of these animals in such large numbers in this barren region is explained by the fact that this valley is a species of neutral ground between the Sioux and the Crows and other bands nearer the mountains, or more correctly speaking, the common war ground visited only by war parties, who never disturb the game as they would thereby give notice to their enemies of their presence.”

Similar observations by early travelers of the region, including Lewis and Clark, noted that the largest herds of bison were found in the no-man’s land between the enemy.

On August 14, Raynold’s party reached the Yellowstone River Valley, where he saw incredible numbers of bison. “Our first view of the Yellowstone valley itself, of which over 50 square miles was visible, literally black with buffalo, grazing in an enormous herd whose numbers defy computation, but must be estimated by the hundreds of thousands.” [xiii][xiv]

Despite this abundance, once the party began to follow the Bighorn River southward into what is now Wyoming, they did not encounter any more bison that season. Finally, on October 6, they reached the Platte River Valley. Again, there were no bison, though Raynolds did note that there were buffalo chips in the region, indicating that at some point in the past, bison had visited the area. [xv]

After wintering for seven months on the North Platte River, on May 10, 1860, the expedition continued its westward explorations. On May 15, east of the upper North Platte River near today’s Alcova Reservoir, Raynolds met some Arapahoe Indians who reported that they had seen and killed bison not far in advance of the Raynolds party. Moreover, Raynolds wrote, “numerous tracks and sign show that they been here recently.” [xvi]

A few days later, Raynolds says Hayden spotted some bison at a distance with Indians watching them for a chance to kill them. Then near the headwaters of the Wind River near Dubois, Wyoming, Raynolds again notes “sign” of bison which he indicated that the Shoshone Indians kept “penned up” in the mountain valleys so they could kill them when necessary.

Nevertheless, despite the occasional “sign” of bison, the expedition did not actually see any or kill any since leaving the Platte River. After going into Jackson Hole and over Teton Pass into Pierre’s Hole (present-day Driggs, Idaho), Raynold’s commented on the paucity of game. “Notwithstanding the beauty and fertility of the valley, we have seen no game, squirrels being the largest animals that have crossed our path, while of birds, only a few curlew and others of the smaller variety have been visible. These circumstances are to be regretted as with our limited stock of provisions, a constant supply of fresh meat is very desirable.” [xvii]

On June 25, the expedition traveled over what is now Raynold’s Pass to the Madison River and the headwaters of the Missouri River. Raynolds notes they have seen one band of buffalo.

Fort Benton was a major trading post on the Upper Missouri River in 1846 by the American Fur Company. Photo George Wuerthner

The party encountered more bison along the Missouri River on July 28, when they were below Fort Benton and near the Musselshell River, a distance of hundreds of miles in what was formerly the prime bison range. [xviii]

On August 3, as the expedition continued its travel down the Missouri River, Raynolds notes, “we halted early with the hope of securing game. In this we were disappointed, however, as the Crows are just south of us, and the Assiniboines to the north, it is probably that we shall obtain no more fresh meat, as these tribes scour the hunting grounds most thoroughly.”[xix]

It was not until they were east of Fort Union on what is today the Montana-North Dakota border that he again noted the presence of “small and scattered bands of bison.” [xx] Raynolds does not mention encountering any more bison on the rest of his journey to Fort Pierre.

WHY DID TRIBES WEST OF THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE MAKE THE ARDUOUS TRIP ANNUALLY TO HUNT BISON ON THE GREAT PLAINS?

Further evidence that bison were extirpated from Southeast Idaho and adjacent areas is the fact that by the 1840s, all the tribes who had previously hunted bison in the area, including the Nez Perce, Flathead, Shoshone, Bannock, and Pend D Oreille, traveled further to the east to access the remaining bison herds on the plains.

Nez Perce Creek in Yellowstone National Park. Tribes traveling to hunt bison on the plains often went through Yellowstone NP on the Bannock Trail to avoid the hostile Blackfeet who guarded access to Montana buffalo fields. Photo George Wuerthner 

The Bannock Trail across what is now Yellowstone NP out to the Big Horn Basin and lower Yellowstone Valley was a major route used by these tribes to avoid encounters with the hostile Blackfeet, even though there were more direct routes to the bison herds further north.

It is logical to ask why these tribes would make an arduous journey through the mountains with thousands of horses and tribal members if they could obtain bison closer to home and avoid encounters with hostile tribes like the Arapahoe, Sioux, and Blackfeet who jealously guarded access to the bison herds on the plains.

Part of the answer to why bison were eliminated from the mountain valleys of Idaho, SW Montana, and northern Utah, while they remained in large numbers on the plains for a longer period of time, may have to do with topography. For one thing, these valleys typically have deeper snow than on the plains, making survival more difficult for bison. The region could never support massive herds of bison.

Second, the basic “island geography” of small populations. As hunting pressure increased across the mountain valleys, bison herds were increasingly fragmented and extirpated from local areas.

As each small herd was eliminated, the ability to “recolonize” the habitat from adjacent bison herds became less and less likely. Furthermore, as bison numbers declined, hunting pressure on the remaining small pockets of bison likely increased as tribal hunters focused hunting on those herds.

By contrast, on the plains, beyond the fact that the habitat was better for bison (more continuous grasslands, less snow, and nutritious summer warm-season grasses), the natural landscape did not concentrate animals in valleys, so when there was human hunting pressure, the herds could move to other habitats.

By the 1850s, bison were extirpated from much of western Wyoming, eastern Idaho, southwest Montana, and even large portions of the Great Plains. This was all before any significant white settlement or commercial hunting.

As noted by Raynolds, as bison herds declined, intertribal warfare increased as each group of Indians sought to control the best-remaining bison habitat of the region. Ironically this led to even more bison slaughter since guns and ammo essential for warfare could only be obtained by trading bison hides to traders.

While the commercial hide hunting by white hunters finished off the last significant bison herds in the central and southern plains, for the most part, this was only successful because bison numbers were already fragmented and headed towards extinction as a consequence of Indian hunting.

Although this article focuses on Southeast Idaho, similar evidence of the contribution of Indian hunting towards bison extirpation can be found in various narratives and historical accounts. A good review of the relationship between Indians and bison in the southern plains and the ultimate decline of bison in the region can be found in Pekka Hamalainen’s book Comanche Empire.

What all these historical accounts demonstrates is that even in the absence of commercial hunters, on-going Indian predation contributed to bison decline. It is likely that bison would have vanished from the plains or at least have been greatly diminished within a few decades as a consequence of Indian exploitation.

[i] Osborne Russell Journal of a Trapper page 34

[ii] Osborne Russell Journal of a Trapper page 35

[i] John Fremont. Fremont’s First Impressions. The Original Report of his Exploring Expeditions of 1843-184. Page 131.

[ii] John Fremont. Fremont’s First Impressions. The Original Report of his Exploring Expeditions of 1843-184. Page 133

[iii] John Fremont. Fremont’s First Impressions. The Original Report of his Exploring Expeditions of 1843-184. Page 142.

[iv] John C. Fremont. Fremont’s First Impressions. The Original Report of His Exploring Expeditions of 1843-1844. Page 155.

[v] John C. Fremont. Fremont’s First Impressions. The Original Report of His Exploring Expeditions of 1843-1844. Page 156.

[vi] John C. Fremont. Fremont’s First Impressions. The Original Report of His Exploring Expeditions of 1843-1844. Page 156

[vii] John C. Fremont. Fremont’s First Impressions. The Original Report of His Exploring Expeditions of 1843-1844. Page 157

[viii] John C. Fremont. Fremont’s First Impressions. The Original Report of His Exploring Expeditions of 1843-1844. Page 157

[ix]   John C. Fremont. Fremont’s First Impressions. The Original Report of His Exploring Expeditions of 1843-1844. Page 159

[x] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River. Brig. Gen. W.F. Raynolds communication with the Secretary of War, in compliance with a Resolution of Senate, February 1866 Washington, Government Printing Office 1868.

[xi] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, page 33.

[xii] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, page 33

[xiii] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, page 45

[xv] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, page 69

[xvi] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, page 79

[xvii] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, page 96

[xviii] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, page 112

[xix] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, page 113

[xx] William Franklin Raynolds. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, page 115

Sandstone outcrops and chaparral along  Hurricane Deck, San Rafael Wilderness, Los Padres NF, California. Photo George Wuerthner 

Chaparral is one of California’s most widespread vegetation communities due to the state’s Mediterranean climate of winter precipitation and summer drought. Chaparral is particularly common in the Coast Range, Traverse Ranges, and western slopes of the Sierra Nevada.

However, it is also found in other parts of the Southwest, including Arizona, Nevada, southern Oregon, and southern Utah.

But chaparral suffers from a lack of respect, as the comedian Rodney Dangerfield once said about himself.

Non-native grasses have replaced chaparral in many areas as a consequence of too frequent fires. Los Padres NF, CA. Photo George Wuerthner 

It is a critical habitat for many wildlife and plant species, including wrentit and numerous other species, and is essential for carbon storage.

You often hear that chaparral “depends” on fire for its survival. And without frequent fire, the stands become decadent and overgrown. Unfortunately, such terms are value judgments that have nothing to do with chaparral ecology.

 Chaparral, Agua Tibia Wilderness, Cleveland NF, CA. Photo George Wuerthner 

The historic fire interval for chaparral is a minimum of 30 years, and chaparral can persist without significant fire for 150 years or more.

Stands of “old growth” chaparral live for decades to hundreds of years without any disturbance. And there is no evidence that lack of fire in chaparral increases the likelihood of a burn.

Indeed, chaparral ecosystems are increasingly in danger from too much fire. Frequent burning favors the establishment of grasses and other plants. A review of 1.5 million fire records over 20 years found that human-caused fires were responsible for 84% of wildfires and 44% of the total area burned. Human ignitions are the dominant source of blazes in Southern California. We would see far less chaparral if it were not for effective fire suppression.

Unfortunately, many public land agencies, fire managers, and tribal people believe the common “wisdom” that frequent prescribed fire or cultural burning will preclude large high, severity chaparral blazes.

The natural fire interval in chaparral ecosystems is 30 to more than 150 yers. Burnt chaparral above Silverwood, CA. Photo George Wuerthner 

Large chaparral fires have been part of the California landscape for thousands of years. The high severity blazes we see are a direct consequence of climate, not “fuel build up.” In addition, California is experiencing a drought that has had no precedent in 1200 years. High winds and severe drought, combined with low humidity and high temperatures, drive all large wildfires, including those in chaparral.

As Jon Keeley opined in a publication he helped co-authored: The fire regime in this region is dominated by human-caused ignitions, and fire suppression has played a critical role in preventing the ever-increasing anthropogenic ignitions from driving the system wildly outside the historical fire return interval. Because the net result has been relatively little change in overall fire regimes, there has not been fuel accumulation in excess of the historical range of variability. As a result, fuel accumulation or changes in fuel continuity do not explain wildfire patterns.”

Chaparral abounds along Manzana Creek Canyon San Rafael Wilderness, Los Padres NF, California

While chaparral has some fire adaptations, the frequency is the issue. Indeed, most chaparral species can tolerate burns frequency of 30 years or more. However, more frequent burning results in a type conversion from shrubs to grasses (which ironically are even more flammable).

One of the most common misstatements we see about wildfires today is the idea that Native Americans frequently set fires, reduced fuel loads, and kept the landscape “healthy.” However, the scientific evidence suggests that Indian burning was primarily localized around villages and other high-use areas but did not significantly influence the broader landscape.

Many assume that today’s coastal grasslands represent the initial natural vegetation type. However, in many instances, the original chaparral shrub community has been type converted to non-native grasses due to livestock grazing and frequent fire.

Chaparral in Cleveland National Forest, California. Photo George Wuerthner 

The fact that California always had extensive chaparral areas is evolutionary evidence that Indian burning was primarily localized and did not influence most of the California landscape, as some people, particularly advocates of cultural and prescribed burning, suggest.

As the following quote demonstrates, fire is not necessary to sustain chaparral.

There is no compelling evidence that the use of fire by Indians or any other primitive man had any effect in developing the adaptations to fire exhibited by the vegetation in California… [F]ires due to-natural causes-chiefly lightning-which have occurred since remote geologic time, have been a significant force in determining the characteristics and adaptations of our California chaparral. (Burcham 1974:117-118)

Chaparral and pines, Plumas NF, California. Photo George Wuerthner 

Beyond even the mindless burning of chaparral to “save it” promoted by some ecologically misinformed supporters of prescribed or cultural burning, some fire fighting techniques like bulldozing fire lines along ridges as fire breaks tend to spread invasive weeds, which are far more fire-prone than chaparral, compounding the already high levels of human ignitions.

So, what is the solution?

The first is to stop burning chaparral as a “management tool.”

Second, stop building homes in the chaparral environment.

Third, start thinking ecologically instead of human-centric about chaparral. Chaparral is a beautiful plant community, every bit as valuable as a redwood forest.

Manzanita, one of many lovely chaparral species growing along the Trinity River in northern California. Photo George Wuerthner 

Finally, we must learn to live with chaparral.

Homes built among chaparral must adapt to fire hazard by implementing home hardening measures. San Gabriel Mountains, CA. Photo George Wuerthner 

As Odion and Davis wrote: “At the interface between human development and chaparral vegetation, desirable management from biological and slope stability perspectives argues not for relatively short rotation hazard reduction burning, but for improving characteristics of the built environment (defensible space, structures, landscaping, safe evacuation means, etc.), in efforts to reduce the perils of fire posed by living near chaparral.”

New road was created for a forest thinning project. Roads are a major location for human ignition. Photo George Wuerthner 

The Biden administration announced it would spend nearly $930 million fighting wildfire in the West. While the plan includes money for everything from hardening homes to paying for more firefighters, the main thrust of the proposal is to increase thinning/logging and prescribed burning to “reduce” fuels.

It is part of a 10-year plan to “treat” 50 million acres, an area bigger than all of New England.

Many of these “active forest management” treatments require road access, thus either creating new roads or being used as an excuse to keep existing roads open and available for forestry management.

The elephant in the room is that roads are among the factors that contribute to greater human ignitions. Humans ignited four times as many large fires as lightning.

A review of 1.5 million fire records over 20 years found that human-caused fires were responsible for 84% of wildfires and 44% of the total area burned.

Once created roads are difficult to close to human access. A “closed” road on the Sequoia National Forest, California. ATVs just go around ineffective road closure. Photo George Wuerthner 

There is, however, a better way to spend funds. The majority of all wildfires are due to human ignitions that occur on or near roads.

Higher road density correlates with an increased probability of human-caused ignitions. But higher road density even correlates with greater lightning blazes.

The disturbance caused by logging roads increase the invasion of weeds, many of them flammable. Photo George Wuerthner 

Research has also demonstrated that roads act as corridors for the spread of flammable weeds. Roads also create a natural vector for wind and vegetation drying, enhancing fire spread.

While blazes that start in roadless areas tend to burn more acres, they pose a smaller threat to human communities. However, since roads are more likely to be closer to human habitation, the increased number of ignitions associated with roaded landscapes may be a greater threat to structures and human life.

The Forest Service has nearly 400,000 miles of roads—more than enough to circle the globe 16 times.

Even so-called “closed” roads provide increased human use and access to the landscape.  Adding a gate does little to reduce the negative influences of roads on fire spread, weed invasion, water pollution from sedimentaion, displacement of wildlife and other impacts. Photo George Wuerthner 

These roads provide access for cars and pick-ups. However, even when they are closed to street vehicles, the roads still provide access for All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) and even mountain bikes, allowing human penetration into landscapes and increasing fire ignitions.

A more effective strategy for reducing wildfire threats to communities would be to spend significant funding by decommissioning and fully recontouring former logging roads, including so-called temporary roads. Not only would road closure and restoration of roadbed slopes reduce unwanted ignitions, but they would have other benefits as well.

Road created for thinning projects like this one in Yaak drainage, Montana is a chronic source of sedimentation into stream, harming aquatic ecosystems. Photo George Wuerthner 

Roads also impact watersheds and aquatic ecosystems. For example, one of the biggest sources of sedimentation into aquatic ecosystems around the West is logging roads which are a chaotic source of sedimentation.

Roads also harm wildlife by direct mortality as well as social displacement.

Decommissioning and restoration of roads also have carbon storage benefits. Fuel reductions do nothing to change the climate, and since logging is a significant source of carbon emissions, it may even enhance wildfire spread in the future.

Do you see the road? Hopefully not. That’s the point. Here a logging road in Redwood National Park, California was recontoured and revegetated effectively reducing most negative influences of roads, including human access. Photo George Wuerthner 

Shifting the emphasis of funding from more thinning/logging and prescribed fire towards reducing road densities may have greater benefits for reducing wildfire threats to communities, not to mention other resource values such as reduction in wildlife disturbance, soil erosion, aquatic ecosystem degradation, and even carbon losses.

High-severity blazes are critical to healthy forest ecosystems. Photo George Wuerthner 

I read yet another study circulated by UC Davis and doggedly promoted by the national media, encouraging more prescribed burning, thinning, and forest manipulation to reduce large high-severity blazes characterized as “bad.”

The headline from UC Davis proclaims that scientists have documented, “Unprecedented levels of high severity fire burn Sierra Nevada Forests.” With a sub-title: The “Wrong Kind of Fire Is Burning Compared to Historical Patterns.”

The paper reports that compared to the pre-1850s, there appear to be far more high-severity blazes in the Sierra Nevada today than in the past.

The 2013  high-severity Rim Fire in California burned more than 200,000 acres and created numerous snags and down logs critical to healthy forest ecosystems. Photo George Wuerthner 

That finding may not be inaccurate—though some researchers would question that assertion.

However, since the climate varies over centuries, when in the past you use for your comparison makes a big difference in how you view whether wildfires are “unprecedented” or the “wrong kind of fire.”

The article goes on to suggest that the proportion of “good” fire (low severity where few trees are killed) to “bad” fire (high severity where the majority of trees are killed) is “out of balance.” These statements are human-centric values, and do not reflect evolutionary or ecological perspectives.

Like numerous others I see all the time, the problem with this research and press release is how researchers and the media attribute the observed changes in fire behavior to a host of factors, most of which are insignificant.

The article says: “These modern changes have been driven largely by anthropogenic factors, for example, halting of Native American burning, adoption of fire suppression policies, timber extraction, and forest management practices, changing ignition patterns, and climate change, that have altered the way fire interacts with forests,”

Wind driven fire seen here. Climatic conditions like drought, high temperatures, and high wind are the major factors that drive large wildfires not fire suppression, forest practices or lack of Native American burning. Photo George Wuerthner 

Yet climate change alone probably accounts for 95% of the variation in fire behavior!! By treating the minor influences of forest practices, suppression, and Native American burning as significant drivers, they set up support for greater forest manipulation, including prescribed burning and timber cutting everywhere.

The biggest problem is that “historical patterns” used as the “control” in the study (pre-1850s) depended on a specific climatic condition that no longer exists today. The climate in the pre-1850s was influenced by the Little Ice Age, which span the time from 1300-1850. The Little Ice Age was a particularly wet and cool period. Cold and wet conditions tend to reduce ignitions and limit fire spread.

California is experiencing the worst drought in 1200 years. This fact alone explains the majority of fire behavior. Photo George Wuerthner 

The climate we are experiencing today has no recent precedent. California, for instance, is experiencing the worst drought in over 1200 years. The average temperatures are also reaching record highs.

The nearest comparative climatic conditions to today were during the Medieval Warm Spell, which occurred between 800-1300 AD. During this time, there was more fire than today.  As one of the authors of this study noted: “This is one line of evidence that it was very fiery on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada – and there’s a very strong relationship between drought and fire.”

During that warm, dry period, there were massive wildfires around the West. It is also why the Anasazi Indians abandoned their cliff dwellings, and Greenland was settled by the Vikings (because it was greener in 900 AD).

So, comparing the fire regime of today with a time of glacial formation during the Little Ice Age is comparing apples and oranges.

The press release is full of “pejorative” language that is not ecologically based but rather represents the Industrial Forestry Paradigm that anything that kills trees other than chainsaws is “out of balance” and “bad.”

First, given the climatic conditions associated with global warming, the increase in high-severity blazes may not be “out of balance” at all. On the contrary, more high-severity fires are precisely what you would expect under current weather/climatic conditions.

The greater number of high-severity fires is an example of Nature in “balance” with the current climatic conditions.

The 2021 Dixie Fire burned more than 900,000 acres including many higher elevation fir forests. Photo George Wuerthner

The paper and press release first acknowledge that fire behavior differs in various plant communities but then gives the impression that the same fire regimes apply to all forest types.

For example, fire rotation in dry pine forests tends to be more frequent than high elevation forest types like lodgepole pine, fir and spruce forests, and aspen, among others which experience long, often hundreds of years, between significant fire events.

These higher-elevation, moister forest types may not experience significant wildfires for hundreds of years because they require specific climatic conditions of extensive drought, warm temperatures, low humidity, and high winds before they are dry enough to burn. These climatic/weather conditions seldom occur in any location along with an ignition source. When these all align, you get high-severity blazes.

The idea that high-severity fires are “bad” is another example of the derogatory wording in the press release and original research. High-severity fires are always relatively infrequent but tend to be the “norm” for higher-elevation or moister forests.

Research in Sierra Nevada forests suggests that high-severity fire rotations varied between The high-severity fire rotation was 281 years in the northern and 354 years in the southern Sierra.

Since global warming has increased the prerequisite conditions of droughts, high temperatures, low humidity, and wind, we are seeing precisely what you would expect-more higher elevation forests burning. These wildfire fires are not “out of balance” but completely in balance with the prevailing climate conditions.

Furthermore, other research shows that these high-severity blazes are critical to healthy forest ecosystems. Numerous plants and animals depend on the down logs, snags, and decaying wood that high-severity blazes produce.

This is evolutionary evidence that contradicts the proclamation that we see the “wrong kind of fire.”

Logs that fall into stream create good fish habitat. The main source of logs for most drainages comes from high severity blazes. Photo George Wuerthner 

Some studies suggest more plants and animals depend on high-severity blazes for their habitat than low-severity fires. For instance, down logs improve fish habitat. In addition, studies have shown that the more logs in a stream, the more fish. Yet most logs that fall into streams may result from one sizeable high-severity blaze that may only occur once in a couple of hundred years in any drainage.

The input of down wood is episodic, not regular. So you may only have 1-4 such high-severity fires every thousand years.

Beyond these problematic temporal and spatial scale issues, we find that the preferred cure of more prescribed burning and thinning are ineffective because they do not influence the primary driver of significant fires-climate change.

Forest that was thinned six months previous to the  2007 Angora Fire at Lake Tahoe. California that burned at high severity. 

Instead, logging appears to increase the occurrence of high-severity fires by opening up the forest to greater wind penetration and solar drying—both conditions that favor fire spread.

Once again, the forestry industry propaganda is being spewed forth by unwitting media with little scientific ability to judge the nuances in the science.

The bottom line is that high-severity fires are not “out of balance” given the on-going climatic conditions, nor are they “bad” from an ecological perspective. Wildfire, bark beetles, drought, and other sources of mortality is moving the Sierra Nevada vegetation community in balance with the existing and future climatic conditions.

“

Cow bombed BLM lands along Paria River, Escalante Grand Staircase, NM, Utah. Photo George Wuerthner 

ABSTRACT: Livestock production occurs in all deserts (except polar deserts). In many desert areas, it is the single most significant human impact. Livestock production includes grazing plants and all associated activities to produce domestic animals. This consists of the dewatering rivers for irrigated forage crops, killing of predators and “pest” species, forage competition between native and domestic animals, soil compaction and erosion, changes in fire regimes, the spread of alien plant species, loss of biodiversity and numerous other ecosystem effects.

INTRODUCTION
Worldwide some 3 billion hectares of land, including deserts, are grazed by domestic livestock, and the majority suffer degradation and loss of biodiversity as a result (Carter et al., 2014).

Deserts are usually defined as arid or semi-arid landscapes, often with high evapotranspiration rates, high rates of solar radiation, and large daily and seasonal temperature range. These factors limit the plant and animal life that can survive in these environments, although there are many remarkable adaptations that species have developed to deal with these extreme conditions.

The Great Basin region of the United States is considered a “cold” desert dominated by sagebrush. Trout Creek Mountains, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner 

Many people associate the term desert with “hot” temperatures like the Saharan desert in Africa or the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and northern Mexico, which are found where descending air creates dry zones. However, many other deserts are colder, often associated with the rain shadow effect of mountains. Cold deserts like those found in Central Asia (Gobi) or Great Basin in North America will often get snow cover for part of the year. The polar desert in Antarctica is the largest desert area in the world and is almost entirely snow-covered year-round.

No matter where they are found, all desert zones experience periods of acute precipitation shortages, which has significant implications for the human ability to exploit the ecosystem with livestock grazing. Domestic livestock includes grazing animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, yaks, camels, and other species.

Humans have traditionally used marginally productive landscapes and steeper mountainous terrain for livestock production, while better-watered landscapes and flatter terrain are reserved for crop production. However, except for irrigated landscapes, most deserts have limited ability to support crop agriculture other than hay or pasture. Consequently, livestock grazing is often the dominant economic use.

Except for the polar deserts, most of the world’s desert areas experience some livestock grazing. Indeed, ungrazed reference points or refugia where livestock grazing has not occurred are difficult to find. (Unless otherwise noted, when I use the term “grazing,” I am referring to cropping by domestic livestock.)

Throughout the world’s deserts, there are many native herbivores. In North American deserts, native herbivores include insects like grasshoppers (Melanoplus spp.), rodents like ground squirrels (Spermophilus spp.), pig-like javelina (Tayassu tajacu) to larger ungulates like mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) or pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana). Herbivores like kangaroos (Macropus) are found in Australian deserts, while Asia and Africa have even larger native herbivores.

Cattle degraded Bureau of Land Management (BLM} lands in eastern Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner

Though there are many native herbivores, it’s important to note that this does not necessarily mean those plant communities are adapted to exotic domestic livestock grazing. Exotic livestock does not utilize the landscape in the same way as native species. And even when a species might be “native” to a particular ecosystem, the tendency to maximize profits and animal production leads to excessive domestic animals that are above the ability of the landscape to support.

As a generalization, livestock grazing is one of the major human activities responsible for creating or expanding desert areas through “desertification.”

Grasses, shrubs, and scattered trees characterize the vegetation in most deserts outside polar regions. Grasses and shrubs are the dominant forage utilized by domestic herbivores. Consequently, grasses

Aridity has limitations on livestock production and tends to exaggerate the ecological impacts of livestock.

First, the lack of precipitation limits plant growth compared to other ecosystems. Regarding primary productivity, desert ecosystems have some of the lowest primary productivity (the rate at which photosynthetic and chemosynthetic autotrophs convert energy to organic substances) on earth. For instance, the United States (U.S.) General Accounting Office (GAO, 1991) concluded that “hot deserts are among the least productive grazing lands in the United States.”

An appraisal conducted in 1984 by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service found that more than 160 acres of land were sometimes required to support one cow for one month in southern New Mexico, Arizona, southwestern Utah, southeastern California, and most of Nevada (GAO, 1991).

One of the significant characteristics of desert landscapes is variable precipitation. Precipitation has a huge effect on plant growth. Therefore, drought conditions are more likely in desert regions and typically will last longer than in other ecosystems. Since much plant growth depends on the amount and timing of precipitation, prolonged drought can significantly reduce the annual plant biomass production and, thus the forage to support livestock.

The cumulative impact of livestock is more than “grazing” or “browsing” (see below); rather, these should include the collateral damage from livestock “production” (Wuerthner and Matteson, 2002).

A 1994 U.S. ForestForest Service report concluded that livestock grazing was the 4th major cause of overall species endangerment and the 2nd major cause of plant endangerment (Belsky et al., 2002).

As the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO, 1991) concluded in a report to Congress: “Current livestock grazing activity on BLM allotments in hot desert areas risks long-term environmental damage while not generating grazing fee revenues sufficient to provide for adequate management. GAO found evidence of damage occurring on BLM lands and evidence of livestock grazing’s adverse impacts on several wildlife species. Moreover, some damaged lands may take decades to recover–if they recover at all.”

The modern “cowboy” on his ATV herding cattle. Photo George Wuerthner 

Among the well-documented direct impacts of livestock production on desert ecosystems are the destruction of soil crusts, damage to riparian areas, forage competition with native wildlife, the spread of invasive weeds, changes in plant community composition, and losses in carbon storage.

Other aspects of livestock production include disease transmission from livestock to native wildlife, water pollution, the killing of “pests” and predators to protect livestock, the dewatering of rivers for irrigation, and the “capture” of springs and other water sources for livestock (Wuerthner and Matteson, 2002; Fleischer, 1994).

Not all species are negatively impacted by livestock production. For instance, brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater), a nest parasite, increase with more domestic cattle. Sagebrush sparrow (Artemisiospiza nevadensis) likely “benefited” from the shift from grasslands to more shrublands in some cold desert ecosystems (Bock et al., 1993). However, in most cases, the species benefiting are widespread generalists, while those harmed by grazing tend to be rarer or those with special habitat needs.

As Bock et al. (1993) concluded in one research review, “The problem with livestock across much of the West today is not with their presence, but with their ubiquity.”

Those plants and animals, including neotropical migratory birds, intolerant of activities of domestic grazers, have comparatively few places to live.

SOIL CRUSTS

One of the essential negative impacts of domestic livestock, particularly animals herded in tight groups, is the trampling of soil crusts. Soil crust is a critical component of arid to semi-arid ecosystems. Soil crusts are known by many names, including biocrusts, cryptogamic, cryptobiotic, microbiotic, or microphytic crusts. Soil crust consists of cyan bacteria, fungi, lichens, mosses, and green algae and may comprise up to 70% of the plant cover in some communities. Indeed, in many desert ecosystems, there are more species of soil crusts than vascular species.

Biocrust, or soil crust, covers the ground and reduces soil erosion. Photo George Wuerthner 

By covering the soil, biocrusts reduce wind and water erosion and act as a mulch, helping retain soil moisture. In addition, many soil crusts can fix atmospheric nitrogen, so it’s available to other plants. They also affect carbon storage and influence plant germination and growth. Notably, nitrogen is one of the limiting factors in many desert areas. In some desert locations, nitrogen fixation by the soil crust is often one of the essential nitrogen sources (Evans and Belnap, 1999).

Crusts often play a critical role in soil productivity. Nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria and lichens dominate many biological soil crusts in western North America. Microfungi also weave filaments through the top portions of the soil, holding the soil particles together.

While many desert vascular plants have adaptations to assist germination, such as self-burial mechanisms or rely on rodents for caching seeds, unlike native species, many exotic species like cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) lack such adaptations and can be inhibited from successful germination by intact soil crust.

By destroying soil crusts, livestock grazing also increases the occurrence of cheatgrass fueled wildfires, one of the significant threats to sagebrush ecosystems and wildlife like sage grouse (Centrocercus minimus).

SOIL COMPACTION AND TRAMPLING

Trampling and compaction of soils are an unavoidable impact on domestic livestock. The destruction of soil crusts, water infiltration reduction, and vegetative cover removal have led to increased soil erosion. A lower infiltration rate means less water will be available for plants, and more surface erosion may occur.

The compaction of soil by livestock hooves reduces water infiltration. Freighter Spring, Idaho. Photo George Wuerthner 

For instance, an experiment in Arizona looked at how vegetation changes have led to increases in interrill areas, decreases in runoff infiltration, and the possibility of greater susceptibility to frost action (Abrahams et al., 1995).

Soil compaction reduces water absorption for plants, making it more difficult for them to spread their roots (Boarman, 2002). A review of grazing impacts on hydrological impacts concluded that grazing at any intensity reduced water infiltration (Gifford and Hawkins, 1978).

Water run-off experiment tests showed that moderate grazing areas had seven times the runoff compared to lightly grazed areas, and heavily grazed areas had ten times the runoff as lightly grazed areas (Boarman, 2002).

Another effect of soil compaction and erosion changes in soil temperatures. Grazing by livestock can increase soil temperatures. Hence water evaporation and amplifying the already hot conditions found close to the ground in desert areas. For instance, a significant increase in soil temperature at depths of 2.5, 7.5, and 15 cm was observed in clipped versus unclipped plots (Steiger, 1930).

Trampling by hooves also can affect seeds biomass. For example, a study in the Mojave Desert (U.S.) found native seeds were higher in an area protected from livestock grazing and off-road vehicles (examples of vehicle types) compared to locations outside of the enclosure, even though there were more seed-eating rodents inside the enclosure as well (Brooks, 1995).

RIPARIAN AREAS

Riparian areas are those lines of water-influenced green vegetation found along waterways. Estimates suggest that riparian areas occupy about 1–2% of the land in many arid landscapes. Yet, despite their relative scarcity, the combination of water, and lush vegetation growth, these thin, green lines are very productive sites and ecologically critical to 60–70% of wildlife in the western United States.

Cows trash riparian area, BLM lands, Ruby Mountains, Nevada. Photo George Wuerthner 

Riparian areas support about a third of all plant species found in the arid West. One study of Arizona’s arid lands concluded that 70% of all threatened and endangered species are riparian obligates (Johnson, 1989).

The highest densities of breeding birds in North America are reported from southwestern riparian woodlands. More than 75% (127 of 166) of southwestern bird species nest primarily in riparian woodlands, and neotropical migrants comprise 60% of the 98 land birds (Bock et al., 1993).

Due to the abundance of green vegetation, shade, and water, riparian areas are particularly attractive to domestic livestock. However, their foraging in these areas has multiple impacts (Behnke and Raleigh, 1978; Kauffman and Krueger, 1984; Armour et al., 1991; Poff et al., 2012). These include trampling and break down of banks, and channel entrenchment.

In addition, livestock alters the stream channel leading to more extensive and shallow profiles. These channel modifications, in turn, lead to higher stream temperatures and velocities which can be detrimental to fish, including a three to four-times decline in trout (Salmo) in grazed versus ungrazed stream sections.

Another review study documented that livestock grazing negatively affects water quality and seasonal quantity, stream channel morphology, hydrology, riparian zone soils, instream, streambank vegetation, and aquatic and riparian wildlife (Belsky et al., 1999).

Browsing on streamside shrubs and trees like willow reduces the creek’s shading and habitat for nesting songbirds. More than 75% (127 of 166) of southwestern bird species nest primarily in riparian woodlands, and neotropical migrants comprise 60% of the 98 land birds (Johnson et al., 1977).

Cattle eliminate streamside vegetation in riparian areas. Photo George Wuerthner 

Soil compaction from livestock (as discussed above) reduces water infiltration and the “sponge” effect of riparian areas. The loss of sponge effects can lead to a reduction in late-season flows.

Removing grass and other streamside vegetation by livestock reduces hiding cover for many species. For instance, sage grouse chicks rely on tall streamside vegetation for feeding and hiding cover (Thompson et al., 2006).

When grass is cropped to golf putting green height (1 cm), many species, from amphibians to reptiles to birds and mammals in riparian areas, are exposed to predators.

FORAGE COMPETITION

As previously stated, productivity in arid climates is generally low; thus, any forage removal by domestic animals can have a disproportionate impact on native species (Willers, 2002). For instance, desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) remain in their burrows for extended periods and only emerge to feed when their favorite foods are green and nutritious. Tortoises selectively feed on herbaceous vegetation, the same plants favored by domestic livestock. Avery (1998) in the Mojave Desert demonstrated that tortoise foraging behavior was altered where cattle and tortoises overlapped.

In the absence of animals, tortoises primarily ate herbaceous perennials (91% of diet), whereas, in the grazed areas, tortoises mainly ate annual grasses (59%), followed by herbaceous perennials (21%). In addition, enough forage removal by livestock affected tortoise reproduction, with fewer eggs laid in drought years where livestock competed with tortoises for food (Tracy, 1996).

Another example can be found in sage grouse. Although the sage grouse, as its name implies, relies on sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) much of the year, the chicks rely on forbs during the first 4–6 weeks of their lives. Grazing by domestic livestock can remove many of these favored plants.

A third example can be found with desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni). Domestic sheep and bighorn sheep consume substantially the same foods, and if a herd of domestic sheep moves through wild sheep habitat, they can leave little forage for the bighorns.

The presence of domestic livestock socially displaces elk and other wildlife. Photo George Wuerthner

Social displacement also influences forage use. Many native species avoid areas where domestic animals are actively grazing. For example, several studies documented that mule deer, pronghorn, and elk (Cervus canadensis) will avoid grazing in the same pastures as domestic animals and are displaced-presumably to less suitable habitat. For instance, in one study in a mountain uplands (so not desert), 94% of the observations of elk Cervus canadensis occurred in pastures unoccupied by livestock (Frisina, 1992).

Another impact of “forage competition” is the loss of hiding cover for small mammals, reptiles, and ground-nesting birds. For instance, sage grouse depend on tall vegetation to hide their nests from predators (DeLong et al., 1995).

INVASIVES AND WEEDS

Invasive plants and animals are either exotics from other countries or native to the region but found in a new location. Among the most problematic invasives in the western US deserts are cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and Russian thistle (Salsola tragus), favored by the disturbance caused by livestock. Other exotics are purposely planted to improve forage for livestock, like crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum). As a result of these factors, livestock facilitates the spread of exotics indirectly or directly.

WATER COMPETITION

Water is typically scarce in desert ecosystems. There are three primary ways that livestock production impacts water: (1) direct water consumption and pollution; (2) dewatering of natural water sources like rivers and springs for irrigation to provide hay for supplemental forage; and (3) construction of dams and reservoirs primarily to store water for irrigation.

In many deserts, natural springs and seeps are tapped to provide water for domestic animals, which can reduce the availability of water for native species. In addition, domestic animals often trample the areas around such water sources, leading to soil compaction and a reduction of flows. Ranchers usually pipe water into troughs, making it more difficult for native species to access. Loss of springs and seeps via dewatering has been shown to reduce native snails (Frest Terrance, 2002) and amphibians (Engle, 2002).

The mere presence of domestic animals may socially displace native species. Some native species will wait until domestic animals are absent before they access waterholes. For instance, a study of pronghorns (found that nearly one-half of pronghorn—feral horse interactions resulted in the exclusion of pronghorns from the water).

The production of hay as supplemental forage for livestock is typical in desert areas. Nearly every natural meadow along streams has been converted from natural vegetation of sedges, water birch (Betula nigra), alder (Alnus spp.), and willows (Salix spp.) to nonnative grasses. The losses of native vegetation shrubs have a significant impact on native species. Many songbirds nest and feed in this streamside vegetation.

Many dams and reservoirs built in the western U.S. and other arid regions are constructed primarily for water storage for irrigation. In many instances, that irrigation water is used to grow forage crops for livestock. These dams have many negative impacts on native species—for example, one study documented that riparian forests dominated by cottonwoods (Populus spp.) are declining due to disruptions in natural flood cycles and groundwater levels by dams, groundwater pumping, and water diversions (Beauchamp et al., 2005). Changes in water temperatures and flows due to dam releases also negatively impacted desert-dwelling native fish like humpback chub (Gila cypha) (USFWS, 2017).

Irrigation for livestock forage production (hay) is the primary factor in the dewatering of western rivers. Photo George Wuerthner 

Irrigated hay production for livestock is a significant factor in the dewatering of rivers and streams, compromising aquatic ecosystems.

A review by McAllister et al. (2014) of dams and their associated reservoirs impact freshwater biodiversity by blocking the movement of migratory species up and down rivers, causing destruction or extinction of genetically distinct stocks or species, changing turbidity/sediment levels to which species/ecosystems in the rivers affects species adapted to natural levels. In addition, trapping silt in reservoirs deprives downstream deltas and estuaries of maintenance materials and nutrients that help make them productive ecosystems, filtering out woody debris which provides habitat and sustains a food chain.

Dam management that diminishes or stops regular river flooding of these plains will impact diversity and fisheries—changing the normal seasonal estuarine discharge, which can reduce the supply of entrained nutrients, affecting the food chains that sustain fisheries in inland and estuarine deltas. Modifying water quality and flow patterns downstream.

DISEASE TRANSMISSION TO WILDLIFE

Many wildlife species, especially those closely related to domestic animals, often suffer from diseases transmitted from domestic animals. Chronic Wasting Disease, Bovine Tuberculosis, and brucellosis found in wildlife all have origins in domestic animals. A well-documented relationship exists between population decline in wild bighorn sheep and the spread of pneumonia transmitted from domestic sheep (Schoenecker, 2004).

Bighorn sheep populations around the West have been discimated by disease from domestic sheep. Photo George Wuerthner

PREDATOR CONTROL

Another consequence of livestock production is the tendency to kill predators to protect domestic animals. Predators like wolves (Canis lupus), cougars (Puma concolor), coyotes (Canis latrans), and bears (Ursus spp.) are known as “top-down” species that shape ecosystems. The loss or reduction of these species can have significant ecosystem consequences. For instance, the presence of wolves in Yellowstone National Park is credited with reducing elk browsing on willows and rejuvenating some riparian areas (Ripple and Beschta, 2011).

Predator control has a significant negative influence on native ecosystem loss. Photo George Wuerthner 

Loss of large apex predators creates a release whereby mesopredators like coyote numbers increase. Bobcats (Lynx rufus), gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), and Virginia opossums (Didelphis virginiana) were detected more often at sites occupied by pumas. In contrast, coyotes and raccoons (Procyon lotor) were detected less often. The detection probabilities of smaller mesopredators were related to coyotes, a dominant mesopredator (Wang et al., 2015).

PEST CONTROL

Many native species are considered “pests” by livestock operators who seek to reduce or eliminate them from grazing lands. Prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), gophers (Thomomys spp.), ground squirrels (Spermophilus spp.), and other rodents are often the target of control efforts, sometimes to the point where native species may be endangered (Wuerthner, 1997).

Grasshoppers and other insects are controlled by poison (Shewchuk and Kerr, 1993). The loss of mammals or insects impacts desert ecosystems since these animals are prey for other species, from fish to birds to mammals.

CARBON STORAGE

Deserts have a low capacity for carbon storage; however, since arid regions cover about 47% of the earth’s land mass, they are thought to make up the world’s third-largest carbon sink on land. Nevertheless, new research suggests that some endorheic ( desert basins represent a vital carbon sink on the global scale, with a magnitude similar to deep ocean carbon burial (Li et al., 2017).

VEGETATION LOSS

More significant grazing pressure on the Mexican side of the International border provided a good comparison of how different livestock management policies can affect the land. For example, there was far less green vegetation on the heavily grazed Mexican side of the line (Berelov and Madsen, 2011).

A study of the Mexican-U.S. (Arizona) border found that the more heavily grazed Mexican desert was consistently warmer than the Arizona stations. Sonora (Mexico) stations warm at a statistically significantly faster pace than the stations in Arizona. The stations in Sonora reveal a significant increase in the diurnal temperature range during the summer season (Balling et al., 1998).

Higher temperatures near the surface of the soil can negatively affect insects like native bees and ants, reptiles like snakes, tortoises, and small mammals who move around close to the soil surface.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Although the overall number of domestic animals supported by desert ecosystems is low due to the limited productivity of these sites, domestic livestock has been identified as one of the major contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). While there are no numbers that break out just the domestic animals produced in desert regions, worldwide estimates suggest that domestic livestock may be contributing as much as 14% of all GHG emissions (Steinfeld, and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and Livestock, Environment, and Development (Firm), 2006). A recent estimate put the total global livestock contribution to GHG emissions at 23% (Reisinger and Clark, 2017).

CONCLUSIONS

Livestock production is one of the most significant influences on desert areas where it occurs, often leading to greater desertification and loss of biodiversity. When you consider the overall large landscape footprint and the cumulative effects of livestock production, including the damage to riparian areas, forage competition with native wildlife, disease transfer, soil compaction, alteration of plant communities, predator control, and dewatering of streams for irrigated forage production, it is easy to understand why some assert it is the greatest threat to our desert ecosystems.

Due to the natural aridity of desert landscapes, the ability to support livestock is limited. If a full accounting of both the economic and ecological costs impacts were done, it would be difficult to justify continued livestock production in arid ecosystems.

THE SOLUTION

It would never pencil out if there were an accurate accounting of the true costs of livestock production in arid landscapes. Ranchers, in effect, transfer some of their real costs on to society or the landscape.

It’s time to admit that livestock grazing in arid lands is a vast ecological and economic mistake. The Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement proposal is the most practical solution to the continued degradation of public lands. Under the Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement proposal, ranchers with public land allotments would be paid a fee to terminate grazing privileges. In addition, the grazing allotment would be permanently closed to future livestock use.

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The Myths of Point Reyes, Part 4

By Ken Bouley

Last June (2021), the Wildlife News published a series entitled “The Myths of Point Reyes,” a three-part paper analyzing the multifaceted, ongoing controversy over continued commercial ranching inside Point Reyes National Seashore, which lies just north of San Francisco, on the California Coast.

Much has happened since that publication: the Park Service announced its final “Record of Decision” (ROD), capturing its go-forward plan for park management; soon after this, environmental groups sued the Park Service over those same plans; and citizen groups conducted and published water quality tests downstream of the ranches, capturing the attention of the California Coastal Commission (CCC) and the San Francisco regional Water Quality Board (SFRWQB).

What follows is an update on these goings-on, some supplemental content to certain of the named Myths previously published, and one completely new myth, that of Continuity, resulting from research done since last summer.

The Record of Decision

On September 13, 2021, the NPS issued its final Record of Decision (ROD) regarding the future of ranching in Point Reyes National Seashore. They selected one of the previously elaborated plans, Alternative B, granting ranches new, 20-year leases, diversified livestock, new expanded commercial activities, and including a plan to cull native tule elk to avoid conflicts with ranches. The ROD included a few alterations to the draft version of B, which were minor enough in nature as to preclude the need for additional review and public comment. One example of the alterations was changing the number of elk to be tolerated in the Drakes Beach herd before culling from 120 to 140, a number just above the estimated population at the time of publication.

The choice of Alternative B was justified based on three assertions: first, that continued ranching in the Seashore is consistent with congressional intent; second, that it fulfills the NPS’s charter to preserve cultural resources; and third, that the selected plan does not impair resources in the park.

Congressional Intent

There is a three-page section of the ROD covering “Congressional intent.” These pages contain a few non-sequiturs and thinly supported inferences regarding Congress’s alleged long-standing “interest” in ranching in Point Reyes. Several passages seem to assume that any observation of the role of ranching in the history of the area amounts to an implicit endorsement of its continuance.

But there are two references to non-legally binding publications from Congress which contain unequivocal endorsements of continued ranching:

• A 1978 House Report accompanying changes to the Point Reyes Enabling Legislation, which stated “the use of agricultural lease-backs is encouraged to the fullest extent in ensuring the perpetuation of this use.”
• A 2019 “Joint Explanatory Statement,” authored by Rep. Huffman, stating that “multi-generational ranching and dairying is important both ecologically and economically” and is “fully consistent with Congress’s intent for the management of Point Reyes National Seashore.”

Furthermore, the Point Reyes Enabling Legislation was modified in 1978 to allow (but not to mandate or even endorse) ranching leases at the discretion of the Interior Secretary.

The ROD goes on to explain that “The NPS Management Policies 2006 (Section 1.4.3.1) direct park managers to consider Congressional interest, as expressed in enabling legislation, when deciding whether to allow a legislatively authorized use.” (Note the preceding references are not actually part of the Enabling Legislation.)

Of course, the ROD makes no mention of the fact that “Congressional intent” in this case may be nothing more than a few, rare riders added by the local Congressperson, at the behest of those who stand to gain from it and who represent important stakeholders in a wider influential industry (in this case, agriculture). Representative Huffman and Senator Feinstein both receive significant campaign contribution from dairy and agriculture.

Furthermore, all relevant and cited laws and explanatory statements from Congress predate the EIS. In other words, to the degree that Congress has in fact supported continued ranching in Point Reyes, the question of whether livestock operations impair resources was not informed by any systematic study, which did come about until the court-mandated EIS recently issued. The appropriateness of ranching in Point Reyes was declared by various boosters, including Representative Huffman, but before the EIS was published. In other words, Congress may have endorsed ranching in Point Reyes presuming it was ecologically benign, but Congress has yet to endorse ranching there despite its ecological impacts, because those were not established on the record until very recently.

Overall, the claim that there is long standing congressional intent to keep ranching in Point Reyes is venturous at best. But let’s grant that a sufficient case can be made for it.

Preservation of Cultural Resources

Regarding the preservation of culture and history, the Myth of History material published previously argues that modern practices and an obliteration of Indigenous People’s imprint on the land counts against continued ranching on this basis. Note that in relevant legislation, culture and history are explicitly subordinate in priority to the preservation of nature. The related section from the Point Reyes Enabling Legislation is quoted here:

• 459c–6. Administration of property

(a) Protection, restoration, and preservation of natural environment

… the property acquired by the Secretary … shall be administered by the Secretary without impairment of its natural values, in a manner which provides for such recreational, educational, historic preservation, interpretation, and scientific research opportunities as are consistent with, based upon, and supportive of the maximum protection, restoration, and preservation of the natural environment within the area… 16 U.S.C. § 459c-6. (Emphasis added.)

So, NPS is required to preserve history but not at a cost to preserving nature. But again, let’s grant that this issue is complex and controversial enough to admit some subjective conclusion to the contrary, biased as it may be.

Non-Impairment

So, with the first two justification reluctantly granted, the question boils down to the third claim, that of non-impairment. The ROD itself comes to the same conclusion:

In establishing Point Reyes and Golden Gate as units of the national park system, Congress envisioned that lands within the parks would be administered to support recreation, inspiration, education, historic preservation, interpretation, and natural and scenic values, and that park resources would be managed in accordance with the high standard of the National Park Service Organic Act, as amended and supplemented. In addition, the legislative record reflects decades of Congressional support for beef and dairy ranching on lands in the planning area, as well as a recognition of the linkage between ranching and maintenance of the park’s scenic and pastoral qualities. This history together with the recent reaffirmation of Congressional support for ranching confirm that ranching remains an appropriate use of park lands today. In accordance with NPS Management Policies Section 1.4.3.1, the NPS has determined that ranching may continue provided that it does not cause impairment or unacceptable impacts to park resources. 

So, does ranching impair resources? The conclusion of the ROD states, “In the best professional judgment of the NPS staff involved with the EIS, no impairment of the park’s resources or values will result from the implementation of the selected action.” This follows a step-by-step treatment of expected impacts to soils, water, vegetation, wildlife, including elk, cultural landscapes and the like, and air. Excepting cultural landscapes, each section claims that planned mitigations and improvements, bolstered by biological opinions from various commenting agencies (such as the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) etc.) will result in resources improving, or at least not worsening.

Bearing in mind that no impairments to any resource type are to be tolerated, it is remarkable that in each dimension, Alternative B is somehow found to be innocuous. One could argue that these expectations are speculative and optimistic, especially given the lack of budget and poor record in the park regarding enforcement and compliance. The previously published Myth of Stewardship section catalogs the documented impacts of ranching in Point Reyes. Additionally, there are numerous and continuing episodes of ranchers flouting lease agreements and the law.

Examples:

1. Many concerned citizens are still waiting to hear if there will be any consequences whatsoever for the ranch leaseholder who was found to have illegally bulldozed a 900-foot path through native vegetation and into a creek supporting endangered species, in clear violation of his existing lease. This incident occurred in the Coastal Zone, meaning it is under the jurisdiction of the California Coastal Commission (see below.) Note it was the leaseholder himself who admitted to running the bulldozer and not, for example, a new employee who might not have known better. Note the incident was discovered by a member of the public, not by the Park Service. Note the very creek involved in the incident is referenced in the Park Service’s water quality study as standing to improve via future management practices.

1. Similarly, as far the author is aware, there has been no public notification of the consequences, clean-up, or related costs regarding the discovery (again by a private citizen, not by the Park Service) of a toxic dump on E Ranch in the Seashore. The dump site is in the Coastal Zone. The Park Service signaled surprise — “While it is common for ranch operations to have a small area of material storage, the nature and scale of this accumulated debris is concerning,” said Melanie Gunn, a spokeswoman for the park.” But the site had been there for decades according to satellite imagery, so it’s not clear which reflects worse on NPS, that they were aware of the dumps and did nothing about them, or that they somehow did not know.

1. In April of 2022, it emerged, again discovered by a member of the public and not the ostensible governing agency — the National Park Service — that several ranch building in PRNS had nonfunctional or entirely absent septic systems. In some cases, raw human sewage was being dumped into open pastures. In another case, the lease holder could not find the septic system for one of the residences. The maintenance of septic systems and associated costs are the responsibility of the leaseholders under the terms of the leases. The public has still not been made aware of what consequences, if any, there may be for these remarkable derelictions.

Another example of the shaky nature of the non-impairment prognosis of the ROD is its reliance on a NPS water quality study in predicting improvements in that area. Water quality may be the most stubborn hurdle regarding aspirations of non-impairment. See the Water Quality section below for more detail on this topic.

So how can it be that the EIS indicates removing ranching would benefit the air, water, soil, wildlife, and vegetation, but the ROD concludes that perpetuating ranching does not impair them? The reason is because the baseline of the plan is taken as the current conditions. Existing conditions as a baseline for analysis was explicitly requested by the Point Reyes Seashore Ranching Association in a 2014 letter to NPS, which in the relevant section concluded, “The environmental baseline for this [environmental assessment] should include all of the ranching, farming, interpretive, visitor serving and retail activities that exist today, without tule elk.”

In other words, the Park Service does not claim that after the plan is implemented, resources in the park won’t (still) be impaired in any absolute sense; they merely claim that, if all goes well regarding predicted improvements, compliance, and governance, at least things won’t get worse. But this is not what the law says in plain English — status quo is not “restoration” — nor is it what the public is demanding. Nor is it a stance that has served us and the Earth well. “First, do no harm,” does not make sense when applied locally in a national park against a backdrop of impending global environmental disasters.

Legal Response

In response to this decision, a lawsuit was filed by environmental groups in January 2022 challenging the ROD’s Alternative B on the basis of the Point Reyes Enabling Legislation, the Organic Act (which established and governs the entire national park system), the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Clean Water Act. As of this writing, the case is still in court.

Another lawsuit was filed by the Harvard Law Clinic in June 2021 against NPS “for its negligence in allowing tule elk to die slow and preventable deaths as a result of starvation and dehydration” in the Tomales Point Elk Reserve.

Supplemental Information

Following are sundry additions to the previously published Myths material. This section may be better understood in context after reading the original Myths publications on each associated topic.

Supplemental to the Myth of Stewardship 

The ecological richness and value of Point Reyes should be noted. It is the only National Seashore on the West Coast, surrounded by the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and contains an impressive roster of habitats: ancient conifer and mixed forests, coastal prairie, wind-swept coastal scrub, verdant canyons, riparian corridors, sandy and rocky beaches, fresh and saltwater estuaries, marshes, mudflats, intertidal zones, dunes, and lagoons. Flora includes 750 species, including ~20% of all California natives. Unsurprisingly, these habitats support diverse wildlife: mountain lions, coyotes, bobcats, badgers, mountain beaver, two species of weasel, river and sea otters, fox, deer, elk and others. The Park is along the Pacific Flyway and almost half of all North American bird species, nearly 500 in all, are recorded there. There are over 100 species registered as threatened, rare, or endangered at the state or federal level.

One defense of continued ranching heard occasionally regarding Point Reyes is that grazing mitigates against wildfire danger. There is some debate about whether this is true, but the claim usually does not include any recognition even if it were true, native grazers like tule elk could, if allowed, provide the same benefit with vastly less impact on the land. In other words, one cannot simultaneously hold that it is unfortunately necessary to restrict the tule elk population through lethal means, and that cattle are necessary to mitigate fire danger via the grazing service they provide. Regardless, the Tomales Point Elk Reserve, which has not seen cattle since 1978, has not had any wildfires and does not appear to be overloaded with fuel. Nor does the claim usually acknowledge that the dense fuel banks that can pop up in the ranchlands are comprised of invasive plant species brought in by the ranches and spread by the cattle in the first place, and contrast starkly with deeper routed, drought-tolerant native plants that evolved in the area. Neither does the argument acknowledge that if the Point Reyes lands currently impacted by ranching were managed as wildlands, various other efforts could be employed to mitigate fire dangers (if any) which do not have the associated impacts as described here. Neither does the argument usually recognize that globally superabundant cattle are a large part of what’s warming the planet in the first place. It is a dubious argument, indeed, which proposes as a solution the actual cause of the problem.

Another argument you hear frequently is that livestock grazing keeps back invasive plants and thereby benefits certain rare, native plants such as the endangered Sonoma spineflower (Chorizanthe valida). This plant species, however, once thought to be extinct, was discovered at Abbott’s Lagoon, outside the ranch area. Another rare plant, supple daisy (Erigeron supplex), was recently (2017) discovered at Pierce Point, which, as mentioned, has not seen cattle since 1978. In general, this argument appears to be a classic red herring; it may appear true in selected particulars, but no one makes a case that native plants benefit in net from cattle in the Seashore.

A study by NPS found that over a third of the rangelands in PRNS were overgrazed between 2012 and 2015. The EIS further states that “grazing in the planning area [has] negatively affected fish habitat as a result of sedimentation, loss of habitat complexity, and diminished riparian ecosystem function” and that “agricultural activities contribute to habitat degradation and reduced water quality and quantity for fishes.”

More generally on this topic, there is an ongoing debate regarding the promise of “regenerative ranching.” A September 2021 article in the New Republic, The Myth of Regenerative Ranching, calls this a “branding exercise,” and points out Point Reyes specifically as “a microcosm of a much broader anti-wildlife bent in American ranching, regenerative and otherwise.”

Straus Creamery, which enjoys a good reputation with the public and purchases milk from two dairies in PRNS,  brazenly projects the headline “carbon neutral farming” in adverts on social media. If you click through, though, what you learn is, they are not actually doing it; they are working on a plan to create a model for doing it, on their own farm only (not in Point Reyes), by the end of 2023.

Meanwhile, a recent report from Springer Nature and Oregon State University underscores the importance of removing commercial grazing from federal lands as part of the uphill battle against climate change.

Supplemental to the Myth of Stewardship – tule elk

In 1993, the Report of the Scientific Advisory Panel on Control of Tule Elk on Point Reyes National Seashore concluded, “The long-range goal of elk management at PRNS should be the re-establishment of free-ranging elk throughout the seashore and associated public lands. This would involve elimination of exotic cervids and removal of the fence across Tomales Point. [The National Park Service] and [California Department of Fish and Game] should develop a long-range management plan with the goal of achieving a large, healthy, free-ranging elk population subjected to a minimum of management intervention.”

NPS eventually supplied minerals and water to the fenced herd at Tomales Point. Whether they will continue to do so is unknown, since it’s unclear why they decided to change or violate their own policy to do so in the first place. The obvious ostensible reason is immense public outcry over their mounting deaths. These actions may also violate the Wilderness Act, which restricts activities in designated wilderness areas and directs that “each agency administering any area designated as wilderness shall be responsible for preserving [its] wilderness character.”

A 2015 New York Times story quoted a prominent ranch family member on the absurdity of the captive elk. “’How can the National Park Service trap and contain animals and not have them get water?’ asked Gary Giacomini, a former Marin County supervisor who worked to protect Point Reyes from development. ‘It strikes me as absolutely preposterous, if not criminal, that the Park Service would let half the elk herd die by depriving them of water. Imagine if the ranchers did that to their cows — they’d all be indicted.’”

Supplemental to the Myth of Special Jurisdiction

The previously published Myth of Special Jurisdiction section examined the common claim that since Point Reyes is a national seashore, not a national park, management standards are lesser. Despite the fact that the Park Service has diligently insisted on the “Seashore” moniker, they did acknowledged in their ROD that there is no meaningful difference between the two with respect to policy:

[As of 1976,] “the NPS used a three-tiered management approach for lands under its jurisdiction based on the classification of each unit. Areas classified as national seashores and national recreation areas were managed with less emphasis on natural resource protection than areas classified as national parks. The intent of the 1976 amendment was to direct NPS to manage Point Reyes under the higher standard then used for national parks. H. Rep. 94-1680, at 3–4 (1976). The NPS abandoned the three-tiered management approach in the 1980s and thereafter managed all park units, regardless of classification, to the same high standard mandated by the National Park Service Organic Act, as amended and supplemented.”

Supplemental to the Myth of Value

The claim that ranching in PRNS costs significant taxpayer money was verified by NPS in their final ROD: “A 2018 analysis of park investment in the management of the range program was on average 1.5 times more than rental income derived from the ranch permits. In fiscal year 2017, the full cost of ranch management was in excess of $1.3 million, when ranch lease payments were less than $500,000.”

Park staff assessed the number of residents and employees on ranches in the Seashore in spring 2019, and found that operations support 63 direct full-time jobs. In total, 188 full-time residents live on ranches in the park. This includes full- and part-time employees, ranchers, and their families.

There is evidence that some of these workers are undocumented and tolerate unjust terms of employment and unsafe and unsanitary living and working conditions. A September 2021 letter from the Resource Renewal Institute to Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland says “We now know that the Park Service is turning a blind eye not only to ranchers’ environmental abuses but to their outrageous labor practices that pay poverty-level wages, rent out unsafe housing and provide no workers’ benefits or rights.” There was no reply from the Secretary.

Local businesswoman Miyoko Schinner of Miyoko’s Vegan Creamery has offered jobs to any and all of the 63 ranch employees, should they lose their jobs to ranch shutdowns and restoration efforts.

Per the NPS, the economic value attributed to tourism in the Seashore in 2017 was ~$132 million, dwarfing that of the dairies and ranches. This number is a measure of the total estimated value of the production of goods and services supported by NPS visitor spending. That figure is corroborated by the National Park Service Visitor Spending Effects Report, which relays that in 2018, nearly 2.5 million people visited the Seashore and spent $107 million in gateway communities near the park. Visitor spending has remained steady in the four-year period ending in 2018, ranging from an estimated $106 million to $108 million per year. Per the report, in 2018, visitor spending supported 1,150 jobs in the local area and had an aggregate benefit to the local economy of $134 million. Most park visitor spending was for hotels (28.2%), followed by restaurants (22.4%), gasoline (14.9%), groceries (14.6%), retail (7.9%), and recreation industries (6.93%).

Additional Myth — the Myth of Continuity

Whereas an impression is given that the Point Reyes ranching families have deep roots in the land (not relative to the Coast Miwok, of course), in many cases the families operating certain ranches are relatively new to them:

• D Ranch was bought by NPS from Alice Hall in November 1971 and is now leased by Betty Nunes and Ernie Spaletta, who never owned the land.
• G Ranch was bought from Radio Corporation of America by the Trust for Public Land in January 1977 and transferred to the Park the following year. It is now leased by Kevin Lunny whose, family never owned the land.
• Home Ranch changed hands after the crash of 1929, was bought by a real estate agent named Leland Stanford Murphy, who sold out to the park in 1968, and is now leased by the McDonald-Lucchesi family.
• K Ranch was purchased in 1939 by a group of people, one of whom, James Lundgren, became the sole owner in 1960. Today it is leased by Dan, Dolores and David Evans and Julie Evans- Rossotti (who also lease H Ranch, AT&T Ranch, and D. Rogers Ranch).
• N Ranch was the first sold to the Park Service, in 1963 by its owners Edward and Hildegarde Heims. Today it is leased to the McDonald family, who also lease Home Ranch.
• AT&T Ranch, originally part of F Ranch, was leased by the John J. Gallagher whose family bought it in 1919. Today it is leased by Dave Evans, a nephew by marriage of the original owner’s son, but not a direct heir.
• Radio Corporation of America (RCA) sold the 1,049-acre property in the southern end of PRNS, to the Trust For Public Land in 1976 who sold it to NPS in 1979. Today its former facilities and their grounds are leased by Commonweal. The surrounding rangeland is leased by the Niman Ranch, a large network of U.S. family farmers and ranchers and subsidiary of Perdue Farms, whose operators never owned the land.
• There are three additional ranches in the Golden Gate Recreation Area (GGNRA) , McFadden Ranch, Edwin Gallagher Ranch, and the R. Giacomini Ranch, which today are leased by operators who never owned the land.

Related to this topic is the succession policy maintained by the NPS pertaining to ranch leases in the Seashore. The succession policy is just that — mere policy rather than law — and is determined by the park superintendent. The current version as of this writing was published September 2021 and indicates that if a leaseholder should not wish to continue his or her lease, that lease will be first offered to the current lessee’s immediate family, then to holders of other leases in the park, and then to “long-term” (not defined) employees from other operations in the park. Lastly, the park will consider an “operator” identified by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (FIGR), the federally recognized Native American group which contains some Coast Miwok descendants (and which operators a casino in nearby Rohnert Park.) Notice that there are no conditions which explicitly trigger a restoration of lands associated with a surrendered ranching lease.

Incidentally, there are no leaseholders who are people of color, nor, as far as the author is aware, has there ever been.

Water quality

The Seashore in 2020 published a study suggesting that best management practices, or BMPs, improved water quality in four ranch-impacted watersheds between 2000 and 2013 and boasted on their website that “water samples met regulatory criteria six times more often” after implementation. Omitted was the fact that before the new practices, regulatorily compliant measurements were found just 6 percent of the time, and afterwards only 38 percent of the time. So, the park’s headline, “BMPs Improve Water Quality on the Point Reyes Peninsula,” could have more honestly been given as “Expensive Best Practices Make Small Dent in Ongoing Pollution.”

Also omitted was the fact that the improvements, such as they were, were theoretical; in other words, they were not found in the actual measures, but were the rain-adjusted outputs of analytic models run as part of the research. The problem with this is, the governing agencies do not accommodate any such adjustments – they care about the absolute measured values solely. The Park Service is therefore misrepresenting its own already dubious results to the agencies, the media, and the public.

Lastly, the NPS interpretation of their own paper implies that spiked bacteria outflow after rains is somehow normal and should be discounted. However, freshwater stream outflows after rains are known to trigger the return of anadromous fish such as endangered coho salmon and steelhead. In other words, the stream flows after rains bring in the fish and simultaneously bring out massive amounts of bacteria.

The ROD over-ambitiously states, “Implementation of the selected action … will result in continued improvements in water quality in the planning area, consistent with trends that have been documented through long-term monitoring (Lewis et. al. 2019 and Voeller et. al. 2021).” But the cited papers make no such claims. They claim only that certain BMPs in certain watersheds did, in fact, make certain, mostly-modest, improvements.

The Voeller study also had data errors, uncontrolled variables, and various other problems. A complete critique can be found in the author’s comments to the California Coastal Commission’s September 2022 meeting.

Furthermore, both papers’ authors and in fact the field at large are aware that there are steeply diminishing returns expected from ongoing efforts to curb manure pollution in the waterways. The leap from “we saw certain limited improvements when we performed the obvious and easiest mitigations” (which itself is a dubious claim) to “we will get more of the same across the planning area in the future and reach satisfactory overall water quality” is entirely unsubstantiated.

In September 2022, an additional, more comprehensive independent water quality study was released by the Turtle Island Restoration Network. This study was conducted between October 2021 through late January 2022, and showed additional alarmingly poor water quality, including E. coli rates up to 170 times greater than legal standards.

California Coastal Commission

The California Coastal Commission (CCC) is charged with overseeing compliance of the California Coastal Act, which states, “the biological productivity and the quality of coastal waters, streams, wetlands, estuaries, and lakes appropriate, to maintain optimum populations of marine organisms and for the protection of human health shall be maintained and, where feasible, restored through, among other means, minimizing adverse effects of waste water discharges and entrainment, controlling runoff, preventing depletion of ground water supplies and substantial interference with surface water flow.”

As of this writing, the CCC has had three significant meetings regarding Point Reyes National Seashore.

1. In April of 2021, the Coastal Commission, at the end of a 12-hour meeting, eventually rendered a determination of “compliance with conditions” via a 5-4 vote, where at least four commissioners received ex parte communications from Representative Huffman, staunch supporter of ranching in Point Reyes.

The conditions were that NPS return to the commission in one year with a water quality strategy and a climate plan. The four dissenters in the conditional approval were passionate and at times exasperated during the hearing, especially Commissioner Dayna Bochco, who called the treatment of the tule elk under the proposed plan “cruel.”

1. Another CCC meeting was held in April of 2022, where the Commission weighed in on the water quality strategy which the park had submitted. The Commission unanimously panned the strategy. Commissioner Mark Gold said, “the water quality plan is just not adequate.” Commissioner Aminzadeh went further and said, “I think it’s an embarrassment where we are today.”

It one point in this tense meeting, Superintendent Kenkel asked the Commission, “If conditions are so tragic at the seashore, why are the visitors still coming?” It may have subsequently been explained to the Superintendent offline that visitation is not necessarily related to environmental health and that, furthermore, E. coli is microscopic. It may also have been suggested to him that high visitation rates should be taken as more motivation to improve water quality, rather than evidence that it’s not needed. At any rate, Superintendent Kenkel was not available for the third meeting, but was replaced by Assistant Superintendent Anne Altman.

1. Point Reyes and Alternative B once again were on the CCC agenda in September of 2022. The revised water quality strategy, in the face of intense public and expert scrutiny, was deemed acceptable by the CCC staff, whose job it is to evaluate such submissions and make recommendations to the commissioners. This time, the Commission voted 6-5 to accept the plan, again with conditions.

A featured topic of this most recent meeting was the matter of jurisdiction. It was discussed that NPS could continue with its management plans regardless of the CCC’s consistency ruling. Commission staff said, “The Park Service could at any time walk away from that process and the commission would have no authority to require compliance with its recommendations…the commission does have the option of filing a lawsuit.” A lawsuit, of course, would involve a long, costly process and would reflect poorly on both agencies.

As a result, even some of the majority six commissioners who ruled in favor of approval indicated they were doing so solely to keep the Commission involved in water quality oversight ongoing. Commissioner Roberto Uranga said, ‘I don’t believe we can just walk away,” before voting for approval. Commissioner Steve Padilla said “The fact of the matter is, we have limited authority here…again I want to echo my own frustration…no, we shouldn’t have these types of uses in the coastal zone…and we shouldn’t be tolerating the kind of water quality impacts that are resulting…” before also voting for approval. Commissioner Bochco, who voted against approval, said, “There isn’t a person who has the ability to think straight who thinks this [plan] is a good idea.

Looking Forward

In March 2022, NPS announced plans to update the management plan for elk area behind the fence on Tomales Point. The plan drew immediate criticism from environmental groups, including the Public Lands Conservancy and the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, because, among numerous other objections, such a divide and conquer strategy is irresponsible and likely illegal. In other words, park administrators appear to be planning to follow the controversial management plan amendment for park lands south of the fence with a similarly contentious exercise for the area north of the fence, without considering the problem as a whole and without considering doing what experts told them to do 30 years ago: take down the fence.

In the short term, even though the tenuous ROD says “NPS will continue to work closely with local agricultural organizations, state agencies, natural resource conservation experts, and stakeholder groups to share information and discuss issues related to ranching,” Seashore Superintendent Kenkel has, in fact, refused to meet with a coalition of environmental groups and concerned citizens, citing the ongoing lawsuits. The process has bound those concerned in a Catch-22, where lawsuits were the unfortunate last resort, but which also provide a ready-made excuse for NPS to completely disengage with the concerned public (who own the land, by the way.)

Conclusion Repeated

What was written 18 months ago is still true: the science, public opinion, the law, and any unbiased assessment of social justice all require that ranching end in the Point Reyes National Seashore and the park become what a national park is meant to be: a refuge for beleaguered wildlife, a recognition of genuine traditional stewardship, a retreat for citizens whose daily experience is otherwise bereft of nature, and a small respite against the seemingly inexorable collapse of our once-healthy planet.

Are we stakeholders? Are you a stakeholder? We don’t know what will emerge from the lawsuits. Concerned citizens are encouraged to follow with interest and reach out to Interior Secretary Haaland (Deb_Haaland@ios.doi.gov) and Rep. Huffman (415 258-9657), and implore them to intervene on behalf of wilderness.

Air view of Pedro Bay area on Illiamna Lake, Alaska. Photo George Wuerthner 

In December, the Pedro Bay Native Corporation (PBC) in Alaska placed 44,000 acres of its property under a $20 million conservation easement that may be the nail in the coffin for the proposed Peeble Creek Gold and Copper Mine in Bristol Bay.

The Peeble Creek ore deposit is considered the second-largest ore body of its type in the world. However, most of the ore is low grade which requires significant processing. Hence the need to move the ore from the mine site on a tributary to Bristol Bay waters to a shipping port at Pile Bay on Cooke Inlet.

The mine would be an open-pit mine a mile square in area and a third of a mile deep. Ponds would be dammed to contain tailing, including some toxic materials. A 165-mile natural gas pipeline would be constructed to provide power for the operation and 80 miles of road and pipeline to transport the mined concentrate to Cook Inlet.

Chigmit Mountains along Illiamna Lake, Alaska. Photo George Wuerthner 

Pedro Bay Corporation (PBC) oversees 92,100 acres of surface land allotted under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Pedro Bay village is located on the eastern side of Illiamna Lake, Alaska’s largest lake. A short road currently connects the village and lake with salt water at Pile Bay on Cooke Inlet. Development of the Peeble Creek Miner has been predicated on constructing a haul road from the mine site along Lake Illiamna to Pile Bay so that ore can be shipped economically for processing.

Fortunately, the PBC Board of Directors has unanimously concluded: “that the Pebble Limited Partnership does not meet our responsible development standards given the unquantifiable impacts the Mine and Transportation Corridor could have on the resources of Pedro Bay, therefore PBC opposes the Pebble Mine and Transportation Corridor.”

The new conservation easements occupy several portions of the proposed mine road and the existing Pedro Bay-Pile Bay road. The conservation easements prohibit the development and execution of any right-of-way agreements needed by the mine to develop the road across Pedro Bay Corporation lands to reach salt water at Pile Bay

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The Bristol Bay region is world renoun as a major salmon spawning and producing area in the world. Sport fishing for salmon and other fish is a major economic activity on Illiamna lake. Photo George Wuerthner

Opponents of the gold mine fear development could harm the Bristol Bay salmon fisheries. Bristol Bay is the most significant salmon spawning and rearing habitat region in the world. In 2022, Bristol Bay’s fishery run was the largest on record at 79 million fish. In addition, the salmon fishery is a significant economic driver in southwest Alaska, accounting for 57% of global sockeye salmon harvests.

I once witnessed the amazing fecundity of the Bristol Bay system. I kayaked around Illiamna Lake during the sockeye salmon run when I was younger. I was windbound for several days on a campsite on a cliff where I could look River, and Pile River and safeguard the most productive and intact spawning and rearing habitats for sockeye salmon within the Iliamna Lake watersheds.

Conservation easements will cover some of the major salmon spawning habitat in Illiamna Lake. Photo George Wuerthner 

The shareholders of the Pedro Bay Native Corporation voted overwhelmingly to accept the conservation easements and will retain ownership of these lands.

When Deb Haaland was nominated for the position of Secretary of Interior, I received dozens of emails from nearly every large conservation organization to support her nomination. She was appointed without having any particular experience or background in public lands issues and limited executive experience in running major federal land management agencies such as the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Land Management.

When I asked some of these organizations why I should support her as Secretary of Interior, I was told that she was a Native American and that was enough qualifications for the job. Presumably, these groups assumed that someone who is part Indian somehow has a genetic predisposition to protect the land and wildlife.

Even worse for the public lands, these same conservation organizations had shown themselves unwilling to publicly criticize environmentally destructive positions or policies by Haaland and the Biden Administration-decisions that they would did oppose when the Trump Administration proposed them.

As the top administrator for America’s public lands agencies including the National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges and Bureau of Land Management, she can have a major influence over how these lands are managed now and in the future. But so far she has failed to be a strong advocate for protecting these icons of the American landscape.

The Bears Ears National Monument, Utah. Photo George Wuerthner 

To Haaland and Biden’s credit, they reinstated the boundaries of the Grand Staircase Escalante, Bears Ears, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monuments, which had been reduced in size by the Trump administration.

However, at the halfway point in the Biden Administration’s tour of duty, I think it’s appropriate to evaluate what Haaland has accomplished in her position as the top land manager for the nation. The Administration has promised to protect 30 percent of the American landscape and waters by 2030, but they have accomplished little towards that goal, and have even supported positions that are counter productive.

What exactly has Haaland and Biden Administration accomplished protecting wildlife and wildlands? Let’s look at the list.

Wolf

For instance, Haaland has failed to relist wolves under the ESA to protect them from the slaughter imposed by some western states such as Idaho and Montana.

She has sided with the Trump administration for a land trade with native groups that would permit the construction of a road through the designated wilderness of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Previous administrations have consistently rejected the road in favor of wildlife protection.

She has supported opening the Naval Petroleum Reserve, the largest undeveloped wildlands in Alaska, a landscape that is functionally a wilderness to oil development.

The Ambler Road would cut across a portion of the Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska. Photo George Wuerthner 

She has remained silent on the proposal to build a 211-mile-long road across the southern Brooks Range and Gates of the Arctic National park to develop a vast mineral deposit owned by Alaskan natives. Is this not a conflict of interest?

Bison at Yellowstone Park. Photo George Wuerthner 

She has failed to halt the slaughter of bison that leave Yellowstone National Park seeking winter range on other public lands outside of the park without voicing opposition to the unnecessary killing.

Cattle degrating Point Reyes National Seashore. Photo George Wuerthner

She has failed to condemn the continued degradation of Point Reyes National Seashore by ranching interests.

Haaland has failed to protect old-growth on BLM lands and elsewhere from logging.

Haaland and the Biden administration promote large-scale industrial solar and wind development on federal lands, all at the expense of wildlife and landscape integrity.

Haaland and the Biden Administration support more oil leasing of federal lands outside of Alaska, including in Wyoming.

WHAT COULD SHE DO

Secretary of Interior Haaland and the Biden administration could redeem themselves in the next two years by advocating, supporting, and aggressively pursuing the following.

1. Support Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement legislation.
2. Oppose the 211-mile-long Ambler Road in the Brooks Range, Alaska.
3. Oppose and stop the Izembek Road across the designated wilderness of the Izembek NWR, Alaska,
4. Oppose Road access to a proposed gold mine in Lake Clark National Park, Alaska,
5. Oppose oil drilling in the Naval Petroleum Reserve, Alaska.
6. Relist wolves under the ESA in the Northern Rockies.
7. Terminating tribal slaughter of bison merely attempting to expand their range on other public lands outside Yellowstone National Park.
8. Support the reintroduction of wild bison to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, Montana
9. Oppose and prevent wind or solar energy development on public lands. There are numerous opportunites for renewable energy development on private lands including distributed solar on houres, as well as abandoned ag lands.
10. Terminate ranching in Point Reyes National Seashore, California.
11. Support and Designate National Monument Status for the following areas:

Sutton Mountain, NM, Oregon; Owyhee Canyonlands NM, Oregon; Range of Light NM, California; Douglas Fir NM, Oregon; Castner Range NM, Texas; Avi Kwa Ame  NM, Nevada; Chumash National Marine Sanctuary, California; Cahokia Mounds NM, Illinois,

12. Support and Designate a Red Desert National Conservation Area for Wyoming.
13. Support the removal of Snake River Dams.
14. Oppose the Uintah Basin oil railway across southern Utah that would facilitate more oil development.
15. Support the White Mountains National Park in New Hampshire.
16. Support livestock removal from Missouri Breaks National Monument.
17. She should terminate all predator control on public lands.
18. Haaland could recommend that the Biden Administration give all Department of Interior Wilderness Study Areas permanet protection as national monuments or other status until such time as Congress determines their fate.
19. Haaland can be an active voice for more parks, and other national preserves near urban centers so these lands are more easily accessed by city dwellers, including minorities.

Given that we are facing a biodiveristy and climate crisis of immense proportions, enacting major shifts in our public lands from exploitation to preservation is essential. By frequently abandoning the public interest in favor of industrial development and Indian-owned commercial interests, Haaland has turned her back on Americans and their public lands.

She has a small window of time to reverse her failure to conserve wildlife and ecosystems on public land, but the road map above lays out the path for redemption. Does she, and the Biden administration, have the fortitude to act on behalf of preservation of one of America’s greatest legacy–it’s public lands, national parks, wilderness areas and wildlife?