Viewpoint: Don’t let Yellowstone Conservation/Rec Act gut wilderness

Robert Dello-Russo

Over forty years ago, I lived in the lower Yaak River Valley in northwest Montana. At that time, a collaboration among U.S. Borax, the ASARCO Mining Corporation and the Kootenai National Forest sought to mine copper and silver ore in the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.

A small group of dedicated, local citizens – including the Cabinet Resource Group, together with folks from the Idaho panhandle – fought hard to oppose this “carving up” of the Cabinet Mountains – in part to prevent the pollution of pristine waterways and in part to protect the tiny and threatened population of grizzly bears that resided there. As part of my contribution to the cause, I created the 1st cartoon below, which was published in a 1984 letter to the editor of the High Country News.

That was then.

Now, I live in the middle of the Paradise Valley in southwest Montana and a collaboration among the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Montana Wild and the Wilderness Society – all major “conservation” groups who should be protecting wildlife and wilderness – together with mechanized recreationists (mountain bikers, snowmobilers etc.) and the Custer-Gallatin National Forest, are trying to advance the so-called Greater Yellowstone Conservation and Recreation Act.

It has been 40+ years and nothing seems to have changed! The GYC et al. plan is really, in many ways, no different than the destructive threats proposed for the Cabinets years ago, as it will allow for much of the existing Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area and 1000s of acres of wilderness-quality land in the Gallatin Mountains to be “carved up” and left open to destruction, and the habitat and migratory routes so critical to wildlife, like grizzly bears (once again!), to be impacted or lost (see my new version of the cartoon below). If allowed to succeed, this current collaboration would – in my opinion – result in an ironic tragedy of Shakespearian proportions.

Please honor the history of conservation in Montana and revise the Greater Yellowstone Conservation and Recreation Act by eliminating the acres sacrificed to mechanized recreation, maximizing the number of wilderness acres and emphasizing and preserving the wildlife of the Gallatin Mountains.

There are already miles of old logging roads and trails in National Forest and other non-wilderness areas for mountain bikers etc. They do not need new playgrounds in wilderness-quality lands.

If this doesn’t sound feasible to you, I suggest you scrap the entire proposal and go back to the drawing board!

Dr. Robert Dello-Russo; Archaeologist / Anthropologist, Illustrator, Cadastral Surveyor