JACKSON, Wyo. — On Oct. 26, the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative (NRCC) hosted the 2023 Jackson Hole Wildlife Symposium, where keynote speaker Robert Keiter, Wallace Stegner Professor of Law at the University of Utah, emphasized how laws and policy are historically and presently integrated into human-wildlife coexistence.
According to Keiter, there’s no single solution that’s going to resolve all of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s conservation challenges because of the region’s jurisdiction fragmentation between different levels of government. However, Keiter notes that the idea of a Grand Strategy to coordinate and scale efforts towards coexistence embraces a number of considerations that would push conservation in the right direction.
A Grand Strategy is nothing new; it’s a blueprint of combined behavior with a robust literature behind it. But Susan Clark, co-founder and emeritus board member of the NRCC, is advocating for the collaborative creation of a five to 10 year Grand Strategy for the GYE, and suggests that having one can particularly help communities positioned in the area achieve long-term coexistence.
A Grand Strategy is a way to enable different organizations and agencies to work towards the same ultimate outcomes. One of the problems, however, is that even within certain systems there are interagency tensions. Keiter suggests a lot of that tension exists in the law and policy related to ecological coexistence, something worth understanding to better inform the development of any future strategies.
“The challenge moving forward is how to manage wildlife and other transboundary resources in this complex setting amidst ongoing governmental tensions both at the federal, state, tribal and local levels, and between states,” Keiter said in his Symposium speech.
As an example, Keiter points to how state law governs wildlife management in the regions surrounding the federal jurisdictions of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, in addition to private land use and regulation. National Parks are faced with the impacts of out-of-boundary state decisions, while already being pressured internally with having to choose between prioritizing conservation and recreation.
While Keiter said the National Park Service (NPS) seems committed to giving conservation priority over recreational activities or uses, he emphasizes that national parks serve as an economic engine for gateway communities and, because of this, NPS management and policy are significantly influenced by local values.
“Balancing national values and local values continues to be an ongoing challenge,” Keiter said. Navigating the fact that wildlife doesn’t understand boundaries between parks and communities that humans have created and imposed also remains a difficult task.
The evolution of grizzly bear management illustrates such need for and benefits of a coordinated management approach. According to Keiter, grizzly bear management under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been very controversial, as seen by the efforts to delist the grizzly bear from federal protection and turn the recovery plan over to the state.
The most recent attempt to return management of the grizzly bear back to Wyoming makes Keiter question if coordinated management will continue between federal agencies, the NPS and the states where hunting is considered.
This lack of coordination can also be seen between the states and national parks in the GYE wolf restoration efforts, and also with the multi-jurisdictional conflict over bison, Keiter says.
“Just within the last few months we’ve seen Yellowstone release its own drafted Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a Bison Management Plan, and the State of Montana is already on record rejecting all the alternatives included in that park service plan,” Keiter said at the Symposium.
Keiter notes roughly 10,000 bison have been killed over the last 20 to 25 years under the fragmented approach to management. While the EIS is setting the state up for more conflict, Keiter says it could also create opportunities for more coordination. He emphasizes the transfer of bison to Native American reservations and the expansion of quarantine facilities outside of Yellowstone is an emerging solution of cooperation.
Elk management and the objection to feedgrounds by Montana and Idaho show that coordination questions prevalent across the GYE also involve state to state tensions. With the town of Jackson blocking one of the main elk migration routes, Keiter says the result is a very unnatural setting totally out of line with trying to manage the GYE as a naturally regulating system. In this way, feedgrounds can seem necessary to support the elk population; however, they also serve as a potential incubator for diseases like brucellosis and CWD.
Although Clark points out that a majority of experts in conservation, wildlife and ecology agree there’s a sense of urgency to quicken the pace of coordination, Keiter does accept that designated Wilderness areas are providing a buffer for most sides of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks to help protect the core of this system for now.
But there are still conflicts between traditional livestock grazers and ranchers and large carnivores in the ecosystem, a tension which Keiter sees clearly persisting in policy and law.
Stay tuned for a followup article discussing coexistence with large carnivores and where to go from here.
