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The Big Hole Valley of Montana Directed by Ramona Marotz-Baden, Ph.D. Southwestern Montana's upper Big Hole valley has only recently attracted outsiders. Ramona Marotz-Baden, Gallatin's program coordinator, has been studying this high-altitude cow-calf ranching community. Her focus is on the adaptations of long-term residents to low agricultural commodity prices, technological innovation, and immigration of newcomers. Land prices have risen as newcomers compete for the land, and at the same time, agricultural prices have fallen. Consequently, farmers and ranchers cannot increase or even maintain their income by buying additional acreage. Land sells for a premium that simply won't "pencil out" in agriculture. Thus, for retirement income, or for equitable distribution among children at the death of parents, the land will likely be sold to outsiders rather than kept in the family. The cultural values of trans-generational farm families and the ecological integrity of their operations are often lost when current land owners cannot pass their operations to their children. This is a rare opportunity to study how ranchers and their adult children, business owners, and newcomers adapt to these changes and to each other in a traditional, ecologically sustainable community. Thus far, the pilot project has focused on ranch families. Additional resources can broaden the study to include newcomers and business owners.
Montana's Big Hole Valley contains the last fluvial (river born) population of Arctic grayling in the lower 48 states. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks estimates that only 3,000 are left in the Big Hole drainage, and these are the last of their kind south of the Canadian border. Thus, the fish is a prime candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act. But grayling are not the only rare creatures in the Big Hole. The ranchers of the Big Hole learned long ago to integrate their cattle and haymaking operations using the least-cost technology. Instead of buying ever bigger and ever more expensive haying equipment, Big Hole ranchers stubbornly persisted in stacking their hay in the fields, using homemade wooden stackers called "beaver slides." Baling and shipping hay is a rare practice in the Big Hole. The result of these efforts is a sustainable system of agriculture. Until very recently, nearly every high school student in the Big Hole was a graduate of the University of Haying. They learned native skills and the values that go with the job, while the ranching families of the valley managed to keep the know-how of low-tech agriculture alive. Unfortunately, the ranchers and the fish end up competing for the same water. Under Western water law - with its fierce dictate of "use it or lose it" - the ranchers of the Big Hole often squeeze the river to get the needed irrigation water. Environmentalists recognize the cost to the vanishing grayling. Given the marginal nature of agriculture, some fear that too much pressure on Big Hole ranchers will hasten land subdivision. The water situation in the valley appears to offer a Hobson's choice: if fish are favored, ranchers are hurt; if ranching is saved, the fish may be lost. Residents have crafted their own solution by creating the Big Hole Watershed Committee, which devises non-coercive solutions to the valley's dilemma. The committee seeks to raise money, public interest, and expertise in efforts to save the grayling while keeping agriculture viable. This strategy seems to be working. Gallatin Writers believes that this model of collaborative resource management should be studied, evaluated, and eventually publicized, for it provides positive models for the future. In so many Western natural resource and environmental issues, productive energies are dissipated through unproductive bickering. The Big Hole Watershed Committee is trying to solve the problem in a manner as sustainable and efficient as the agriculture practiced by some of its members.
Riparian Rejuvenation:
Community-Based Conservation of Cold Water Fisheries Gallatin Writers is leading an effort to reclaim high-quality fisheries in the Northern Rockies. We propose to produce a professional video designed to show landowners how to restore riparian and fishery habitat and increase the value, both ecological and financial, of their property. The Bozeman, Montana area has a significant ranching tradition and is a mecca for those interested in high-quality trout fisheries. Often, however, there is a serious gulf between landowners and conservationists interested in promoting stream restoration. This project is designed to bridge this gap and demonstrate how the interests of farmers, ranchers, and other landowners can complement environmental objectives. People with experience in the farming and ranching industry will help produce and promote the video to agricultural landowners in our region, thus attracting an accepting and interested audience. Gene Surber, a natural resources specialist for Montana State University Extension Service, has worked for 30 years with ranchers, government agencies, and environmental organizations, and will play a key role in this project. He has produced several videos on the technology of restoring streams and riparian areas. Dr. Jim Knight, Extension wildlife specialist at Montana State University, specializes in motivating landowners and offering various fish and wildlife management practices, will also join the effort. Several local ranchers and farmers have successfully protected, improved, or rejuvenated riparian areas. For example, rancher Tom Milesnick successfully restored streams and a portion of the Gallatin River. He built fences to control cattle use of riparian areas, and stopped spraying herbicides near the water. He offers fishing access to a maximum of six people per day at $50 each. Such diversification is especially beneficial for farmers and ranchers. When land has been in the family since the early 1900s, as in the Milesnicks' case, it is no easy thing to give it up to subdivision and development. However, with a struggling agricultural industry there is great pressure, and often little choice, but to sell and subdivide the land. To resist these pressures, many successful farmers and ranchers are seeking innovative ideas that preserve their way of life for the next generation and the riparian zone for all. For some, the improvement of the resource may be sufficient incentive. Others will be motivated by the income potential of a high-quality fishing experience. Gallatin Writers will work with Gene Surber, Jim Knight, and various conservation groups such as Trout Unlimited to design and produce the video. Surber and Knight have credibility and opportunities to introduce the video to farmers, ranchers, other land-owners, and conservation groups. The video project will be an excellent opportunity for Gallatin Writers to foster creativity and cooperation among two of the West's most important constituencies: agriculturists and conservationists, as well as to work closely with Montana State University.
The Private Lands
Photography Project Using photos and stories of individuals and families, fine-art photographer Scott Ridgeway will create a coffee-table book that celebrates the innovative contributions of private landowners to environmental stewardship. Dozens of private, nonprofit land trusts such as The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation work hard to protect significant private lands through contracts and fee-simple purchase. Ridgeway's combined photographic and literary project will draw attention to these innovative experiments in habitat restoration and land conservation. These efforts illustrate a larger movement toward experimentation with new institutional arrangements for achieving conservation goals. Private initiatives are not intended to subvert the government's conservation efforts, but rather to complement those approaches and extend conservation onto lands that are not managed by public agencies. Since 1994, Ridgeway has photographed lands that are protected and preserved by individuals, conservation organizations, and forward-thinking businesses. Ridgeway's work illustrates a vital but often neglected piece of the conservation puzzle: environmental entrepreneurs who bring ecologically valuable private lands into conservation plans. The objective of this attractive book is to expand the knowledge of innovative practices people can use on their own land or can offer as alternative solutions to environmental problems. The beautiful, illustrative photographs will grab the eye, especially of the visual learner, and the accompanying text will tell a compelling story about each project.
Gallatin's Series
of Policy Forums: Science and Innovative Land Management.
Romance mythology defines the West for both the long-term resident and the newcomer. Gallatin does not attempt to alter the fundamental economic and social shifts underway in the West, but rather to study them and explain what is happening in understandable language, thus providing an information base for informed policy decision-making. Important economic, environmental, and political decisions are likely to be far better if based on scientific reality than on romance. In 2001, Gallatin will host a short series of "policy forums" to explore innovative conservation practices and their application to public policy. Increasingly, conservation efforts benefit from both private and public contributions while avoiding the high costs of public ownership and political control. Rather than addressing the symptoms of poorly designed institutions and national policies, we propose a gathering of scholars, media, practitioners, and public intellectuals to explore modest proposals for reform. Topics of the first seminar are Great Basin Restoration, Ecological Implications of Growth in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and In Fire's Way. Our contacts in regional media (e.g., Geoff O'Gara, producer for Wyoming Public Television and Marv Granger, Director of Yellowstone Public Radio) and with public intellectuals (e.g., Dan Kemmis of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West) can help introduce the topics and discussion to the region.
Exploring
Alternatives for Lewis and Clark's Missouri River: Preservation,
Restoration, Education The bicentennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (2003-2005) will focus attention upon the Upper Missouri River, especially the 139-mile Wild and Scenic portion in Montana. This section is extremely attractive, with magnificent white limestone cliffs and spectacular topographic relief. Currently, the area receives modest commercial and private recreational use. However, with the impending Bicentennial, the success of Stephen Ambrose's recent book, Undaunted Courage, and Ken Burns' PBS special on Lewis and Clark, interest in and recreational use of this section is increasing dramatically. As a result, a national treasure is at risk. It is this threat, which will last well beyond the Bicentennial, that motivated Gallatin Writers, in cooperation with the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), to call for proposals. We requested proposals exploring alternative institutional arrangements for the protection of the Wild and Scenic portion of the Missouri River. Gallatin and FREE convened a nationally respected jury to review the proposals and awarded prizes as indicated below. The river corridor is a mosaic of land ownership. Private lands are mixed with state and federal public lands managed by several agencies. The river corridor is managed by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM). On the BLM lands, ranchers lease rights to graze cattle, which congregate in the river's lush bottom lands. The increasing national attention to this stretch of river has produced growing conflict among recreationists and between recreational and traditional agricultural uses. This has prompted some people to lobby the federal government to consider designating the area a national park or a national monument. Local ranchers are concerned such a move would threaten their grazing rights and restrict resource development during especially difficult economic times, and experience shows that conventional approaches to environmental protection (e.g., establishing federally designated protected areas and carefully limiting human use) are often insufficient to protect threatened resources. The cooperation of private landowners, people with huge emotional and economic investments in their land, makes protection more effective. As noted in the booklet, "The View from Airlie: Community Based Conservation in Perspective," produced by the Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg Foundation: The real trouble with the protected area strategy is that it tends to omit humanity from the realm of nature and from the enterprise of nature conservation. Humanity can't be omitted. Homo sapiens is an ecological reality, and ineluctable part of the larger landscape outside of protected areas, where most of the Earth's biological diversity resides. Realism, not to mention justice, therefore demands that efforts to conserve biological diversity must be efforts to address human needs too. Creativity, flexibility, and adaptability are essential to coordinate environmental protection across ownerships. Given the constraints inherent to large governmental bureaucracies, these qualities are elusive under politically centralized management. The challenge of enlisting the support of private landowners has created a niche for a new breed of environmental activist, namely, environmental entrepreneurs. Environmental entrepreneurs specialize in identifying conservation opportunities, mobilizing resources, and building a constituency for conservation. As demonstrated by the success of Ducks Unlimited, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and hundreds of local organizations, these efforts are a vital piece of the conservation challenge. Creative, constructive ideas are highly valuable in the environmental policy field. Past debates have degenerated into images of Jane Fonda chaining herself to a tree or unemployed loggers advocating spotted owl stew. Gallatin Writers sees an open niche for academics, environmental activists, and politicians of any party. Bravery and creativity are required to propose reforms that support both local communities and ecosystems. For example, consider the CAMPFIRE program in Zimbabwe, the National Audubon Society's oil and gas leasing program in their Rainey Preserve, the Texas State Park's move toward self-supporting management, and the Malipais Borderland group in the American Southwest. We find especially creative the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance's successful effort to raise $16 million to purchase timber rights for the Loomis State Forest in Washington, and the creation of an independent trust to manage the Baca Ranch in New Mexico as it moves into Forest Service administration. We wish to encourage such examples of "outside the box" thinking. As Alexis de Tocqueville explained early in our history, Americans excel at building voluntary institutions to pursue shared interests. It is in the spirit of de Tocqueville that Gallatin Writers and FREE invited the exploration of alternatives to achieving conservation goals on the Wild and Scenic portion of the Missouri River. Presenting the winners
of the Missouri River Project
Region
Seven? Explorations of Social Change SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE
ENVIRONMENT Similarly, the way we talk about natural resources is far different than it was just decades ago. "Swamps" have become "valuable wetlands," and creatures once considered vicious predators such as wolves now adorn our nature books and calendars. Fundamentally, this is a cultural phenomenon. When the Sagebrush Rebels advocated decentralization of federal land management in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the idea was repugnant to Greens. Today, explorations in decentralization and community-based conservation motivate the movement. Consider Dan Kemmis, former mayor of Missoula, Montana, and now director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West. He is one of the leading advocates for moving environmental decision making to regional constituencies. These ideas rapidly moved from radical to mainstream. Many federal land management agencies are now pursuing collaborative arrangements and experimenting with local stewardship. What implications do these changes have for the cultures and ecological landscapes of the American West, where vast expanses of public lands bring these questions into sharp relief? THE DIMENSIONS OF THE ISSUE In 1971 John Baden debated Milton Friedman at the University of Montana. This led to the article "Externality, Property Rights, and the Management of our National Forests," by Baden and Rick Stroup, in the Journal of Law and Economics. The paper laid out the importance of understanding how alternative institutional arrangements can promote environmentally sensitive management of the national forests. In a Reason cover story of 1981 Baden and Stroup published "A Radical Plan for Saving the Wilderness." This introduced the notion of "Wilderness Trusts" as an alternative to federal management. In the intervening years Baden has produced a number of book chapters and opinion pieces for national publications (e.g., The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times) further developing these ideas. On February 6, 2002, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, proposed a radical policy experiment. He wants to turn over the management of one or two national forests to local trusts. The "charter forest" idea presents an opportunity for constructive thought, writing, and possibly even action. However, the path toward progress is neither costless nor certain. Constructive reforms aimed at achieving positive ecological and social outcomes require leadership, innovation, and courage. In September 2002 Gallatin Writers cosponsored a three-day conference with the Center for the Rocky Mountain West. Held at the University of Montana's Castles Forestry Center in the Lubrecht Experimental Forest, "Region Seven? Explorations of Social Change" examined the history of national forest management and the potential for experiments in decentralized management, i.e. forest trusts or charter forests. Participants included Jack Ward Thomas, former Forest Service chief, as well as academics, journalists, foundation representatives, and community activists. Click here to view Program Agenda
2004 Wallace Stegner Essay Contest: Healing the Marriage Between the Boomer and the Nester Wallace Stegner claimed that he was born to write one story -- the story of the “boomer” and the “nester” on the western frontier. In Stegner's novels, these two were often literally wedded in a tension-filled marriage. One thinks of Bo and Elsa Mason in The Big Rock Candy Mountain , or Oliver and Susan Ward in Angle of Repose. Stegner readily admitted that he based these characters partly on his parents:
Throughout his life and work, Stegner remained keenly aware of how the West had come to depend upon the boomer mentality. In the early days of settlement, it was a mindset that herded Indians onto their reservations, then repeatedly shrunk the borders. In the federal reclamation projects, boomers oversaw the radical conversion of prairie to potatoes, of rivers to reservoirs, all at public expense. In the mining regions, boomers literally moved mountains. And the West became ever more wedded to subsidized models of extraction. That the ecological results were often catastrophic was a fact that enraged Stegner and ruled much of his later work -- both his writing and his political activism. But there was a quieter strain, too, to Stegner's fascination with the Bo Masons of the West, and it led him to a useful observation about the strident opposition to change:
Stegner was also both an observer and a prophet of change in the American West. Perhaps more than any other writer, he understood the pace and nature of the transformations that swept this region during the last century. He observed that the West “changes faster” than most places, and he characterized the changes as “the warping influence of great in-migration, uninterrupted boom, and unremitting technological tinkering” ( The Sound of Mountain Water , 10). In the midst of it all, he issued a series of warnings, and some of his conclusions leaned toward a pessimistic vision of the future, but in the end, Stegner held out great hope:
In his most famous and oft-quoted passage, Stegner remarked,
Perhaps a conservationist future for the American West lies not in banishing the boomer but in healing the marriage between the boomer and the nester. The boomer is, after all, the force of enterprise -- the bold mover and shaker, the rain-maker, the one who “doesn't know what it means to be licked or to give up.” The nester is the steward, the home-maker and garden-tender, the quiet force who builds without destroying, and wants to stay without soiling the nest. Karl Stauber, in “ Why Invest in Rural America—And How? A Critical Public Policy Question for the 21st Century ” points out that
Stauber identifies four public outcomes to pursue in order to reduce concentrated rural poverty, promote the survival of the rural middle class, and sustain and improve the quality of the natural environment. They are:
In this contest, we're looking for imaginative essays that demonstrate, in real-world terms, the reconciliation of the boomer and the nester. Where do we find such reconciliation? What shapes does it take, and what kind of work does it provide? What hope would a reconciliation between the boomer and the nester hold for the future of the American West? Gallatin Writers and FREE invite essay submissions from college and high school students. Prizes of $1000, $750, and $500 will be awarded to the top three essays from each group. Winning submissions will not be longer than 2000 words. We encourage the use of your original term papers if appropriate. References are desired but not required. Email entries to jdownen@free-eco.org as an attached Microsoft Word-readable file. The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2004, for university students and May 28 for advanced high school students. Please include your name, educational institution, department or major field of study (for college students), and a phone number where you can be reached. Works Cited: Stauber, Karl. “Why Invest in Rural America—And How? A Critical Public Policy Question for the 21st Century,” paper delivered at the Center for the Study of Rural America's conference, Exploring Policy Options for a New Rural America, June 2001 . Stegner, Wallace
Presenting the winners of the 2004 Wallace Stegner Essay Contest Brandon R. Schrand, University of Idaho, Creative Non-Fiction Pete Gomben, Utah State University, Environment and Society Patrick J. DelHomme, University of Montana, Environmental Studies 2003 Wallace
Stegner Essay Contest and winning essays
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