george wuerthner's "on the range"
Wilderness for Wild Gallatin Range
By George Wuerthner, 7-15-08
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One my favorite places to hike, ski, fish, hunt, camp, and just sit and enjoy wild spaces is Montana’s Gallatin Range. I used to spend a lot of time in the Gallatin Range when I lived in Livingston, Montana, but I go back to the range every time I am in the area. Recently, on a hot June day, I hiked up Bozeman Creek, enjoying its shady coolness and the cottonwood and red osier dogwood bordering the stream. The hike reminded me once again the special place the Gallatin Range has in my heart.
The Gallatin Range extends south of Bozeman to Yellowstone National Park. It is one of the West’s most spectacular mountain landscapes and one of the most vulnerable, unprotected wildlands in Montana. The range is approximately 75 miles and averages 20 miles wide. It contains 10 peaks over 10,000 feet with Electric Peak (10,969 feet) the highest. The lower slopes are forested with aspen, Engelmann spruce, lodgepole pine, Douglas fir, intermixed with many flower-studded meadows. The higher crest of the range is alpine tundra, carpeted with wildflowers in mid summer.
Covering more than 520,000 acres, it is one of the largest unprotected roadless areas left in the lower 48 states. Approximately 325,000 acres are in Yellowstone Park. The park, though managed for wilderness values, still lacks any formal wilderness protection from Congress. The remaining 200,000 acres running from the park border north to Bozeman lies within the Gallatin National Forest. .
The range is named for the Gallatin River which flows along its western border. The river, in turn, was named for President Thomas Jefferson’s Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. Lewis and Clark named all three rivers-- the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson-- on their historic tour of the West in 1804-1806. The Yellowstone drainage in Paradise Valley borders the eastern side of the range.
Wildlands Values
Wilderness protection for the area has been tossed around for decades. In 1977, Montana Senator Lee Metcalf included the 151,000-acre Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn WSA of the Gallatin Range (among nine other roadless areas) in his legislation the Montana Wilderness Study Areas Act, now known as Senate Bill 393. The Act directed the Forest Service to maintain the wildlands quality of the area until Congress changed its status either by releasing the area from further study or by designation of wilderness.
In the early 1980s, the Gallatin Range was part of a 600,000-acre wilderness proposal for what is now the Lee Metcalf Wilderness. The proposal included roadless lands both in the Madison Range (now Lee Metcalf Wilderness) and Gallatin Range. The Gallatin Range was eventually dropped from the Lee Metcalf Wilderness proposal to reduce the wilderness acreage to a lower, less controversial, total number. Since the Gallatin Range was already protected in S. 393 (or so conservationists thought), the range was dropped from the Lee Metcalf proposal. Then in 1988, a portion of the Gallatin Range was included in a statewide wilderness bill that passed Congress, but was vetoed by then President Reagan.
Complicating wilderness designation for the Gallatin Range were many checkerboard inholdings left over from the railroad giveaways of a century ago. Owned by Burlington Northern, then Plum Creek, and eventually Big Sky Lumber, these railroad lands on the Gallatin Range’s western flank were eventually acquired and incorporated into the Gallatin National Forest, setting the stage for potential wilderness designation today.
Wildlife Values
If for no other reason than its large size, the Gallatin Range deserves wilderness protection. Large roadless blocks of country are far more valuable for wildlife, providing much more secure habitat than smaller chucks. The Gallatin Range is home to many species that are rare elsewhere in the West, including grizzly bear, wolf, wolverine, lynx, and perhaps fisher. The Gallatins are also home to bighorn sheep, large elk herds, plus moose, deer, and were recently colonized by mountain goats moving in from the adjacent Absaroka Range. The range is also home to lesser-known species like flying squirrels, Pacific tree frogs and goshawks. Bison continue to try to colonize the range, and there’s no reason why wild bison can’t live here.
The Gallatin Range is also an important wildlife corridor that connects the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to points north and west. Elk regularly migrate from the Gallatin Range, over the Madison Range to the Madison Valley. Animals also move northward towards the Bridger Range beyond I-90. Over the years, I’ve seen at least two black bear and several elk herds crossing northward towards the Bridger Range by Bozeman Pass.
The range’s streams also support populations of genetically pure west slope cutthroat trout, and Yellowstone cutthroat trout. Montana grayling were also native to the Gallatin River and its tributaries. Attempts to reestablish viable fluvial populations of grayling have so far failed
Other Values
The Gallatin Range has other important values as well. Some portions of the crest have petrified forests. Unfortunately under Forest Service management any one can loot these rare treasures. There are also archeological values. I once found a number of wickiups on a ridge above a small creek left by the Sheepeater Indians who once roam the range. The Gallatin Range also is the source for Bozeman’s drinking water.
Threats
The Gallatin Range’s lower slopes have been heavily logged in some drainages, in some cases nearly to the crest of the range. Logging, however, is less a threat today than ORVS, which continue to expand usage throughout the range. Even though as a S. 393 area, the Forest Service is supposed to maintain the wilderness qualities of the range, thrillcraft both in summer and winter have become a major problem in some portions of the range. And there are always new threats. At one time proponents of Big Sky Resort were proposing a major power line corridor across the range. And other new ideas for intrusive manipulation of the range’s natural qualities are continuously hatched.
Wilderness is Best Antidote
Wilderness designation for the entire range from Bozeman south into Yellowstone National Park would ensure that the special values of the Gallatin Range including quietude, alpine splendor, and its value as a wildlife sanctuary would be maintained into the future. Recently a loose group of individuals have organized themselves as Montanans for Gallatin Wilderness to ramp up wilderness designation efforts. To learn more about their efforts, head to www.gallatinwilderness.org. For a map of the area, go to www.gallatinwilderness.org/map.html
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Comments
As it now stands, the USFS has no legal public access in areas on the eastside of the Gallatin that would allow a person to hike the crest from YNP to I-90. To do that you are trespassing in places but not likely to get caught. If the USFS built a trail to facilitate that trek, they would be in trespass.
Of course, if private checkerboard sections inside the proposed wilderness boundary were exchanged for USFS inholdings outside the proposed wilderness boundary, it would be clear sailing for the public to hike the Gallatin crest from YNP to I-90. But that is not going to happen in the foreseeable future because the USFS wants to continue to demand pubic access through the lands they trade out of, even though that access is not available now, due to the checkerboard nature of the ownerships. There is no legal way to get across checkerboard ownerships without easements, and the nature of private property is to limit that access to persons the owner would have using their property.
On the other hand, that denial of public access works at this time to ensure that a whole lot of really good wildlife habitat goes the year 'round without continual human interference of the
tranquility that keeping the public out provides. Perhaps the wildlife and the resource is better protected by the private inholdings limiting access, and the wilderness values are truer with those inholdings. Maybe right now is the best it will ever be.
And that is the wisdom of the Congress when the checkerboard land exchange for a transcontinental railroad system was put into law. The railroad lands had to be sold, and the US Govt got the private estate to build the roads by allowing easements through public lands. It was a cheap way to gain access to an area of vast public holdings. And today, it is used in just the opposite way, as a way to stop or limit access to public lands. Fortunately, land laws also protect the private landowner, and inholders, and the US has to gain access only by easement through private lands for any activity other than administrative use by the USFS or BLM. Recreational use is not an administrative use.
So, the issue is that it appears the eastside Gallatin private land owners don't have the moxie, the horsepower, to support the seen and unseen benefits that Tim Blixeth employed to gain his Big Sky landholding in exchange for those lands he held on the westside of the Gallatin NF. With all that money flowing around, and now knowing that the likes of Senator Baucus favor Big Timber and the Timber Barons, the NGOs, and the campaign finance money stream is in play as a suspected route of how to accomplish land trades in Montana, the answer is becoming more clear. You buy them.
I don't think the Paradise valley side of the Gallatin is in any way inclined to buy any land exchanges that would benefit the USFS and the Montana Democrat political machine. There is no Plum Creek, no Weyerhaeuser, no bucks up music producers, tv stars, who are in a position to buy a land exchange to further the USFS proposed Gallatin NF wilderness down the Gallatin crest.
For there to be a big W wilderness in the proposed wilderness area, the USFS will have to change their ways, the political landscape altered. Obama might tell he is for change, but Baucus is not, and if changes are not made, it will not happen. The Feds will let it burn, including the inholdings, as retribution and as a signal of their sovereignty. The autonomous State of USFS must flex its muscles in any way they might in these days, because their NGO handlers and their friends in high places are not Republicans and the money stream has dwindled to nothing. That billion dollars to Weyco and PCT is a Region One deal but accomplished in Washington DC, and of no consequence on the Gallatin, and will most likely diminish their budget over time.
The idea of a big W wilderness is noble, eccentric in ways, and at times the worst of ideas for keeping habitat in place that works. The reality is that it can happen, but only when the USFS and the Marxist NGOs change their tune. There is public land and there is private land. Forcing public access on private land (eg. insisting the USFS have and/or keep access to and across the lands they trade out of) is not going to facilitate a trade. Will not happen. Dead in the water. DOA. No vital signs. An unobtainable dream. The roadblock is in Bozeman at the SO. They were able to do the Blixeth deal. Do you think the public has access through the Yellowstone Club? Draw your own conclusions.