Finding Common Ground: Governance and Natural Resources in the American West
Finding Common Ground: Governance and Natural Resources in the American West
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Overview
The first chapter of this enlightening book diagnoses contemporary problems of governance in natural resources policy and in the United States generally, then introduces community-based initiatives as responses to those problems. The next chapters examine the range of successes and failures of initiatives in water management in the Upper Clark Fork River in Montana; wolf recovery in the northern Rockies; bison management in greater Yellowstone; and forest policy in northern California. The concluding chapter considers how to harvest experience from these and other cases, offering practical suggestions for diverse participants in community-based initiatives and their supporters, agencies and interest groups, and researchers and educators.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300127904 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Finding Common Ground
Governance and Natural Resources in the American WestBy Ronald D. Brunner Christine H. Colburn Christina M. Cromley Roberta A. Klein Elizabeth A. Olson
Yale University Press
Copyright © 2002 Yale UniversityAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-300-09144-3
Chapter One
Problems of GovernanceRonald D. Brunner
On the morning of March 6, 1997, just north of Yellowstone National Park near Gardiner, Montana, Rosalie Little-Thunder heard gunfire while participating in a prayer service for the spirits of slain buffalo. It was "a crackling sound, like dead branches snapping," she said. About a mile away she and several others found officials of the Montana Department of Livestock in the snow dressing out the bodies of eight Yellowstone bison they had just shot and killed. Little-Thunder later recalled: "It was like murder in the church parking lot during the service.... It was shocking, the disrespect they showed the buffalo." When Little-Thunder asked if she and another Lakota Sioux could pray for the spirits of these bison, she was told to get off the private land where the carnage had occurred and get back onto the road. When she refused, she was arrested for criminal trespass. For the Lakota Sioux and other tribes organized in the Intertribal Bison Cooperative, saving Yellowstone bison-the last free-roaming bison herds in the country-means saving the spirit of the bison. "The buffalo took care of our ancestors for thousands of years, and now it's time to return the favor," said Mike Fox, president of the Cooperative.
At least several hundred and perhaps a thousand bison died inside Yellowstone National Park from snow and ice conditions during that winter of 1996-97, the most severe since 1943-and by one account the most severe since 1902, the year in which Congress ordered the bison rescued from extinction. Another 1,084 bison roaming in search of forage crossed the boundaries of the Park into Montana, where they were shot and killed by officials from the Montana Department of Livestock and the National Park Service. The officials acted under authority of an Interim Bison Management Plan designed to prevent the transmission of a disease, brucellosis, from bison to the cattle that graze on public and private lands around the Park. Cattle not certified brucellosis-free by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture are subject to costly restrictions in interstate and international commerce. Mike Gilsdorf, an APHIS veterinarian, argued: "We have our own mandate just like the park has theirs, and ours is to eliminate brucellosis.... If we drop our guard and let the diseased bison roam freely out in the countryside, we're inviting trouble."
But shooting free-roaming bison had already brought trouble. "When people describe what's happening here as 'a national tragedy,' I don't disagree with them," said Park Superintendent Mike Finley. "The National Park Service is very uncomfortable with the position it finds itself in. We are participating in something that is totally unpalatable to the American people, and it's something we are not convinced that science justifies." Marc Racicot, governor of Montana, insisted, "We have never wanted this responsibility thrust upon the state of Montana. Our preferred alternative is not to harvest bison, but it is virtually the only option we are left with.... Yellowstone has an obligation to take care of its wildlife and it has been remiss." Some stockgrowers were disgusted at the toll of bison, even though they were supposed to benefit directly from this means of protecting cattle from brucellosis. Among them was Delas Munns, whose family has grazed cattle on public land just north of Yellowstone's west entrance for decades. "So many different federal and state bureaucrats are trying to decide what should be done with those park bison [that] it's become a pretty ugly, aggravating situation as far as I am concerned. I'm tired of it." An organized interest group, the Fund for Animals, urged tourists to boycott Montana. "The state of Montana has zero tolerance for buffalo, so we need you to have zero tolerance for Montana," read the Fund's full-page ad in USA Today. Two weeks after Rosalie Little-Thunder was arrested, Delyla Wilson was also arrested in Gardiner after splashing rotting bison entrails on Governor Racicot, who was participating in a public meeting on bison management with Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and Montana's two senators.
Behind these events are three changes in policy, expressing the different mandates and interests of the Park Service, APHIS, and the state of Montana. This background serves to introduce problems of governance in natural resources policy and other policy areas-it also serves to introduce a potential solution. As we will see, bison management in greater Yellowstone is a microcosm of larger problems of governance in the United States.
A Microcosm
In 1967, the National Park Service acknowledged that management of Yellowstone bison as if they were livestock, that is, intensive management, was no longer appropriate. Instead, they had begun to implement a policy of natural regulation in the expectation that disease and starvation would control the size of Yellowstone's bison herds. But the herds increased, and with the increase more bison crossed the north and west boundaries of the Park into Montana in search of forage, especially during severe winters. In 1985, APHIS declared cattle herds in Montana and Wyoming brucellosis-free. But to protect those herds, APHIS pressured the Park Service to keep bison inside Park boundaries and sought to eradicate brucellosis from all wildlife in Yellowstone eventually. This was an extension to wildlife of its policy of zero-tolerance for brucellosis in cattle. Also in 1985, the state of Montana authorized hunting to help control the bison and to protect cattle. But there was vehement public opposition, especially during the winter of 1988-89, when licensed hunters and state officials killed 579 bison, animal rights activists waged a national campaign against the hunt, and the news media covered these events. In response to public opposition, in 1991 the state legislature revoked authority for the hunt.
Meanwhile, in September 1989, the National Park Service, under pressure, agreed to produce a long-term Interagency Bison Management Plan for greater Yellowstone, together with an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), as mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). A stated purpose of NEPA is "to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans." The rules for achieving this purpose are primarily procedural. NEPA directs "all agencies of the Federal Government" to prepare an EIS when any "major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment" are proposed. Publication of the draft EIS provides opportunities for public participation prior to decision on the proposed actions. But assessments of NEPA have been mixed. For example, according to one observer, "Exposed to the glare of unforgiving public scrutiny, many short-sighted, uneconomic, and unwise decisions have been derailed [by NEPA]; others have been revised to reflect public concerns and to mitigate foreseeable environmental consequences." But the same observer also raised concerns that procedural compliance with NEPA has detracted from its larger purposes. Those purposes are not always served by procedural compliance alone. Bison management in greater Yellowstone is a case in point.
When the NEPA process was initiated in September 1989, it was expected to culminate in a long-term Interagency Bison Management Plan in 1991. Instead, state and federal agencies repeatedly postponed the draft EIS and managed Yellowstone bison under a series of interim management plans. Criticism increased from many directions. In 1997, for example, Mike Clark, executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, concluded, "Our appointed and elected officials have been unable and unwilling to even sit down together and talk meaningfully about the conflict, much less reach agreement." Early in 1998, Governor Jim Geringer of Wyoming stated, "We are no closer to resolution of the brucellosis problem with the different agencies of the federal government than we were ten years ago." The Bozeman Daily Chronicle later that year drew attention to the costs: "All that blood in the snow has attracted national media attention and pitted neighbor against neighbor in this area. It has fattened the wedge that divides the ranching industry and environmentalists, groups that in a more rational world would become natural allies. It has cost money, sweat and anguish." The Chronicle concluded, "The ten-year shouting match has gone on far too long. It's time to make a decision."
In June 1998, the state of Montana, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Forest Service as lead agencies, together with APHIS as a cooperating agency, released the draft EIS. It listed seven alternatives, all of which called for more research and development of a safe, effective brucellosis vaccine for bison. The agencies' preferred alternative authorized capture and testing of bison north and west of the Park, slaughter of brucellosis-positive animals, quarantine of brucellosis-negative animals, and limited public hunting to keep the number of Yellowstone bison between 1,700 and 2,500 animals. The situation was summed up in a workshop in September 1998: "Where does this leave us? With options from separation of wildlife and livestock for risk management to eradication of brucellosis, and intermediate options like control of the Park boundary and control through hunting. We are caught in a litigation loop-each official plan generates lawsuits. We need extremely high-level politics to intervene to break out of the litigation loop." Why "extremely high-level politics" had not intervened was an important but unanswered question. Litigation is indeed a major alternative to the NEPA process when officials or citizens are frustrated within the NEPA process or are excluded from it. There have been at least a dozen lawsuits on bison management and brucellosis in greater Yellowstone since 1985.
The one-hundred-twenty-day public comment period on the draft EIS closed early in November 1998. Of the 67,520 comment documents received, about 70 percent endorsed a Citizens' Plan to Save Yellowstone Bison that had been formulated and promoted by a coalition of conservation groups. The groups took the initiative because they believed that they had been excluded from the formulation of the alternatives in the draft EIS. Following analysis of public comments received, the federal agencies proposed a "modified preferred alternative" for the final EIS. Discussions of that alternative led to an impasse between federal and state agencies and to the federal agencies' withdrawal from a Memorandum of Understanding that had been signed with the state of Montana in 1992 and incorporated into the settlement of Montana's lawsuit against the federal agencies in 1995. The federal and state agencies nevertheless agreed to attempt to resolve their differences through a court-appointed mediator. Mediation in the spring, summer, and fall of 2000 led to a slightly altered version of the modified preferred alternative that is called the Joint Management Plan in the record of decision on the final EIS. The record of decision, dated December 20, 2000, culminated the NEPA process begun more than a decade earlier.
Despite the stated purpose of NEPA and the considerable resources invested over that time, there has been little progress in finding common ground. The Joint Management Plan is less a resolution of the different interests represented by the state and federal agencies than another truce among them-prompted perhaps by exhaustion as much as anything else. Moreover, among the 3,888 who submitted public comments on the final EIS, nearly half objected to the deference given to cattle over Yellowstone's bison. According to the record of decision, "The majority of commentors expressing opinions on this subject (1,800 v. 2) indicated that it should be cattle rather than bison that are moved or managed to prevent contact and possible transmission of brucellosis. Part of the value of the herd to commentors was in its wild and free-ranging nature. Management practices such as capture, testing, slaughter, quarantine, corralling, radio collars, vaginal transmitters, etc. were considered antithetical to the concept of a wild herd by many commentors. Many (1,458) felt that all slaughter should be stopped." Thus the central issue between the agencies' Joint Implementation Plan and a large part of the active public also remains unresolved.
Was there a better alternative, substantively and procedurally? A case can be made that a plan proposed in 1991 by the Bison Management Citizen's Working Group in Bozeman might have avoided much of the divisiveness and expense and made some progress toward a resolution-if federal and state officials had taken the plan seriously. This proposal came closer in several ways to finding the common ground. Procedurally, the plan was the result of more inclusive deliberations by representatives of conservation, environmental, ranching, landowner, wildlife, sporting, and other interests in the greater Yellowstone area. The deliberations, which took place in weekly meetings over several months, were informed by the local knowledge of the representatives and by Native American and technical advisers. Substantively, the members of the Working Group signed off on the plan when they recommended it to the Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park in a letter dated May 15, 1991. They expected the plan to secure the common interest-which included, significantly, preventing brucellosis in cattle and maintaining free-roaming bison herds as much as possible. Practically, however, we do not know whether these expectations were valid, because the plan was not implemented, or even seriously considered, by the public officials who were nevertheless in procedural compliance with NEPA. But management techniques like those proposed by the Working Group had already worked around Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in Wyoming. According to ranchers and conservationists living there, Wyoming's brucellosis-free status "is secure now because there is no recent history of brucellosis transmission from wildlife to cattle in [their] counties and because the ranchers in this area protect their cattle through vaccinations."
The bison management problem is a microcosm of larger problems of governance in the United States: the failure to clarify and secure the common interest through specific policies in natural resources as well as in other policy areas. In the American political tradition, it is difficult both logically and politically to justify policies that serve the special interests of the few over the common interest of the many.
Continues...
Excerpted from Finding Common Ground by Ronald D. Brunner Christine H. Colburn Christina M. Cromley Roberta A. Klein Elizabeth A. Olson Copyright © 2002 by Yale University. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
| Preface | vii | |
| Acknowledgments | xi | |
| Chapter 1. | Problems of Governance | 1 |
| Chapter 2. | Water Management and the Upper Clark Fork Steering Committee | 48 |
| Chapter 3. | Wolf Recovery in the Northern Rockies | 88 |
| Chapter 4. | Bison Management in Greater Yellowstone | 126 |
| Chapter 5. | Forest Policy and the Quincy Library Group | 159 |
| Chapter 6. | Harvesting Experience | 201 |
| Notes | 248 | |
| Index | 289 |