Showdown at Yellowstone The Victims and Survivors of Ecosystem Management
Pahre R. 2011. Showdown at Yellowstone The Victims and Survivors of Ecosystem Management. Journal of the West. 50(1)
Twenty years ago, the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) was in the midst of an unprecedented political uproar. The national parks and national forests were engaged in a large collaboration called the Vision for the Future, a flagship project for those who hoped to see them move toward “ecosystem management” on a large scale. Local economic interests feared that this Vision would prevent timber harvest, oil and gas development, and livestock grazing. They successfully killed the Vision project in 1990, and it was replaced with a short, face-saving alternative, the Framework. This study returns to the political battles of the Vision to reconsider its supposed lessons. Most observers concluded that collaboration was not politically feasible. This conclusion overlooks many other forms of collaboration that survived the Vision’s failure. Using some analytical categories borrowed from game theory, this article reviews both these successes and the failure of the grander Vision of twenty years ago.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Pahre, Robert
- Units
- GRYN
- Keywords
- Environmental Policy, Federal Government, game theory, Greater Yellowstone, Management, Vision for the Future