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MEETING OF FORESTERS Is the Yellowstone area becoming a 'Fortress for the wealthy?' Yellowstone region would be fastest-growing rural state in country By MICHAEL MILSTEIN Gazette Wyoming Bureau CODY, Wyo. - With a limited number of jobs, property prices rising and an influx of residents who have earned their money elsewhere, the Greater Yellowstone Region is gradually becoming a "fortress for the wealthy" with less and less room for longtime families who earn salaries in traditional ways, members of a panel said in Cody on Friday. "Many of our ranchers are on the verge of going out of business, unless they have other sources of income," said Mike Clark, executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Clark, Shoshone National Forest Supervisor Rebecca Aus and Cody Country Chamber of Commerce Director Paul Hoffman each spoke and then joined in a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the Colorado-Wyoming Chapter of the Society of American Foresters in Cody on Friday. If the Greater Yellowstone Region were a state, it would be the fastest-growing rural state in the country, with annual population growth topping 12 percent, Clark said. But the growth is primarily in two areas: the service sector, which includes retail trade and businesses largely associated with tourism, and "people who deal with information" and can work via fax and modem. Ranching today supports just 2 percent of the region's jobs and logging represents just 4 percent. The region's timber production alone has dropped by three-quarters in the last decade. Such change in the economy is also driving a change in public attitudes about the use of the roughly 17 million acres of public lands in the region. "Our customers do not speak with one, clear voice," Aus told the roughly 100 people in attendance. Sometimes land management agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service are perceived as not listening to the public, when in fact they listen intently but simply cannot make decisions that please everybody. Now that the National Park Service has designated county commissions as cooperating agencies in the development of a winter use plan for Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, Aus said it will be interesting to see whether citizens feel their views are better represented by their county officials than land management officials. Either way, the counties will probably learn, just as land managers have learned, that public opinion is extremely diverse, especially on land management issues. Hoffman said that during debates over land management that too often lead to lawsuits, sometimes "we lose sight of the fact that we all love these resources." "A lot of times, we end up making big differences over small things and it polarizes us instead of helping us work together," he said. "Judges and courts are making the decisions that ought to be left to the experts in the field." Park County is heavily dependent on public lands, which comprise about 83 percent of all land in the county, for commodity uses like logging and oil and gas drilling, as well as recreation. But the county's growth has straggled at just 1.34 percent per year from 1990 to 1998, far behind the rate Clark cited for the rest of the Yellowstone region, Hoffman said. The sectors of the economy with the highest paying jobs - such as mining and oil and gas drilling - are the sectors that are either stagnant or shrinking, he said. The growing service sector, by comparison, represents 24 percent of the county's jobs but just 18 percent of the payroll. Service sector wages in Park County hover at just 57 percent of the national average and wages in all sectors combined in Park County sit at 72 percent of the national average. Almost 12 percent of Park County residents have incomes at or below the poverty level," Hoffman said. Although new banks are springing up, they are at least partly based on serving incoming residents who have made their livings elsewhere and bring with them savings and retirement accounts. And often only wealthy arrivals can afford to buy large tracts of land and ranches, which they then sometimes close to public access for fishing and hunting. "We're losing the middle class in Park County," he said. If the trend continues, the area may take after the "feudal landlord" system of long-ago Europe, where "you have a rich few owning most of the land and closing it off to everyone else." Clark agreed that "Yellowstone is becoming a fortress for the wealthy" and said he is not in favor of no growth in the region. Growth, however, must be carefully guided so that it does not conflict with the very reason people move to the region - its favorable quality of life, he said. He specifically argued against planned timber sales in the Sunlight Basin and Crandall Creek areas of the Shoshone National Forest northwest of Cody. Wildfires and past logging have already cut into the timber of the area, which provides prime habitat for grizzly bears and other wildlife, and it now "it ought to be given a rest." Much of the challenge facing land managers centers on human impacts on such wildlands. "Ecosystem management is not managing wildlife, it's managing people," Clark said. But Hoffman countered that humans cannot be removed from an ecosystem like Greater Yellowstone. "We are remiss if we ignore the human factor," Hoffman added. "Humans are part of the ecosystem - always have been, always will be."
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