Few corners of the West are more contentious than the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The reintroduction of wolves, the hazing of brucellosis-carrying bison, the possible delisting of grizzly bears, the extraction of natural gas, the debate over elk feedlots — sometimes it seems like a different controversy lurks behind every tree. (And don’t even get folks started on kayaking or snowmobiling.)
Yellowstone’s discord has long fascinated Justin
Farrell, today a sociologist at the Yale School of Forestry &
Environmental Studies. Farrell was born in Cheyenne, the descendent of
Wyomingites and Idahoans; though he grew up in Nebraska, he traveled
often to Yellowstone throughout his youth. The area, he noticed, changed
rapidly: One year, a resort company built a hotel next to his
grandfather’s cabin. “It raised a lot of questions in my mind about the
types of people who were moving out there, and how they interacted with
the people who had lived there for a long time,” he says.
Farrell explores those questions in a new book, The Battle for Yellowstone: Morality and the Sacred Roots of Environmental Conflict.
The book, for which Farrell analyzed thousands of documents and
conducted over 100 stakeholder interviews, offers a path to
understanding the deep-seated divisions within the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem (GYE) — and, perhaps, to someday resolving them. High Country News sat down with Farrell to discuss the sanctity of bison, the rise of the New West, and the religious symbolism of Canis lupus.
High Country News: You investigated
familiar conflicts, including the reintroduction of wolves and the
hazing and killing of bison. But you’re looking at these issues through a
new lens: You view the battle for Yellowstone as a moral battle, rather
than an economic or scientific one. What does that mean, exactly?
Justin Farrell: I argue that we all operate
from starting points that often go unnoticed, but that ultimately
motivate why we do what we do: Why we care about wolves, why we view
buffalo as sacred, why we’re so passionate about private property
rights. Those aren’t just attitudes — they’re deeper questions about who
we are as human beings and where we think society ought to be headed.
The overwhelming techno-scientific approach we take to environmental
issues, while often useful, tends to discourage other approaches. But
these conflicts have cultural and moral dimensions.
HCN: It seems like those dimensions are constantly changing. You write about how demographic shifts in the so-called New West are driving prevailing values.
JF: The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
has some of the fastest-growing counties in terms of population and
land development. That can lead to moral devaluation: The people
who move to the area bring with them different values, which can
ultimately devalue traditional heritage and ideals about what land and
wildlife is good for. That can create some deep disagreement.
HCN: As you point out in the book, rugged
individualism has always been part of the West’s identity. Now ranchers
and outfitters are seeing their livelihood called “spiritually bankrupt”
by some of the more amenity-minded New Westerners. What did you hear
from the Old West community about how morality is changing?
JF: Many had a really profound
connection to the land, rooted in attitudes like, “I’m working the same
land that my father and mother once worked, but now there are new laws
that limit traditional ways of making a living.” Old Westerners see
these amenity migrants, new environmental laws, and wealth, and they
think there’s a sort of moral hypocrisy going on. Ranching and
extractive industries are being eliminated in some places, but is
building a 10,000 square-foot house ultimately any better for the land?
HCN: It seems like wolves epitomize
the “what is wildlife good for” debate. Some outsiders assume that the
people who hate wolves hate them for economic reasons — they’re ranchers
and hunters who are worried about livestock and game. But you say
people seem morally opposed to wolves. What’s the source of that opposition?
JF: One of the primary feelings I
heard is that individual rights are being infringed upon by the federal
government. The reintroduced wolves came from Canada, so there’s also
the fact that people see the wolf as an “immigrant” — a word that brings
up a lot of connotations right now. The wolf links to all sorts of
other issues in American politics that go well beyond the Yellowstone
area.
Majestic spiritual icon, or religious abomination? Depends whom you ask.
Carter Niemeyer, US Fish & Wildlife Service
HCN: People often oppose wolves in religious terms, too — it’s an animal that symbolizes man losing dominion over the earth.
JF: People have this sense of a
natural hierarchy with god at the top, then humans, then other animals.
Still, that wasn’t the strongest cultural dimension I found. In fact,
the pro-wolf movement had a much stronger religious dimension.
You hear this notion that by reintroducing the wolf, you create a
wholeness that goes beyond ecology. The language isn’t overtly
Christian, but it kind of follows the Christian narrative about the fall
and then redemption. The fall would be what humans did to the wolves
earlier, by exterminating them from the area, but now redemption is
possible, and we’ve got to seize this opportunity.
I also noticed that people were much more spiritual
when they lived further away from the park. Those people tend to
idealize the wolf more, maybe because they’re not as connected to the
on-the-ground difficulties of dealing with the animal.
HCN: Those same spiritual attitudes also exist in the case of bison. You embedded with the Buffalo Field Campaign,
the primary activist group that’s trying to prevent hazing and
slaughter. They’re very overt about the spiritual value of bison and the
moral importance of defending them.
JF: They’re an interesting
organization. One of their main tactics is shedding light on what’s
happening, by simply videotaping and taking photos of government actions
against buffalo. They find instances of extremely violent hazing, or a
calf that has a broken leg, or mothers that have an abortion while being
hazed. Showing people who don’t live in the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem what’s going on has a huge impact. They rely on moral shock,
on using shocking events and footage to cause social change.
I’m as objective as possible on these issues, but I’d
be lying if I said I wasn’t inspired by that group. The Buffalo Field
Campaign has been very effective because it’s such a morally charged
issue, and they make you feel that in a way that arguing about
brucellosis from a scientific point of view doesn’t.
HCN: I thought one of the most
fascinating parts of their story was that even though the organization
itself regards bison in an overtly spiritual way, the individual
volunteers tend to be uncomfortable talking about their own morality.
JF: I call it religious muting.
Out in the field, when they’re near the buffalo, they talk in overtly
religious terms. But when you get back to camp, they’re much more
“rational” — they sterilize any sort of religious motivation. This is
part of a larger trend in the U.S. of moving toward identifying as
spiritual rather than religious, or being uncomfortable with religion
because it’s come to be associated with the Christian right or
extremism.
HCN: The last conflict you wrote about
was the campaign against gas drilling in Wyoming’s Hoback Basin, where a
whole bunch of diverse interests got together to protect the area from
gas drilling. How did morality play out in that conflict?
JF: You had folks who would
traditionally be for gas drilling everywhere else, but here, they say
this place is too special to drill. They would say things like, “I’ve
been coming here since I was young, my family has lived here for
generations.” This is an example of how old westerners are getting
involved in the environmental movement. These people love land, but they
aren’t your average environmentalists. They distinguish themselves from
tree-huggers. It’s this interesting mingling of Old West and New West
morality.
The idea that land is special and sacred was the rallying cry of this movement, and it was very effective. They ended up buying out the wells
from the company, PXP. It was a “Wyoming solution,” as they called it.
It wasn’t that they passed laws to forbid drilling; instead, they
honored the contracts the company had, and paid fairly for them.
HCN: You make a strong case that
environmental conflict has a moral dimension. To be blunt: so what? How
does understanding the moral aspects of conflict help us resolve them?
Talking about morality brings issues to the surface,
especially during intractable conflicts. Sometimes you can find common
ground at the level of morality, like in the case of fracking in the
Hoback. Oftentimes, we don’t step back and recognize why we’re having
these arguments in the first place. My argument is not that morality
matters in every single case, but it’s present in many cases, and we
should be aware of it.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Ben Goldfarb is a correspondent for High Country News.source
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