Toward a new moratorium

Friday, April 04, 2008

By Jake Nichols

Jackson Hole, Wyoming - I wasn’t around when ranchers shot, trapped and poisoned the grey wolf into extinction in Wyoming. The animal once revered by Native Americans for its cunning, and the most adaptable creature to its climate on the planet next to humans, met its match with strychnine.

Some of us felt bad. We made room in Wyoming for the wolf again.
Buffalo Bill Cody shot 4,280 bison in 17 months while clearing track for the Kansas Pacific Railroad. Oklahoman Bill Tilghman killed twice that. It is estimated that 31 million bison were massacred between 1868 and 1881; more than 2 million in 1872 alone, the year Yellowstone was established as the nation’s first national park.

Some of us, including President Grover Cleveland, felt bad. We made room for a scraggly herd in Yellowstone formed from a few dozen bison shipped back to Wyoming from a Brooklyn zoo.

With no natural predator, dead elk piled up like cordwood during the winter of 1908-1909. Stephen Leek photographed some of the estimated 12,000 starving wapiti as they raided local haystacks and lay down to die.

Some of us felt bad. We made room for the elk in various refuges around the valley. Oil and gas fields in the Pinedale Anticline have bottlenecked and disrupted the largest migratory game herd in the lower 48 states – the pronghorn antelope. Emissions from the rigs threaten air quality and have resulted in numerous recent violations and warnings from the Wyoming Regional Haze State Implementation Plan about smog.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal felt a little bad. He asked the federal government to cancel 44,000 acres of energy lease in the Wyoming Range and has stated he doesn’t believe drilling should be taking place there.
So are we feeling bad about building houses and stores and roads in Jackson? Apparently.

Judging by the 1,000-plus Teton County Comprehensive Plan Scenario Surveys that are in so far, we would rather needy wildlife get first dibs on housing than us humans. More than 90 percent of respondents said open space and wildlife habitat were as important or more important than building affordable housing.

Maybe if Stephen Leek were around today, his heart-wrenching photos of the pass-and-canyon commuter crowd would elicit donations from wealthy easterners. Pictures of poor sheetrock hangers making only $25 an hour, pouring $4-a-gallon diesel into their new Dodge Ram pickups would tug at the heartstrings of New Jersey stockbrokers who used to spend an hour-and-a-half getting to work every morning before they were laid off recently.

Maybe, if some of yesteryear’s buffalo hunters were still around they’d take up positions in the Mike Harris Campground and pick off Subarus and leave the hides to rot.
Have we always loved animals and trees that much? Or is this just some manifestation of underlying guilt that surfaces only after we’re scribbling “mortgage” onto the memo line of our monthly checks instead of “rent?”

Let’s face it. The homesteaders of old Jackson have cashed out. Migratory baby boomers are cashing in. And this valley is a far cry from its wild and wooly days. Imported wolves hunt pet elk in an outdoor zoo not one mile from a four-story concrete parking garage. This is Disneyland … without the parking.

At least let’s have a moratorium on bitching about it.
PERMALINK:
Toward a new moratorium | Planet JH News Article: General News

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