Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem - History

History

Yellowstone National Park boundaries were arbitrarily drawn in 1872 in hopes of including all regional geothermal basins in the area. No other landscape considerations were incorporated. By the 1970s, however, the grizzly bear's (Ursus arctos) range in and near the park became the first informal minimum boundary of a theoretical Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that included at least 16,000 square kilometres (4,000,000 acres). Since then, definitions of the greater ecosystem's size have steadily grown larger. A 1994 study listed the size as 76,890 square kilometres (19,000,000 acres), while a 1994 speech by a Greater Yellowstone Coalition leader enlarged that to 80,000 square kilometres (20,000,000 acres).

In 1985 the United States House of Representatives Subcommittees on Public Lands and National Parks and Recreation held a joint subcommittee hearing on Greater Yellowstone, resulting in a 1986 report by the Congressional Research Service outlining shortcomings in interagency coordination and concluding that the area's essential values were at risk.

Other federally managed areas within the GYE include Gallatin, Custer, Caribou-Targhee, Bridger-Teton and Shoshone National Forests, the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway, as well as the National Elk Refuge and Grand Teton National Park. The GYE also encompasses some privately held lands surrounding those managed by the U.S. Government. Outside of Yellowstone National Park, ten distinct wilderness areas have been established in the National Forests since 1966 to ensure a higher level of habitat protection than is normally mandated.