Improvement Efforts

Public Sector: Legislation

In 1998, congress found that the land North of Yellowstone National park possessed "natural characteristics and wildlife habitat" that would be a valuable addition to the National Forest Service. In addition, the current checkerboard ownership was illogical and ineffective in terms of costs of management and accessibility to public land interspersed with private land. As a result of these conclusions came the Gallatin Land Consolidation Act of 1998 (Gallatin II) .  This act, paired with the Gallatin Range Consolidation and Protection act of 1993 , resulted in the trade of 30,000 acres of federal land for 55,000 acres of land owned by Big Sky Lumber Company.  Not since 1950, when the Grand Teton National Park was expanded has such an extensive acquisition of public land occurred.
 
 
 
Name 
Year
Acres to Public
Acres to Private
Total Acreage
Gallatin I
1993
37,752
16,278
54,030
Gallatin II
1998
54,000
29,000
83,000
                                Source: The Gallatin Land Exchanges

This land exchange has had many positive effects: ( Land Exchanges )

• Eliminates 400 miles of property lines
• Brings 133 miles of road and 73 miles of trail into public ownership.
• 116 miles of stream and 184 acres of wetlands are now public.
• Tributaries of the Gallatin River are now under protection.

Private Sector: Gallatin Peaks Land and Development

Gallatin Peaks Land & Development located in Bozeman, Montana, own land in the Gallatin Peaks area North of Yellowstone National Park. Their development plans call for homes that take wildlife and its required habitat into consideration (McAtee, 2002). For example, they have an in depth guide to the types of landscape plant species that are appropriate for use. This helps prevent invasive species such as knapweed from taking over the endemic plant species, thus changing wildlife habitat. Another step that this company is taking to ensure wildlife populations is to limit the fencing that each house can have. This is especially crucial to avoiding the disruption of ungulate migrations as they move from their winter range to their summer range. A fence could be put to use during most times of the year except for these migration periods in the autumn. In addition, there are guidelines for when birdfeeders are appropriate to use in order to discourage birds from staying over the winter months instead of migrating.

 

The specific areas of development are also designed to be as low-impact as possible by their cluster formations (see figure). High-density patches of human areas surrounded by undeveloped land are more favorable than a low-density development that covers the entire landscape.  Unfortunately, Gallatin Peaks’ ownership of this land is in square mile segments due to the checkerboard pattern of land distribution. This decreases the effectiveness of all of the above measures by interspersing this wildlife friendly development plots with other plots that will most likely be developed in a more traditional manner of division into 5, 10, or 20-acre lots. Fences, bird feeders, and plant species from these segments of land undermine the good intentions of Gallatin Peaks.
 
 



References:

Draffen, George and Janine Blaeloch. May 5, 2002. The Gallatin Land Exchanges.
http://www.landgrant.org/gallatin-lx.html .

Gallatin Land Exchange. Source: http://www.greateryellowstone.org/ gallatin_ exchange.html . May 5, 2002.

Gallatin Range Consolidation and Protection Act of 1993. Source: http://www. yellowstone -online.com /history/GallatinAct93.html .  May 5, 2002.

Gallatin Land Consolidation Act of 1998. Source: http://www.yellowstone-online.com/history/GallatinII98.html

McAtee, Deborah. 2002. Personal Communication.