Sometime this fall, if a judge allows it, an Idaho resident will nudge their truck up a rutted road in search of high ground from which to spot, stalk, and shoot a grizzly bear. For days, the hunter will glass the hillsides, alert for pale fur in dark timber. Abandoning the car, the hunter will follow plate-sized tracks and huckleberry scat, eventually creeping close enough to identify the blocky muzzle of an adult male. Then the hunter will lift their rifle鈥�a .375 H&H, maybe鈥攁nd attempt to put a bullet through the animal鈥檚 shoulders or lungs. Their prize will be one of the first grizzly bears legally hunted in the lower 48 since 1974.

Whether such a scene will actually transpire remains uncertain. On August 30, in response to six lawsuits filed by a coalition of environmental groups and Native tribes, U.S. District of Montana Judge Dana Christensen placed a 14-day block on proposed grizzly hunts in Wyoming and Idaho while he considers whether the region鈥檚 bears should remain protected by the Endangered Species Act. On September 13, he granted a second 14-day block. While Wyoming鈥檚 grizzly season has attracted national headlines and opprobrium , its neighboring state鈥檚 hunt has flown under the radar. One telling metric: 鈥淲yoming grizzly hunt鈥� has generated Google interest as 鈥淚daho grizzly hunt.鈥�

There鈥檚 a good reason for that disparity: Wyoming issued 22 grizzly tags; Idaho granted just one. Yet despite its far smaller grizzly population, the Gem State plays an outsize role in the future of Ursos arctos horribilis and the controversy over the bear鈥檚 management. Central Idaho boasts some of the Northern Rockies鈥� wildest blocks of public land, in particular the 1.3 million鈥揳cre Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and the adjacent 2.3 million鈥揳cre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. Although scientists estimate that the Selway-Bitterroot ecosystem could support as many as 600 bruins, it鈥檚 the only official grizzly recovery area currently devoid of bears. Conservationists envision the state someday serving as a vast corridor connecting the West鈥檚 fragmented grizzlies鈥攁 junction some call 鈥渢he holy grail of Rockies recovery.鈥�

鈥淭he key to long-term grizzly recovery is providing the opportunity to expand and connect, and in that sense, Idaho is critical,鈥� says Dan Ritzman, director of lands, water, and wildlife for the Sierra Club. 鈥淭he numbers are small enough [in Idaho] that each individual bear can make a difference.鈥�

The story of this year鈥檚 grizzly hunt begins in 1975, when the lower 48鈥檚 bears, eradicated from 98 percent of their range, under the Endangered Species Act. In and around Yellowstone National Park, which held the most isolated concentration of bears, the population had fallen to 136 lonely grizzlies. Spurred by the listing, government managers set out to reduce the attractants that were luring bears into fatal conflicts with people, installing bear-proof garbage cans, compelling backpackers to hang their food, and closing nearby grazing allotments.

The bears . From 2002 to 2014, the population within the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which sprawls across Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, leveled off at around 674. That figure became the for a healthy population. By 2017, an estimated 718 grizzlies roamed the region, leading the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rescind federal protection.

Delisting, crucially, shifted the onus of grizzly management from the feds to the states. Bears within Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks remained under National Park Service jurisdiction, but grizzlies that drifted beyond those boundaries became wards of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. In practice, that meant the bears could be hunted.

Anticipating the delisting in 2016, the three states divvying up the potential harvest: The more bear habitat you have, the more bears you can kill. More than half鈥�58 percent鈥攐f the Yellowstone population鈥檚 core range falls in Wyoming, 34 percent in Montana, and 8 percent in Idaho. The states also concocted a formula to determine how many bears could die each year without crashing the core population. (Beyond Yellowstone National Park, the deal allows states to permit as many kills as they want, leading some distraught biologists to dub those outer lands the 鈥�.鈥�)

In 2018, the formula allocated Wyoming鈥檚 hunters ten Yellowstone bears, Montana six, and Idaho a single grizzly. Deciding whether to exercise those newfound hunting rights required a more complex political calculus. Montana, which skews purpler than its neighbors, at a grizzly season to further study the hunt鈥檚 impacts. Wyoming, to no one鈥檚 surprise, went gung ho by granting : its ten allotted grizzlies within the Yellowstone core, along with in the fringe beyond.

Idaho, which shares more cultural DNA with Wyoming, also opted to hunt its quota, announcing in April that it would select one lucky sportsperson via lottery. The contest drew 1,272 applicants who paid apiece for their entries, reaping $21,000 for the state. On July 20, Idaho drew its , a Boise-area resident.

It is no exaggeration to say that delisting grizzly bears, and permitting hunting them, has proved to be among the most controversial wildlife actions in American history. Some within the sportsman wing of the conservation movement welcome the return to state rule. 鈥淵ellowstone grizzly bears are probably the most studied animals on the planet, and we feel they can come off the list and the states can manage them,鈥� says Blake Henning, chief conservation officer of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which supporting delisting. State agencies, Henning argues, are 鈥渃loser to the ground鈥� than their federal counterparts. They鈥檙e also closer to hunters: As per the , states rely on hunting and fishing license sales and gear taxes to support research that guides conservation. Whether wildlife agencies are as science-guided as they claim to be is an open question, but there鈥檚 no doubt that, as Henning puts it, a lot of money from hunters鈥� pockets 鈥渉as gone into study and habitat acquisition for bears.鈥�

Many state officials also consider hunting to be a tool for population control. 鈥淭he next step in the recovery of grizzly bears is actually having some managed harvest on them,鈥� says Toby Boudreau, assistant chief of wildlife for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. By hunting some of what Boudreau calls the 鈥渉arvestable surplus鈥� beyond the population target of 674, the states hope to limit human-bruin conflicts. (Environmentalists that hunting kills innocent bears at random, rather than surgically removing troublemakers.) Should the population drop below 600, the hunts will cease until bears bounce back.

The primary argument against delisting, on the other hand, is simple: The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is already a perilous place to be a grizzly bear. in 2017, up to 49 of them killed by humans鈥攖hree times more than in 2014. Bears were shot by elk hunters in self-defense, mowed down by motorists, and euthanized for preying on cattle.

Tim Preso, managing attorney of Earthjustice鈥檚 Northern Rockies office, argues the escalating body count is no coincidence. As whitebark pine has succumbed to climate-fueled beetle epidemics, depriving grizzlies of nutritious pine nuts, bears have to meat, especially elk. Supporters of delisting claim this flexibility makes grizzlies resilient; Preso counters that the quest for calories is leading bears into clashes over cows and elk carcasses. or are suspected to have died so far in 2018鈥攁t least 26 at human hands.

鈥淭he government chose to declare the population recovered at a time of record-high human-caused grizzly mortality,鈥� Preso says. 鈥淣ow we鈥檙e proposing to add 23 more hunting mortalities on top of that.鈥�

Those deaths, conservationists argue, are especially troubling given the splintered geography of the West鈥檚 grizzlies. Bears in the lower 48 persist in a scattered archipelago, wild islands within a sea of roads, towns, and farms. Bridging those islands鈥攁llowing Yellowstone grizzlies to mingle with their cousins from Glacier National Park, Montana鈥檚 Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, and Northern Idaho鈥檚 Selkirk Mountains鈥攊s the quixotic goal of bear conservation, the only way to ensure isolated populations don鈥檛 blink out. Hunting bears as they disperse out of Yellowstone, wrote 73 scientists in an to Wyoming Governor Matt Mead, could 鈥減revent the achievement of meaningful viability.鈥�

Idaho contains only 1 percent of Yellowstone National Park, but it, too, plays a pivotal role in the dream of pan-Rockies recovery. The Fish and Wildlife Service came within a whisker of reintroducing bears to the Bitterroot in 2000, only to see its plans scuttled by then-governor Dirk Kempthorne, who infamously opposed 鈥溾�� in his state. Then, in 2016, a brave Yellowstone grizzly , a gateway to the Bitterroots. There have been no confirmed sightings of grizzlies in the area since, but their natural return could allow central Idaho to someday serve as a corridor allowing southbound Selkirk bears to link up with grizzlies moving west from Yellowstone and Glacier in Idaho鈥檚 enormous wilderness areas.

The Elk Foundation鈥檚 Blake Henning doubts that hunting a single Idaho grizzly will affect long-term connectivity. But by permitting intensive hunting in the fringe zone, says Erin Edge, Rockies and Plains representative for Defenders of Wildlife, Wyoming has already made clear that it intends to limit grizzlies鈥� spread. Edge fears that Idaho will likewise use its hunt to prevent future dispersal.

鈥淲hat we鈥檝e seen in the past is that Idaho has been resistant to grizzly bear occupancy鈥� beyond the core Yellowstone range, Edge says. As grizzlies head west, she adds, 鈥淚鈥檇 be highly concerned that the pressure would be on preventing bears from moving into other places in Idaho.鈥�

If Yellowstone鈥檚 grizzlies indeed avoid the hunt, the importance of connecting populations may well prove decisive. During the August 30 hearing at which he placed a two-week restraining order on hunting, Judge Christensen 鈥渜uestioned whether the government had adequately considered how delisting Yellowstone grizzlies could affect its ability to link up with other bears,鈥� reported the .

鈥淭o me, it seems a fundamental concept,鈥� the judge said during the hearing, 鈥渁nd that鈥檚 the issue of connectivity.鈥�

Whatever your values, the Yellowstone grizzly comeback presents an unprecedented opportunity. To Preso, it鈥檚 a chance to push the envelope by returning bears to lands they haven鈥檛 trod in decades; to Fish and Game鈥檚 Toby Boudreau, it鈥檚 a thrilling season for his state鈥檚 sportsmen. If Idaho鈥檚 first grizzly hunter gets a legal green light, though, his success is far from a fait accompli. Hunting depends as much on happenstance as skill. Says Boudreau, 鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 take a very big bush to hide a bear.鈥�

The post Why Hunting a Single Grizzly Bear Is Such a Big Deal appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

If you care one whit about wildlife, you鈥檝e probably seen the YouTube hagiography 鈥�.鈥� If you鈥檙e not among its 39 million viewers, here鈥檚 the gist: After the destruction of Yellowstone鈥檚 wolves, the story goes, unchecked herds of elk grazed the park鈥檚 streamside plants to nubbins. Denuded riverbanks slumped into their channels, leaving behind bare, incised, eroding waterways.

Wolf reintroduction in 1995 changed all that. Not only did Canis lupus thin the herds, wolves also frightened their prey away from narrow valleys, deathtraps whose tight confines made elk easy pickings鈥攁 dynamic dubbed 鈥渢he ecology of fear.鈥� Safe from hungry elk, riparian aspen and willow thrived. Wildlife from flycatchers to grizzly bears returned to shelter and feed; eroding streambanks stabilized; degraded creeks transformed into deep, meandering watercourses. Wolves had apparently catalyzed a trophic cascade, a process in which the influence of top predators鈥攍ions in Africa, dingoes in Australia, even sea stars in tide pools鈥攔ipples through foodwebs, changing, in some cases, the vegetation itself. 鈥淪o the wolves, small in number, transform not just the ecosystem of the Yellowstone National Park鈥ut also its physical geography,鈥� enthused the video鈥檚 narrator.

鈥淗ow Wolves Change Rivers鈥� transfixed me when I first saw it. I wasn鈥檛 the only one: I鈥檝e since heard the Yellowstone wolf tale repeated at conferences, seminars, and even on the lips of baristas in Scottish fishing villages. 鈥淭his story鈥攖hat wolves fixed a broken Yellowstone by killing and frightening elk鈥攊s one of ecology鈥檚 most famous,鈥� wrote the biologist Arthur Middleton . And it鈥檚 a great story: imbued with hope, easily grasped, bespeaking the possibility that our gravest mistakes can be remedied through enlightened stewardship. We live in a world of wounds, quoth Aldo Leopold, but we can also play doctor.

There鈥檚 only small problem with the vaunted wolf narrative, Middleton added: 鈥淚t鈥檚 not true.鈥�

鈥淯ntrue鈥� is, to my mind, too harsh. 鈥淚ncomplete鈥� might capture it better. Wolves have undoubtedly changed Yellowstone鈥檚 ecosystems, and in some river valleys they鈥檝e done extraordinary good. But there are other valleys the canids haven鈥檛 managed to save, places that remain as degraded as they were on that January day, more than two decades ago, when reintroduction began. Yellowstone鈥檚 wolves are landscape benefactors, but perhaps not panaceas.

So what makes the salvational story incomplete? Well, for one thing, it elides the role of another species鈥攁n equally influential animal that, like the wolf, was for decades almost entirely absent from the park. Over 20 years after wolf reintroduction, most of Yellowstone鈥檚 streams are still missing their true architects.

More than a century ago, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem ranked among the finest capitals in all of Beaverland. Although trappers pillaged the region, Yellowstone鈥檚 beavers survived the fur trade unvanquished. In 1863, Walter DeLacy complained about the 鈥渘umerous beaver dams鈥� that frustrated his travels through the Madison drainage. The Earl of Dunraven, exploring the Upper Yellowstone River in 1874, remarked that 鈥渁ll the streams are full of beaver.鈥�

There was a good reason why Yellowstone was so beaver-rich: The same otherworldly geysers and hot springs that entranced the park鈥檚 human visitors made it uniquely well suited to harboring aquatic mammals in winter. 鈥淭hese outlets, relatively clear of ice, afford unusual advantages for burrow habitations in their banks,鈥� wrote superintendent Philetus Norris in 1881, 鈥渙r for the construction, in their sloughs, of the鈥rush-and-turf houses of these animals.鈥� Were it not for illegal trappers surreptitiously controlling their numbers, Norris speculated that beavers would overrun the park altogether. 鈥淯nmolested by man, who is ever their greatest enemy, the conditions here mentioned are so favorable to their safety that soon they would construct dams upon so many of the cold-water streams as literally to flood the narrow valleys, terraced slopes, and passes, and thus render the park uninhabitable for men as well as for many of the animals now within its confines.鈥� In 1927, Milton Skinner, the park鈥檚 superintendent, estimated Yellowstone鈥檚 beaver population at 10,000, but added that the guess was likely 鈥渧ery conservative.鈥�

Yet the park鈥檚 beaver boom was short-lived. By the time Robert Jonas, a graduate student at the University of Idaho, surveyed beavers in Yellowstone鈥檚 Northern Range the 1950s, he found little but ruins, like an archaeologist stumbling upon the overgrown rubble of an abandoned kingdom: empty lodges, derelict dams, chew scars darkened by the passage of years. 鈥淥f all the areas (previously) found to have significant beaver workings,鈥� Jonas wrote, 鈥渘one had any activity in 1953 nor was there any indication that beaver had inhabited those regions for several years.鈥� Just three decades earlier Yellowstone had been Castor central. Now, despite all the protections afforded by a national park, it was a ghost town. What had gone wrong?

Beavers, Jonas realized, were collateral damage鈥攖he victims of backward wildlife management. In 1914, Congress had granted the Bureau of Biological Survey, an obscure agency tasked with controlling crop-eating birds and rodents, a sinister new remit: the destruction of wolves, coyotes, cougars, and other predators. Sheep and cattle were spreading across the West, and the government sought to purge the range of stock-menacing carnivores. Bureau agents bearing guns, poisons, and traps scuttled across the land under the orders of director Vernon Bailey, a man not known for mercy. 鈥淏y watching near [wolf] dens in the early morning or at dusk before the young are taken out,鈥� Bailey advised in one circular, 鈥渁 good hunter is sometimes able to shoot one or both of the parents.鈥�

Today national parks are strongholds for large carnivores. But when Bailey visited Yellowstone in 1915, he 鈥渇ound wolves common, feeding on young elk,鈥� and urged the bureau to kill 鈥渨ithout abatement until these pests are greatly reduced in numbers.鈥� The new National Park Service became one of Bailey鈥檚 most enthusiastic clients. By 1926, the Park Service and the Bureau of Biological Survey had killed at least 122 Yellowstone wolves, 1,300 coyotes, and untold cougars. The campaign was largely motivated by the cynical politics of self-preservation. By eliminating predators, the Park Service hoped to reassure ranchers and Congress that future national parks wouldn鈥檛 threaten livestock. And without pesky wolves around, Yellowstone鈥檚 burgeoning elk, deer, and pronghorn herds would, in theory, spill out of the park, satisfying hunters. 鈥淭o me a herd of antelope and deer is more valuable than a herd of coyotes,鈥� superintendent Roger Toll opined in 1932.

Public pressure eventually ended the slaughter, but by then it was too late: The wolves were gone. Almost immediately, researchers realized how badly the policy had backfired. Exploding elk herds devoured vegetation as fast as it could grow, hastening soil erosion. 鈥淭he range was in deplorable condition when we first saw it, and its deterioration has been progressing steadily since then,鈥� a team of visiting scientists cautioned in 1934.

At first, the anti-predator campaign may have given beavers a boost. Wolves are inordinately fond of the delectable rodents: When scientists picked through summertime wolf scat in Alberta, they found nearly 60 percent of the samples contained traces of luckless beaver. In 1926, one researcher suggested that carnivore extermination had unleashed 鈥渨hat is probably an unnatural expansion of the beaver population.鈥�

Soon after the final wolf fell, however, beavers found themselves squeezed out by other herbivores. Beavers in northern latitudes, recall, cache food in frozen ponds for the winter. According to ecologist Bruce Baker, the rodents are prudent about their stores, ignoring willow stems until the plants are large enough to furnish an adequate winter supply鈥攁round three years of growth. Beaver-chewed willows tend to coppice, growing back shoots after each cutting; beavers often harvest and rotate their coppices as diligently as any silviculturist. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a rest period built into the system,鈥� Baker told me.

Elk, by contrast, prefer aspen and willow at their youngest, greenest, and most tender. Nibbled incessantly by elk, willow can鈥檛 recover from browsing; eventually the plants die, depriving beavers of their winter larder. In his 1955 report, Bob Jonas didn鈥檛 pull punches: 鈥淭he serious reduction of the favorable beaver habitat within the park boundaries can be attributed primarily to the overpopulation of elk.鈥� Beaverland had ceded to Elktown.

In the mid-1980s, beavers finally found a champion. Dan Tyers, today a grizzly bear biologist for the U.S. Forest Service, grew up around Yellowstone, the son of a Park Service ranger. When, in 1978, Tyers landed a backcountry ranger gig in the breathtaking Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, the block of land just north of Yellowstone, he kept his eyes peeled for beavers. He saw ancient lodges and overgrown dams everywhere, but scant recent sign.

As Tyers ascended the Forest Service鈥檚 ranks, the shine wore off his ranger job. He grew disenchanted with the mundanity of checking permits and monitoring timber sales. He yearned to feel creative, to ask grand questions and seek meaningful answers. His supervisors were perplexed by his zeal, but they didn鈥檛 object when he proposed his big idea: reintroducing beavers into the Absaroka-Beartooth.

Tyers鈥檚 effort, which lasted from 1986 to 1999, remains one of the largest beaver relocations ever undertaken. The biologist live-trapped nuisance beavers on private property and transplanted them in public headwaters, even capturing the rodents on Ted Turner鈥檚 ranch after they lopped down the magnate鈥檚 shade trees. He moved the animals on horseback, in canvas-wrapped cages cooled by blocks of ice. Tyers turned his beavers loose in streams like Slough Creek and Buffalo Creek, waterways that flow south from the Absaroka-Beartooth into Yellowstone National Park, passing from Forest Service land to National Park Service jurisdiction as they go. Tyers knew there was a chance鈥攊ndeed, a likelihood鈥攖hat his beavers would follow the creeks into the park.

Sure enough, Tyers鈥� beavers soon trespassed. In 1996, Doug Smith, Yellowstone鈥檚 wolf biologist, surveyed its beaver colonies from the sky, his lanky frame folded up in the back of a circling Piper Super Cub. (Smith made sure to stop before hitting 鈥渙bserver fatigue鈥濃�攁 euphemism, he wrote, for 鈥渢he puking point.鈥�) During that first survey, Smith counted only 49 colonies in the entirety of Yellowstone. By 2007, however, the tally had nearly tripled, to 127 colonies. The spike, Smith noticed, was concentrated in the Northern Range, on many of the same streams where the Forest Service had released beavers. At last, Tyers figured, his wards had drifted downstream.

In the popular imagination, however, Tyers鈥� relocation tale lost out to a more compelling narrative: that, by allowing willows to regrow, wolves alone brought beavers back. Articles in National Geographic, the , and Orion Magazine attributed beaver recovery to wolf reintroduction, without once mentioning the relocation program that had quietly restocked the rodents just outside the park. Beavers became another link in the trophic cascade. This framing wasn鈥檛 inaccurate, per se, but it omitted Tyers鈥� meddling.

鈥淭he conversation made me think about spontaneous generation,鈥� Tyers told me when I visited his Bozeman office, referring to the antiquarian theory that, say, maggots could simply arise, without progenitors, from rotting meat. 鈥溾�楬ow did beaver get there? Well, they just appeared.鈥欌�� He sat back in his rolling chair and shrugged. 鈥淏eavers started showing up in Yellowstone, and because of the park鈥檚 name recognition, it hit the news. Reasonably so鈥擨鈥檓 not being critical. But all the while we鈥檇 been moving beavers into the backcountry and probably had 50 different active lodges and terraced dams that went on for a mile. Holy smokes, folks, if you just went a few miles north of the park and saw what beavers were doing there, you鈥檇 have a different view of the world.鈥�

The media coverage glossed over another inconvenient truth: Despite the wolf reintroduction, and despite beavers鈥� incremental recovery, many Yellowstone valleys remained untransformed. Had Philetus Norris surveyed the Northern Range in 2006, he would have discovered that the soggy paradise he鈥檇 witnessed in the 1880s remained largely bone-dry and beaverless. The sad reality, some scientists suspected, was that a century of mismanagement had inflicted damage that neither wolves nor beavers could readily repair.

As long as beavers are back in Yellowstone, why does it matter whether wolves or relocations get credit for their return? Ask Dan Kotter, and he鈥檒l tell you the reason is expectation management.

One June morning, Kotter, a PhD student at Colorado State University, drove me to Elk Creek, Exhibit A in the case for the limitations of the trophic cascade. In the 1920s, Elk Creek had been a beaver-built wonderland of open water, willow, and aspen; in the stream鈥檚 North Fork, one surveyor recorded 17 dams, including 鈥渁 splendid new structure鈥ore than 350 feet if measured along all the curves, and 5 feet high on the lower face.鈥� But the concerted wolf-killing had allowed elk to feast here, outcompeting beavers for precious forage. Without plants and beaver dams to slow its flows, the creek eroded to bedrock, while its floodplain, now disconnected from the stream, devolved from productive wetland to fallow pasture. Millennia to create, mere decades to unravel.

Kotter and I scrambled through smooth brome and timothy into Elk Creek鈥檚 channel. A towering cutbank loomed eight feet above the ankle-deep flow, the eroded cross-section as black and rich as chocolate cake. Hardly a willow stem adorned the banks: The water table had plummeted so far, Kotter said, that roots couldn鈥檛 tap groundwater. 鈥淭he only thing that could recreate this big wet valley would be beavers coming back,鈥� Kotter explained. 鈥淏ut can beavers come back when there鈥檚 no food resource?鈥� He shrugged. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think this site will restore itself in my lifetime.鈥�

In other words: Wolves may well be boosting vegetation and stabilizing streams in many Northern Range valleys, yet some incised creeks have degraded too far to bounce back. Those doomed streams are locked today in the dreaded purgatory that Kotter calls the 鈥渁lternate stable state.鈥� Without tall willows to feed them, beavers can鈥檛 return; without beavers to irrigate them, willows can鈥檛 recover鈥攁 feedback loop of degradation. I鈥檝e thought a lot about how to reconcile the competing Yellowstone stories, and here鈥檚 the best I can do: In many heavily grazed western landscapes, restoring beavers demands wolves. But some ecosystems are too damaged for even predators to salvage.

Nor are wolves the only way to alleviate the symptoms of elk overabundance. Four hundred miles southeast of Yellowstone, in Colorado鈥檚 Rocky Mountain National Park, a parallel ungulate explosion drove the park鈥檚 beavers nearly to extinction. By 1980, nary a beaver cavorted in Rocky Mountain鈥檚 Beaver Meadows. While Yellowstone tackled its elk glut with wolves, Rocky Mountain鈥攚hich is practically next door to Denver鈥攖ook a more cautious approach, encircling over 200 riparian acres with six-foot-tall fences and planting thousands of aspen and willow stems. Although the park鈥檚 elk population has descended to sustainable levels, beavers have recolonized only 10 percent of its suitable habitat, and landscape ecologist Hanem Abouelezz told me vegetation throughout much of Rocky Mountain still isn鈥檛 ready to support the rodents.

鈥淚f they just mow down all our plantings and den in the bank, that could really set us back,鈥� she said. Park officials have discussed the possibility of installing artificial beaver dams to boost water tables and willow growth, but Abouelezz told me the idea was still embryonic. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 create this problem in ten years,鈥� she said, 鈥渁nd we鈥檙e not going to fix it in ten years.鈥�

Whether it鈥檚 appropriate to build artificial beaver dams in national parks is an ethical question as much as a scientific one. What do you value more: rapid recovery, or the relative naturalness of a hands-off approach? Without intervention, Yellowstone aficionados may have to wait a long time鈥攃enturies, perhaps鈥攖o glimpse the gloriously ponded Northern Range that scientists sloshed through in the 1920s. But maybe that鈥檚 okay. 鈥淭wenty years ago, Yellowstone was a dismal desert,鈥� Bob Beschta, an Oregon State University hydrologist who鈥檚 among the leading proponents of the trophic cascade theory, told me. Since 2003, Beschta and his frequent co-author, the ecologist William Ripple, have published around 20 studies demonstrating the renaissance of Yellowstone鈥檚 vegetation, from cottonwood to willow to serviceberry. 鈥淭oday, most aspen stands are on the trajectory of success,鈥� Beschta said. 鈥淧ersonally, I鈥檓 not in a huge rush to push the system. I think it鈥檚 working.鈥� Installing artificial dams to accelerate natural recovery, Beschta added, would be 鈥渁n ecologically bankrupt idea.鈥�

Beschta鈥檚 aversion to heavy-handed meddling is also why he wishes that Dan Tyers had never relocated beavers into the Northern Range. Wolves would have paved the way for the rodents鈥� eventual return, he insists. 鈥淗e could鈥檝e dumped a thousand beaver outside the park, and you鈥檇 still never have any in the Northern Range if the plants hadn鈥檛 recovered,鈥� Beschta said. 鈥淭he reality is there was no place for them before wolf reintroduction鈥攝ero.鈥� To Beschta鈥檚 mind, the Yellowstone story proves that bringing back beavers throughout the West means keeping ungulates, both domestic and wild, in check鈥攚hether with more assertive cowboys or more abundant carnivores. 鈥淯ntil we resolve grazing issues, until we get functioning riparian plant communities that allow beaver to come in, we鈥檙e going in the wrong direction.鈥�

I have spent more time tromping through Yellowstone National Park than I have just about anywhere else. And yet, until the summer of 2017, the park鈥檚 beavers were invisible to me.

The morning after our Elk Creek visit, Dan Kotter led me eight miles on foot up Slough Creek, a stream that horseshoes lazily through sweeping bison meadows on its way into the park from the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, to rectify my oversight. Twenty thousand years ago, the Pinedale Glaciation had gouged out this valley with a flick of its icy finger. Over millennia, Kotter said as we climbed, beavers aggraded the ice-carved trench into the lush grassland below us, capturing enough sediment in their ponds to fill a vertiginous V into a hospitable U. We could still make out the grass-covered shadows of ancient dams snaking across the damp meadows.

Now Slough Creek鈥檚 beaver population was again growing. When Doug Smith first surveyed the park鈥檚 beavers from the air in 1996, Slough Creek hadn鈥檛 supported a single colony; a decade later, it held nine. We met beaver sign everywhere: foraging canals slicing through damp floodplains, gnaw marks inscribed into small spruces, spindrifts of polished sticks washed ashore on point bars. 鈥淭his place,鈥� Kotter said, 鈥渋s the beating heart of Northern Range beaver recovery.鈥�

At last we stumbled upon shelter, a charmingly dilapidated cabin perched at Slough Creek鈥檚 confluence with a rollicking tributary called the Elk Tongue. No sooner had we dropped our packs than we were passed by a beaver coasting down Slough at high velocity, mocha head poking from the current. Later, we saw the same animal struggling back upstream at a much slower clip, riding high and ungainly, like a paddling golden retriever. It was the first time I鈥檇 seen a beaver look clumsy in his aquatic element. Kotter pointed out, though, that the creek鈥檚 flow was weakest at the surface, where it was diminished by friction with the air. Even awkward-seeming beaver behavior, I realized, conceals efficiency.

After dinner, we set out for some evening recon. Flooding had left Slough鈥檚 meadows soft and saturated; soon we were soaked to the shins. Baseball-sized boreal toads, a species that in many places breeds exclusively in beaver ponds, leaped to avoid our footfalls. Every quarter-mile a haystack-sized beaver lodge sprouted from the bank. Kotter cut across the floodplain to examine a massive dome with a freshly manicured roof. We knelt to examine tracks, a jumble of splayed hind feet and dainty front paws. Some of the impressions were no wider than a thumbprint. 鈥淚 think there are kits in here,鈥� Kotter whispered. We held our breath, and moments later faint burbles, uncannily like the cries of a human baby, rose from the lodge鈥檚 interior.

Evidently the parents did not appreciate our proximity, for the chirrups were followed by a resounding kerplunk, as though someone had thrown a flagstone into the stream. A glistening black head cut a wake through Slough Creek, whose glowing surface reflected the fiery sunset. The beaver swam toward us with startling boldness, tacking back and forth upstream like a sailboat battling a strong wind. He whacked his oar-like tail again, shattering the dusk and raising a plume of spray. He was brave, determined, selfless in the face of danger; I felt instantly guilty at causing him undue stress.

As we retreated through near-darkness to the cabin, bear spray at the ready, I realized this encounter represented something new to me. In my beaver-watching career, I had seen the adaptable animals flourishing in irrigation ditches, culverts, and drainage canals. But I鈥檇 never met one in a place so wild that I could gaze from valley wall to valley wall, upstream and down, without laying eyes on house, road, or artificial light. We have countless examples of how Castor canadensis uses and abuses human-built infrastructure, but precious few places where we can observe beavers interact with a full complement of native wildlife鈥攚olves and elk, bison and boreal toads, cutthroat and cranes. Beavers are defined by their role as keystone species; the Greater Yellowstone is one of a handful of ecosystems where the arch remains intact.

Even so, there鈥檚 something fallacious about calling Yellowstone wild. Over the last 150 years, its denizens have been hardly more self-willed than the orcas at SeaWorld. Wolves were wiped out by one government agency, then reintroduced by another; elk were culled and subjected to firing squads the moment they crossed park boundaries. Bison still face hazing or slaughter when they summon the temerity to leave Yellowstone. Even the return of beavers, one of the park鈥檚 happiest stories, was abetted by a relocation program engineered by an idealistic Forest Service employee. Our wildest ecosystems are indelibly smudged with human fingerprints.

We woke the next morning from a sound night鈥檚 sleep in our Slough Creek cabin to find that rain had fallen and bejeweled the grass. After breakfast, Kotter cracked open a cabinet and unearthed a trove of old logbooks, scrawled with entries authored by visiting rangers and researchers. I sat on the wooden porch in the sun and leafed through 40 years of semi-legible jottings. Some were quotidian: 鈥淭he outhouse door slams at the same moment every morning.鈥� Others, dramatic: 鈥淕rizz print on door is a front pad and is 6 inches wide.鈥� There, on November 30, 1988, was Dan Tyers, up Slough Creek to radio-collar moose: 鈥淛oys of early winter skiing鈥攂reaking trail; not as bad as trip last January.鈥�

Wait a second鈥攃ollaring moose? I鈥檇 been into Slough Creek half a dozen times over the years without once seeing hide or hair of Alces alces. As I paged through the logbooks, though, I discovered that both moose and elk had once been ubiquitous in Slough Creek. Nearly every journal entry mentioned encountering one or both species. In 1988: 鈥淎lmost 200 elk seen between here and the Silver Tip ranch.鈥� In 1989: 鈥淲e鈥檝e seen at least eight moose, many ducks, elk with new calves.鈥� In 1990: 鈥淪aw elk in every meadow.鈥�

While browsers apparently had the run of the place, beavers, I noticed, had been scarce. An entry from June 7, 1989, signed by one of Tyers鈥� assistants, told the tale: 鈥淣ot good beaver habitat until you get to Frenchy鈥檚 meadows鈥濃�攁 bend far upstream. Now the species鈥� roles had reversed: Elk and moose had nearly vanished, and beavers had taken their place. The old logbooks might not qualify for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but they still provided compelling testimony on behalf of an ecosystem restructured by trophic cascade.

The most powerful stories tend to be the simplest ones, the tales that can be cogently distilled into four-minute YouTube clips. Ecological truth, however, is harder to condense in a viral video. Much though we crave a unified field theory for Yellowstone National Park, we may instead be forced to settle for dozens of stories, each unique to its stream, each the product of a different permutation of topography, hydrology, and ecology. Yellowstone is larger than some European countries; it contains multitudes. There is room for waterways, like Slough Creek, that have been transformed by predators, and for others, like Elk Creek, that no number of wolfpacks could ever restore.

鈥淭he two most common words in ecology,鈥� Kotter told me as we flipped through the musty logbooks, 鈥渁re it depends.鈥�

Toward the back of one journal, I came to an entry penned in 1991, signed by a mysterious M.B.鈥攑erhaps Mollie Beattie, former head of the Fish and Wildlife Service, who died of cancer in 1996, just a year after wolves were reintroduced. The log prattled on for a few sentences about meteorological conditions before wrapping up with a premonition that, in its wistful mix of hope and yearning, hit me with the force of a line from A Sand County Almanac. 鈥淎ll this place needs is a pack of wolves to serenade us to sleep,鈥� M.B. had written, four years before the carnivores鈥� return. 鈥淲e鈥檙e working on it!鈥�

This excerpt is from Ben Goldfarb鈥檚 new book, (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.

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Shortly after midnight one evening in August 1967, Dave Shea, a 27-year-old biologist stationed in Glacier National Park, leveled his .300 H&H Magnum rifle at a female grizzly as she devoured garbage behind a backcountry guesthouse called the Granite Park Chalet. Six men, including the tall, redheaded Shea, stood poised on the balcony鈥攖wo to illuminate the sow with flashlights, four to end her life. At the count of three, the executioners fired. Eleven bullets split the cool night, and the bear slumped into a ravine.

In the 57 years between Glacier National Park鈥檚 founding and 1967, its resident grizzlies had rarely bothered human visitors. A century of persecution had relegated the lower 48鈥檚 last silvertips to mountain redoubts. Never had a Glacier grizzly killed a human. 鈥淚f you set up a danger index ranging from zero to ten,鈥� a ranger told the author Jack Olsen at the time, 鈥渨here the butterfly is zero and the rattlesnake is ten, the grizzlies of Glacier Park would have to rate somewhere between zero and one.鈥�

That illusion was shattered 50 years ago this week, when two grizzly attacks stunned the Park Service and forever transformed America鈥檚 relationship with its most iconic carnivore.

In the early hours of August 13, 1967, a bear dragged 19-year-old Julie Helgeson from a campground below the chalet after gnawing the arm and legs of her male companion. By the time rescuers found her torn body hours later, Helgeson, a bright, charming Minnesotan, had suffered massive blood loss; though her bitten friend survived, she died on a makeshift operating table at the chalet at 4:12 am. At nearly the same moment, a different grizzly attacked another 19-year-old woman, Michele Koons, in her sleeping bag at nearby Trout Lake. Although Koons鈥� friends managed to flee, the young Californian wasn鈥檛 able to disengage her zipper, and the grizzly carried her into the night.

The next morning, mortified officials dispatched a cadre of rangers to terminate any bear lingering near the attack sites鈥攁 job Shea considered necessary but stomach-turning. 鈥淚t was very disagreeable to me,鈥� he says. 鈥淭o live in the same country as grizzly bears is a privilege. And it really wasn鈥檛 the bears鈥� fault.鈥�

For much of the 20th century, many grizzly bears who lived in or around national parks subsisted largely on human garbage. In Yellowstone, early officials erected bleachers around dumps so tourists could watch bruins nosh chicken bones and rotten vegetables. Glacier鈥檚 approach was scarcely better. Just four days earlier, Shea and a 27-year-old ranger named Bert Gildart had visited the chalet and discovered that the hotel was feeding its scraps to regular ursine visitors. Meanwhile, the campground at Trout Lake 鈥渓ooked like a battlefield strewn with K rations,鈥� wrote Olsen in , his bestselling 1969 account of the tragedy.

The inevitable result: Bears lost their fear of humans and came instead to associate us with free dinner. 鈥淭hese were tragedies waiting to happen,鈥� says Gildart, who shot the Trout Lake bear, an emaciated female whose stomach was found to contain a tangled mass of undigested human hair.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, a broader reprisal against Glacier鈥檚 grizzlies seemed inevitable. Yes, the offending individuals had been killed, but some dissatisfied officials demanded the species鈥� from the lower 48. Who were parks for, anyway鈥攑eople or predators? 鈥淭he grizzly will almost certainly be banished into Canada,鈥� Olsen warned in his book, 鈥渁nd thence perhaps into Alaska to live out his last years as a species, and all the goodwill and understanding in the world鈥ill not alter his eventual fate.鈥�

Rather than leading to the eradication of bruins, however, the night of the grizzlies forever reshaped the country鈥檚 approach to bear management. Over the months that followed, chastened Glacier administrators set about developing nearly all the practices that modern campers associate with bear-smart outdoorsmanship: installing bruin-proof garbage cans, separating cooking and sleeping areas at campgrounds, and setting up a backcountry permitting process to track hikers. Shea suspended steel cables between trees so backpackers could hang their food; Gildart escorted them out of the woods when they failed to comply. Altogether, says Shea, Glacier鈥檚 bear management plan expanded, virtually overnight, from three pages long to around 50.

An aggressive education program also bolstered awareness. Before the attacks, Gildart remembers, drivers would regularly pose their kids alongside black bears on Going-to-the-Sun Road. One motorist even tried to coax a bear behind the steering wheel for a photo op. 鈥淏y the next year, people would get around 15 pieces of bear safety literature going through the park,鈥� he says.

Yellowstone鈥檚 managers took heed as well, raising food poles, establishing dedicated backcountry sites, and closing the famous open-pit dumps. The latter decision, though well-intentioned, troubled twin brothers Frank and John Craighead, the founding fathers of grizzly biology, who advised the park to phase out the trash heaps gradually and to supplement the garbage with elk carcasses to wean the bears onto natural foods. Forcing rubbish-addicted bears to go cold turkey, , could lead to 鈥渢ragic personal injury, costly damages, and a drastic reduction in the number of grizzlies.鈥�

But park managers ignored their recommendations, and the process unfolded as the Craigheads foretold. Dozens of starving, garbage-dependent bears blundered into campgrounds and trash piles just outside the park, and, in 1972, a grizzly killed a camper near Old Faithful, a slaying that many attributed to the dump shutdown. The closures were far more fatal for wildlife: Between 1968 and 1973, a staggering 189 Yellowstone grizzlies at human hands. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no question that park rangers were killing bears willy-nilly,鈥� says bear biologist David Mattson.

The dump closure and the spike in grizzly deaths also had profound political consequences. By 1975, , prompting the government to list them as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Decades of recovery efforts ensued, largely centered around improved garbage management. Once, Yellowstone鈥檚 black and grizzly bears an appalling 48 people each year; by the 2000s, though, the park was averaging only one attack annually and killing just a single incorrigible silvertip every five years. (Although officials are 聽to euthanize grizzlies that attack people鈥攊f, for instance, the aggressor is a mother defending her cubs鈥攎anagers tend to err on the side of human safety.)

鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to go into a cleaner place than Yellowstone or Glacier today,鈥� says longtime grizzly advocate Louisa Willcox. 鈥淭o have people as well-behaved as they are is astonishing.鈥�

Thanks largely to improved human behavior, Olsen鈥檚 prediction about the certain demise of Ursus arctos horribilis proved wrong. In recent years, grizzlies have expanded their range, venturing down from alpine refuges to recolonize prairies in Wyoming, Montana, and Alberta. Farther west, the government has proposed into Washington鈥檚 North Cascades National Park. And earlier this year, Yellowstone鈥檚 grizzlies, which number around 700, were finally 鈥攄espite advocates鈥� objections鈥攁nd stripped of their endangered status. But Mattson and Willcox鈥攁 husband-wife duo who describe themselves as Montana鈥檚 鈥溾�濃�攁ren鈥檛 celebrating. To their minds, the Yellowstone bear鈥檚 situation in 2017 contains disquieting echoes of its plight a half-century ago. Once again, grizzlies face an uncertain nutritional future, as whitebark pine trees, whose nuts provide critical calories, are being ravaged by a climate change鈥揹riven beetle epidemic. Once again, alarming numbers of bears are perishing beyond the park鈥檚 boundaries鈥攖his time in clashes with ranchers and hunters. And once again, they say, the warnings of independent scientists have fallen upon deaf ears. 鈥淭hese dynamics, in some respects, are eternal,鈥� Mattson says.

Today, the odds of being mauled in a national park are infinitesimal. Eight people have been in Yellowstone鈥檚 history鈥攆ewer than the number of people who have perished in the park鈥檚 thermal pools. In Glacier, bruins have benefited from new protocols as much as people have: According to supervisory wildlife biologist John Waller, the park hasn鈥檛 been forced to remove a grizzly since 2009. Bears that linger around campgrounds face a battery of hazing techniques from rangers鈥攜apping dogs, exploding cracker shells, gun-propelled bean bags鈥攄esigned to make them fear us strange, hairless bipeds. 鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 take the bear very long to go, huh, it鈥檚 not worth going back there,鈥� Waller says.

Still, freak accidents happen. In 2016, for instance, Brad Treat, a Forest Service officer, was mountain biking just outside Glacier when he collided with a grizzly, which then killed him. (Bert Gildart, an avid cyclist, alerts animals by singing Bruce Springsteen鈥檚 鈥淕lory Days鈥� as he rounds blind curves.) The most intractable source of conflict may be simple math. In Glacier鈥檚 early years, it drew scarcely 4,000 visitors a year; in 2016, it . Yellowstone has for two years running. 鈥淕lacier is where my heart is, but it鈥檚 not wilderness anymore,鈥� says Dave Shea, who worked 36 seasons in the park before retiring. 鈥淭he overarching problem is too many humans.鈥�

Earlier this summer, while hiking a Yellowstone ridgeline with a friend, I spotted a female grizzly trundling across a snowfield a quarter-mile downwind. As we dug for our cameras, the bear caught our scent, lifted her head, and took off at a gallop toward us, slabs of fat and muscle rippling beneath blond fur. Cameras forgotten, we unsheathed cans of bear spray鈥攁 technology that didn鈥檛 exist in 1967鈥攁nd backed away, hollering and clapping. The scene unfurled surreally; I felt less participant than observer, as though the anachronistic experience of being charged by a gigantic predator was more appropriately the stuff of nature documentaries than real life.

Moments later, the grizzly popped over the plateau鈥檚 lip, foam flecking the corners of her toothy mouth, panting like a winded dog. She hesitated 25 feet out, more quizzical than aggressive. For a long moment, we shared the plateau, three mammals alone on a windswept ridge in the heart of nowhere. And then the grizzly, decisively and mercifully, turned and disappeared over the next rise, leaving us alone with our hammering hearts. She was everything a bear should be鈥攚ary and wild, an animal that saw us two humans not as providers or prey, but, rightly, as untrustworthy interlopers to be avoided.

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On a rose-tinted summer evening near Billings, Montana, a football-shaped dory drifts down the Yellowstone River, its flat bottom skimming wakeless over the roiling surface. Mike Penfold, a former Bureau of Land Management state director, mans the oars with the vigor of an Olympic rower. Dale Anderson, a bearded ex-teacher, perches in the bucket seat. The river tightens into a narrow canyon, hemmed by sandstone cliffs that glow in the fading light. Two hundred and nine years earlier, Captain William Clark鈥檚 Corps of Discovery drifted past this very spot during its homeward trek from the Pacific.

鈥淵ou wonder what was going on in Clark鈥檚 brain when he saw that,鈥� Penfold, 78, says, nodding at the radiant cliffs. A cowboy hat shades his broad, florid face, and his T-shirt bears the slogan #KeepItPublic. 鈥淭oday, the Yellowstone seems quiet and easy,鈥� he adds, pirouetting the dory away from a groping log. 鈥淏ut there are times when this river is damn-well dangerous.鈥�

Farther downstream, the Yellowstone鈥檚 mood swings are scrawled across the landscape. Tangled root wads burst from naked clay banks, and gravel bars jut into the current. The wheat and beet farmers whose properties abut the river don鈥檛 appreciate its capriciousness; they鈥檝e piled the banks with concrete blocks, warped nests of rebar and rusted-out pickup trucks to thwart erosion. But floods and ice jams regularly tear apart the riprap and send junk whirling downriver. Every year, volunteers extract some 7,000 pounds of detritus. Anderson, who swears he once saw an ex-wife鈥檚 Buick in the rubble, watches the riprap slide by, arms folded. 鈥淢an, that鈥檚 ugly,鈥� he mutters.

Penfold鈥斺�渢he dean of the Yellowstone,鈥� a former colleague calls him鈥攁lso grumbles about the trash. Much of the meddling, he surmises, was conducted without a permit. In central Montana, environmental enforcement can be lax, and a full 84 percent of the Yellowstone鈥檚 surroundings are privately owned, substantially more than the state as a whole. But Penfold, a career federal servant who worships Montana鈥檚 famously progressive stream-access laws, believes the Yellowstone鈥檚 corridor is also home to thousands of acres of heretofore unrecognized public land, in the form of unclaimed islands and banks. Identifying the rightful public ownership of these parcels is central to his longstanding dream: the creation of the Montana Recreation Waterway, aquatic cousin to the Appalachian or Pacific Crest trails, a river trail running most of the 670-mile course of the Yellowstone.

He believes that to experience a river is to love it, and that to love it is to fight for its protection. The Yellowstone 鈥� its waters overdrawn by irrigators, polluted by oil spills, constrained by riprap 鈥� could use some love. 鈥淲hat would you need to make a river trail happen?鈥� Penfold asks as we cruise through the canyon. 鈥淵ou need places to camp. You need places to pull out. You need public land.鈥�

The Yellowstone is a curious river, at once iconic and neglected 鈥� neither contaminated like the Duwamish, nor altered beyond recognition like the Colorado, nor beloved by rafters like the Salmon. Though its headwaters rise just outside America鈥檚 first national park, it鈥檚 a utilitarian waterway, whose flows nourish sugar beets, wheat and alfalfa. Its upper reaches in the Paradise Valley are stalked by trout and well-heeled fly fishermen; by the time it reaches its confluence with the Missouri, it鈥檚 inhabited by blue-collar fish like sauger and bass, and trafficked by the jet boats of Bakken oil workers. It is the blue thread that ties Montana鈥檚 mountainous west to its agricultural east, its grizzly bear meadows to its beet fields.

Much recent Yellowstone media coverage has focused on two catastrophic oil pipeline ruptures, in 2011 and 2015, which together hemorrhaged over 100,000 gallons. But the spills were merely the latest episodes in a history of maltreatment. Agricultural withdrawals have reduced the river鈥檚 flows, riprap stifles the buildup of floodplains and other hydraulic processes, and runoff from farms and cities degrades water quality. Invasive plants, particularly Russian olive, choke the banks. While the Yellowstone is technically the country鈥檚 longest free-flowing river, its irrigation diversions impede fish, especially the endangered pallid sturgeon.

Decades of abuse came to a head after 1996, when a hundred-year flood tore through the basin, devouring crops, bridges and houses. Landowners like Jerry O鈥橦air, a ruddy-cheeked rancher and farmer, vowed to protect themselves against future torrents. O鈥橦air spent thousands of dollars armoring his section of the river and restoring a trout stream on his land. 鈥淲e must鈥檝e bought all the chicken wire in western Montana,鈥� he recalls. The next year, yet another hundred-year flood undid his work. 鈥淭hese giant root wads I鈥檇 put in just went bobbing away like corks.鈥�

Riprap had almost certainly exacerbated the floods by converting sections of the river into giant sluices. Yet many farmers believed the solution was still more riprap. The number of armoring permits granted by the Army Corps doubled. Environmental groups sued, insisting that the agency evaluate the cumulative impacts of all its permits. A judge sided with the environmentalists, but by then, says Susan Gilbertz, a cultural geographer at Montana State University Billings, 鈥淪ections of this river were screwed up about as badly as they could get.鈥�

Penfold followed the armoring controversy with interest. He鈥檇 served as Montana鈥檚 BLM director from 1980 to 1985, administering the agency鈥檚 coal-leasing program. Later, he worked as its national assistant director for land and renewable resources under both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. But his formative years came in the 1970s, when Penfold, a Colorado native, moved with his wife and four daughters to Roanoke, Virginia, to work for the U.S. Forest Service. More than 300 miles of the Appalachian Trail traversed his hardscrabble corner of the state, and he noticed that towns closer to the trail seemed cleaner and wealthier. Hikers served as walking shots of economic adrenaline, injecting tourist dollars into Virginia鈥檚 hills. The local trail club watchdogged the Forest Service, lambasting it when it planned clear-cuts near the path. Penfold joined the club on hikes and incorporated its concerns into forest planning. 鈥淭he Forest Service needed to be dragged up by the scruff of the neck,鈥� he recalls.

Though Penfold retired to Billings in 1995, leisure didn鈥檛 suit him, and he hurled himself into public land conservation and access issues. In 2007, for instance, he organized a coalition of conservationists, ATVers and horsemen in an attempt to devise travel-management plans in the Pryor Mountains, a remote crease of peaks, canyons and mesas near the Wyoming border. 鈥淓veryone was pissed,鈥� recalls Dale Anderson, who was involved in the negotiations. 鈥淢ike was one of the cooler heads I鈥檝e been around.鈥�

Around the same time, the was winning its own legal battle, for recreational river access at a disputed Yellowstone crossing called Bundy Bridge (no relation to the notorious Nevadan). Although a local rancher claimed the land, the group used historical records to prove public ownership; today, the bridge hosts a popular fishing access site. That success got Penfold wondering: Just how much unrecognized public land lined the Yellowstone? After all, the river was constantly re-contouring itself, creating and annihilating islands and bars. By law, islands that formed prior to Montana鈥檚 statehood in 1889 are federal land, while islands that sprang up later belong to the state 鈥� even if they eventually attach to the bank. Some of those erstwhile islands, Penfold believed, had been appropriated by landowners, or ignored altogether. He wanted to reclaim them for the people.

In 2009, Penfold, now volunteering for a group called Our Montana, hired a fluvial geomorphologist to study 15 miles of the river鈥檚 historic twists and turns. He also pored over tax records and folios of old aerial photos, identifying stretches of bank that may have originated as islands. In the end, he identified 10 separate tracts of unrecognized public land along the Yellowstone between Billings and nearby Laurel. If a single 15-mile section enfolded that much land, who knew how many public parcels lined the river鈥檚 course?

Penfold submitted his report to the state in 2010. Then he waited. And waited. The state made polite noises about evaluating the issue, but the process moved slowly. 鈥淭he response was always, 鈥榃e don鈥檛 have time,鈥� 鈥� Penfold says. 鈥淚t was disappointing.鈥�

Finally, in 2014, his work bore fruit. Among Penfold鈥檚 islands was a piece of land dubbed Clarks Crossing, a cobble-strewn stretch of bank where William Clark ordered Sgt. Nathaniel Pryor to lead two dozen horses across the Yellowstone. Thieves soon nabbed the animals, but the sergeant, undaunted, stretched buffalo hides over wooden frames to create makeshift canoes, paddling downriver to deliver the bad news to Clark two weeks later. Inglorious though the episode may have been, the historical connection helped spur Montana to officially recognize the island. The state later leased the 115-acre Clarks Crossing, without the apostrophe, to the city of Billings for use as a public park.

Still, the floodgates of public-land designation won鈥檛 open anytime soon. 鈥�(Riparian ownership) analyses are quite costly in both staff time and contracted resources,鈥� Monte Mason, minerals management bureau chief for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me via email. Penfold鈥檚 work, Mason wrote, 鈥渋s useful to help refine a list of possibilities,鈥� and has led the agency to engage in 鈥渁 broad review of landforms in the central-eastern stretch of the Yellowstone River.鈥� But Penfold鈥檚 reports, he added, 鈥渄o not provide the level of expert analysis鈥� necessary to prove title. Wrote Mason: 鈥淲e have cautioned Mr. Penfold regarding making public assertions of state ownership and access to landforms where legal title has not been adjudicated.鈥�

Three days after our dory ride, Penfold and I embark in a green battleship of a canoe on a 19-mile float below Intake Diversion Dam, a line of boulders that shunts irrigation water into nearby fields and disrupts migratory sturgeon. We鈥檙e joined by a ragtag armada drawn from Penfold鈥檚 bottomless pool of friends and friends鈥� friends, from retired wheat farmers to plant pathologists to a small-town mayor who doubles as his village鈥檚 minister and triples as the owner of its liquor store.

Among the paddlers is Doug Smith, an immense, gray-braided member of the , a citizen council that helps steer the state park system. Soon after joining the board, he lobbied for the creation of three new parks 鈥� including a 40-mile stretch of the Yellowstone that would 鈥済et your foot in the door for a whole river park,鈥� he tells me when we beach our canoes for lunch. Though Smith and Penfold had only met this morning, they鈥檇 independently concocted similar visions. When Smith presented his river park to the board, however, it was dead on arrival. 鈥淭he park system is way underfunded, and there鈥檚 a huge backlog of deferred maintenance,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 get much traction with these ideas.鈥�

Indeed, Montana鈥檚 state parks are fiscally ailing. Between 2009 and 2013, revenue from hunting and fishing licenses declined by 8 percent, forcing the state鈥檚 Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to cut staff and close laboratories. In 2014, Montana鈥檚 budget for its 55 public parks was $7.5 million, 聽paltry compared to nearby states like Idaho, which had a $16 million budget for just 30 parks. Montana scarcely has enough money to manage its existing parks, let alone a sprawling, logistically complex river with myriad access points.

If the state can鈥檛 come through, though, the feds could. The program, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, includes numerous water trails, among them a network of 55 campsites in Washington鈥檚 Puget Sound. But in eastern Montana, where anti-government fever runs high, a federal river trail surely would incite resentment.

鈥淭o many people, any attempt to raise the profile of this river seems to come from on high and will involve more regulations,鈥� Susan Gilbertz cautions. In 2014, Interior dissolved its two-year-old National Blueways System, an initiative designed to recognize aquatic conservation efforts, after some landowners and Republican congressmen expressed largely unfounded fears that it would lead to land seizures.

Skeptical landowners may take comfort in the fact that, if history is any guide, the Montana Recreation Waterway would serve as a state-long stimulus package. The Appalachian Trail, the legendary path that first inspired Penfold, generates nearly $30 million annually for local communities. Even small trails, like the 34-mile , are worth millions. And rivers are liquid assets, in every sense: A , for instance, found that fishing and boating on the Upper Snake creates $46 million annually. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got 3.5 million people coming by our door every year on their way to Yellowstone Park,鈥� Penfold says as our canoe scrapes a shallow bar. 鈥淭he potential here is absolutely immense.鈥�

Moreover, conservation is already coming. In 2015, the Yellowstone River Conservation District Council, the organization that formed in the wake of the mid-鈥�90s floods, released a long-awaited draft of its , a hefty document that chronicles the Yellowstone鈥檚 plight and offers an array of recommendations for ameliorating damage. The suggestions include removing blockages that cut off side channels, taking out old riprap and berms, and compensating farmers who let their land sink back into the river.

鈥淢any of the biggest changes to the river鈥檚 morphology are also subtle鈥攚e have to address things that are not obvious to the eye,鈥� says Don Youngbauer, the council鈥檚 chairman. Penfold鈥檚 project, Youngbauer adds, could nudge restoration along by growing the river鈥檚 constituency. 鈥淚鈥檇 love to see that. You can鈥檛 protect what you can鈥檛 touch.鈥�

Around 10 miles below the dam, the river widens and slows, and civilization disappears behind a wall of cottonwoods. The other canoes slip around a bend, leaving our boat alone with a small group of mergansers, the females鈥� rust-colored crests ruffled by the wind. We sit in silence, listening to the faint hiss of silty water sliding against the hull. For the first time since our voyage began, it鈥檚 possible to imagine the river as Clark might have experienced it. The channel guides us along the right flank of a massive island, and Penfold adds it to his mental map as we drift past. 鈥淲hat a nice piece of land,鈥� he says, like a jeweler admiring a 12-carat diamond.

The Montana Recreation Waterway is, to be sure, a pie-in-the-sky scheme. It faces resistant landowners, cash-strapped agencies and uncertain land tenure. (Because recreational river boating is prohibited within Yellowstone National Park鈥檚 waters, the trail would have to begin in Gardiner, Montana, rather than at the headwaters.) Still, Penfold is making incremental progress. He鈥檚 recruited students and professors at Rocky Mountain College to help map more islands, launched a new website touting Yellowstone conservation, and gradually filled his Rolodex with supporters. Yet even the designation of humble Clarks Crossing, a single link in a 670-mile-long chain, took years of work.

No one understands the sluggish pace of bureaucracy better than a former BLM director, and Penfold realizes that he may not live to see his plan to fruition. Still, he also knows that most great ideas in the annals of public lands protection began as flights of fancy. As we cruise downriver, I wonder aloud who would be foolhardy enough to travel his hypothetical river trail, braving diversion dams and loose logs and irate farmers along the way. Penfold, crouched in the canoe鈥檚 rear, flashes a mischievous grin. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a river that could be very challenging to a lot of people,鈥� he says, dipping a paddle. 鈥淵ou need someone with a little adventure in their spirit.鈥�

Correspondent Ben Goldfarb writes from New Haven, Connecticut. Follow

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