Beyond the Arch

373 Pages·2004·16.67 MB·English

7th Biennial Scientific Conference on the
Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Beyond the Arch
Community and Conservation in
Greater Yellowstone and East Africa
Proceedings
Edited by
Alice Wondrak Biel
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The production of these proceedings was made possible through the
generous support of the Yellowstone Association.
The 7th Biennial Scientific Conference on the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem was sponsored by the following organizations:
Yellowstone Association
National Park Service
Xanterra Parks and Resorts
American Studies Program, School of Environment and Natural
Resources, and Research Office, University of Wyoming
Big Sky Institute, Montana State University
Draper Museum of Natural History, Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Program, U.S. Agency
for International Development
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Beyond the Arch
Community and Conservation in
Greater Yellowstone and East Africa
Proceedings of the
7th Biennial Scientific Conference
on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Edited by
Alice Wondrak Biel
Yellowstone Center for Resources
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
2004
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Design and Layout: Alice Wondrak Biel
Suggested citation: Name of author(s). 2004. Paper title. Page(s) __ in
A. Wondrak Biel, ed., Beyond the Arch: Community and Conservation
in Greater Yellowstone and East Africa. Proceedings of the 7th Biennial
Scientific Conference on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. October
6–8, 2003, Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone National Park. Wyo.: Yellowstone Center for Resources.
For ordering information, contact: Publications Office, Yellowstone Center
for Resources, P.O. Box 168, Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190; (307)
344-2203
The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the
authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions and pol-
icies of the U.S. government or other organizations supporting the confer-
ence. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute
the endorsement of the U.S. government or other organizations supporting
the conference.

Beyond the Arch Program Committee
Dr. Lisa Graumlich, Big Sky Institute, co-chair
Dr. Eric Sandeen, University of Wyoming, co-chair
Dr. Frieda Knobloch, University of Wyoming
Dr. Charles Preston, Draper Museum of Natural History
Photo credits: cover, Roosevelt Arch (Tom Murphy); title page, clockwise
from top left, Roosevelt Arch centennial event (NPS); Kenyan schoolchil-
dren (Darren Ireland); wolf attacking a cow elk (anonymous donor); topi
approaching a lion (Darren Ireland); page 4, American bison (NPS); Cape
buffalo (Darren Ireland).
ii Beyond the Arch
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Contents
Opening welcome .................................................................................7
Suzanne Lewis, Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park
An attempt to coalesce with change......................................................9
Herbert Anungazuk
Long distance migrations: Yellowstone in a global context................18
Joel Berger
Uncommon properties: the historical ecology of cooperation in
a ranching valley............................................................................24
Alison Bidwell Pearce
Landscapes of tradition, landscapes of resistance.............................38
Don Callaway
Issues in carnivore and ungulate conservation in the Yellowstone
and Selous ecosystems....................................................................67
Scott Creel and Douglas W. Smith
Cross-border insecurity: national parks and human security in
East Africa......................................................................................70
Kevin C. Dunn
Approaching the table: transforming conservation–community
conflicts into opportunities.............................................................82
Christina Ellis, Izabella Koziell, Brian McQuinn, and Julie Stein
What we’ve learned about nature from the national park idea........96
Dan Flores
Community Conservation Services for Serengeti National
Park’s surrounding communities.................................................107
Emmanuel J. Gereta
Ecological mechanisms linking nature reserves to surrounding
lands..............................................................................................115
Andrew J. Hansen and Ruth DeFries
Conservation and contested landscapes: the potential for commu-
nity-based conservation in East Africa and North America.......126
Jim Igoe
Proceedings iii
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Theodore Roosevelt’s quest for wilderness: a comparison of
Roosevelt’s visits to Yellowstone and Africa.................................149
Jeremy Johnston
A. Starker Leopold Lecture................................................................168
Richard Leakey
Involving communities in conservation in Zanzibar: local
factors in program outcomes.......................................................179
Arielle Levine
A brief survey of standing: seeking shelter without technicalities
in Africa........................................................................................197
Kelly Matheson
Livelihood diversification among the Maasai of northern
Tanzania: implications and challenges for conservation
policy.............................................................................................204
J. Terrence McCabe
Democratizing natural resource management: experiences
from northern Tanzania...............................................................215
Fred Nelson
A century of changing land uses and property rights in
Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve.................................................228
Roderick P. Neumann
Connecting islands of hope in a raging sea.......................................244
Charles R. Preston
Excluding people from parks in East African savannas:
unintended consequences for wildlife?.........................................253
Robin Reid
Play, place, and safety in images of Yellowstone and other
national parks..............................................................................272
Bruce A. Richardson
A conservation agenda in an era of poverty....................................278
Steven E. Sanderson
Understanding ecosystem processes for conservation and
management.................................................................................287
A.R.E. Sinclair
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Ungulate grazing systems compared between the Greater
Yellowstone Area and East Africa................................................304
Francis J. Singer, Linda C. Zeigenfuss, and Robert Stottlemyer
Early wildlife and parks research in East Africa: parallels with
Yellowstone?..................................................................................319
Lee M. Talbot
Yellowstone wildlife watching: a survey of visitor attitudes
and desires....................................................................................328
Alice Wondrak Biel
The snowmachine in the garden: Yellowstone, industry, and the
Snowmobile Capital of the World................................................341
Michael J. Yochim
Poster session abstracts.....................................................................358
Proceedings v
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Foreword
Since Yellowstone National Park’s establishment, its extraordinary resources have been
protected largely through the efforts of generation after generation of park managers and friends.
The challenges facing park managers have grown increasingly complex; issues such as crowding,
landscape fragmentation, non-native species invasions, conflicting use demands, and grand-scale
political and emotional controversies would have been largely foreign to Yellowstone’s early
caretakers. Today, effective protection of the park’s natural and cultural treasures requires active,
informed management based on good science—science conducted by researchers outside, as
well as inside the National Park Service.
The purpose of the Greater Yellowstone conference series, instituted in 1991, is to encour-
age awareness and application of wide-ranging, high-caliber scientific work on the region’s
natural and cultural resources. The wealth of subjects and issues to be explored in Yellowstone
National Park provides an unbounded font of research possibilities, as well as an unflagging need
for their results. This biennial conference series, with the active involvement of professional soci-
eties and other institutions, provides a much-needed forum for knowledge-sharing among the
hundreds of researchers doing work here, park managers, and the general public.
The Seventh Biennial Conference, Beyond the Arch: Community and Conservation in
Greater Yellowstone and East Africa, reached beyond the boundaries of Yellowstone National
Park to seek commonality and difference with parks built on the Yellowstone model, but in
a wholly separate social context. Through a publicly-oriented discussion of issues that drew
together national parks in the Greater Yellowstone and East Africa, managers, scientists, poli-
cymakers, and the public came together to discuss and consider the interdependence of both
nature–society relations and natural and cultural history in local and global contexts.
The conference’s featured speakers included eminent conservationist and political activ-
ist Dr. Richard Leakey. Historian Dr. Dan Flores eloquently explored how the national park
idea has shaped our ideas about nature. Dr. A.R.E. Sinclair, who literally “wrote the book” on
ecosystem processes of the Serengeti—twice—outlined ways in which uninformed management
decisions can result in devastating “unintended consequences.” Dr. Lee Talbot shared his early
experiences conducting parks research in East Africa; Dr. Charles Preston drew connections
between Yellowstone and the East African parks and the conundrums facing their managers; Dr.
Steven Sanderson discussed the state of conservation in the world; and Dr. Robin Reid shared
the results of recently-collected data concerning human effects on the African landscape.
Other conference highlights included panels on GYE ranchland dynamics, democratizing
resource management, and the compatibility of conservation versus cultural agendas, as well as
several spirited, ongoing discussions about whether conservation efforts are best directed at the
local or national scale.
Beyond the Arch attracted the highest number of registrants of any biennial conference to
date—more than 200 people from across the globe. They included members of the public as well
as scientists, authors, media representatives, and individuals from a number of government agen-
cies. We hope these conferences and their proceedings continue to contribute to professional
knowledge and debate on the many aspects of this extraordinary area.
John D. Varley
Director, Yellowstone Center for Resources
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Opening welcome
Suzanne Lewis
Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Suzanne Lewis, and I am superinten-
dent of Yellowstone National Park. It is my pleasure and honor to welcome
you to the Seventh Biennial Scientific Conference on the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem. I bring you this welcome on behalf of all of us who work in this
great park. We are at your service, and if we can help you in any way while
you are here, please let us know. The team of park staff who are hosting this
conference will be obvious to you, but please consider any one of us wearing
the gray and green of the National Park Service to be available to answer your
questions or provide you any other kind of assistance.
Before I go on, I want to reinforce a message you’ve probably been receiv-
ing from the moment you entered the park. This park belongs to the citizens
of the United States, but it belongs even more urgently to the wild citizens of
the Yellowstone ecosystem. This time of year, as you may have noticed, some
of those citizens are extremely agitated about certain evolutionary impera-
tives, so please be very careful when you go outdoors. Our neighborhood
elk have a fairly demanding agenda of their own right now, and it’s up to us
to give them plenty of room. If you are careless, you can easily find yourself
participating in a primal wilderness experience that you would enjoy much
more from a distance. And take it from those of us who live here that the cows
can be just as aggressive as the bulls.
Just a few weeks ago, a thousand people gathered here to celebrate the
hundredth anniversary of the Roosevelt Arch, that unique historic structure
you may have driven through as you entered Yellowstone’s North Entrance.
In many ways, that celebration set the stage for this very exciting conference.
When President Theodore Roosevelt dedicated that arch in 1903, he was reaf-
firming the mission of Yellowstone and the growing number of other parks, a
mission that has grown more complex and vital through the years.
But the mission evolves. The very idea of a national park has come a long
way since Roosevelt’s time. Some of the values that now guide us here might
surprise him; each generation has to reconsider and even redefine places like
Yellowstone to meet the needs of the times.
But it’s a sure thing that Roosevelt would have shared our excitement
about this conference. Our problems, our triumphs, and even our failures
would fascinate him. The glory of the national park idea is that it is so
Proceedings 7
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Opening welcome
exhilarating just as it is so demanding; we can never rest if we are to do the
idea justice.
We are here to compare notes among ourselves—about:
• what we have to learn from our common experiences in managing
wild lands and wild lives;
• dramatic changes in how national parks around the world relate to the
rest of the planetary landscape;
• the equally dramatic changes in how national parks address the needs
of indigenous peoples;
• the futures we might hope for, and the futures we might fear; and
• the great promise of a gathering like this, as the beginning of a global
conversation—an essential dialogue that will help us all find our
way when the meaning and importance of national parks is too eas-
ily misplaced in the headlong rush of social and political change.
That is a mighty and daunting agenda, but my reading of the list of presenters
gathered here persuades me that you are up to the challenge.
One of the reasons for my confidence is that Yellowstone has proven
itself a great forum for just this kind of meeting. This is the seventh confer-
ence in this series, and I think the series has flourished in good part because
of Yellowstone’s fame and notoriety.
Theodore Roosevelt, who never lacked in opinions that he was eager to
share with the world, described the White House as a “bully pulpit.” When it
comes to questions of conservation and the human relationship with nature,
Yellowstone is also one of the world’s bully pulpits. These conferences have
debuted the data, the interpretations, and the insights of many, many fine
researchers and managers. Considering only the proceedings of the confer-
ence series, the first six conferences have resulted in some 118 important
papers and book chapters prepared by 285 authors and co-authors—more
than 1,600 pages of solid and often pathbreaking science, a sustained publica-
tion record unparalleled elsewhere in the national parks of our country.
I am confident that you will add significantly to that distinguished record,
and further elevate the wisdom it represents.
“I speak of Africa and golden joys.” With those words, Theodore
Roosevelt began his book of African adventure, and with those words I con-
clude my welcome. It is, for us, a golden joy to have you all here, and to help
you embark on new adventures in the study, protection, and celebration of
wild places from Yellowstone to Africa and beyond.
Thank you.
8 Beyond the Arch
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