The Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Act
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The Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Act would safeguard the Northern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, the gold standard of land designations on our public lands.
Want to learn about Wilderness? Visit Wilderness Connect
GYWA is saddened to report the passing of GYWA board member Joe Gutkoski.
We honor Joe and all of the work he has done for wilderness in the northern Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Listen to Todd Wilkinson's lecture at the 45th anniversary of the Gallatin Wildlife Association.
http://kgvm.org/show/gwa-45th-anniversary-todd-wilkinson-lecture/
Message From the President
By Joseph Scalia - GYWA President
December 19, 2021
The Brave Path of 2021
Dear Supporters of GYWA and of all things wild,
As the year comes to a close, our all-volunteer organization wants to share with you our journey and some of the highlights of our accomplishments in 2021. ... and to ask for your continued support as we enter the all-important 2022.
The depredations to the wild - both flora and fauna - in 2021 have been deeply disturbing, and we have fought hard to provide a fearless voice, when too much of the environmentalism world remained complicit or silent. In order to carry out our work, we have had to see first-hand how our dominant local and regional culture is, over and over and over, sheerly eviscerating our wild country. We are fast losing our wildness. We are fast reaching a point of no return. Our wildlands and our wildlife are in imminent threat of demise, and it is painful to look that square in the eye.
To see it, and help others see it, we have provided an alternative to the much advertised and self-congratulatory "collaborate and compromise" model promoted by mainstream environmental groups, groups who are all highly dependent on corporate foundation funding and the societal beliefs of those corporations, and cannot see or speak without that lens.
With very high output, we have read, researched, written and published, and been interviewed on various podcasts, about "the rest of the story" that the mainstream does not want you to know.
We have taken to the wilds and to the streets, ground-truthing and publicly protesting, raising public consciousness through hard-gained knowledge. We've hiked, skied and backpacked much of the land being contested, including all of the lands which the wrongly trusted Montana big Greens have told you they were protecting, even as they want to trade away the very heart of the Hyalite Porcupine Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area, while audaciously, and rather shockingly, claiming to protect it.
We have researched and conveyed to the public the ugly realities of the vast old-growth logging and roadbuilding occurring just south of Bozeman, and on the east side of the Bridgers, all under the guises of various protections, while actually serving as logs for the timber industry. These magnificent forests are being malformed into big gardens and parks, which so much of the so-called forest and wildlife "management" and "treatment" is causing.
We completed the mapping of our Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Act, promoting new Wilderness designation for 1.15 million acres of wilderness quality lands that are being coveted by users who would increasingly displace our still intact full complement of pre-1492 wildlife.
With the help of our advocacy, three of the six East Paradise grazing allotments, in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness - all considered for livestock grazing, remain vacant.
Our short film, "Yellowstone Wilderness" now with over 11,000 views, was produced this year and is viewable on our website.
GYWA has also contributed to tireless efforts to protect the unique and soul-stirring landscapes of the Pryor Mountains, which governmental agencies would otherwise have continued ceding to motorized and mechanized recreation, with a brazen neglect of the ecological consequences of their actions.
This year, over 200 new supporters have joined us, having become more analytical in citizen responses to the messaging of governmental and NGO groups who too often propagandize in the place of educate. Some of you hail from far-flung parts of the US, as our efforts have now successfully reached beyond Montana.
Please help us remain nimble in our efforts by contributing financially, at www.gallatinyellowstonewilderness.org, in celebration of a spirited engagement and "resistance" throughout this seminal year. Thank you for accompanying us on this journey, and for having the courage to see so many painful truths, always a prerequisite to ethical existence.
In solidarity,
Joseph Scalia III, Psya.D.
President
"Yellowstone Wilderness"
A short film by GYWA
About Us...
The Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance (GYWA) is a non-profit grassroots wilderness organization based in Bozeman, Montana. We formed in early 2019, at a time when our very planet and humanity itself are terribly imperiled, and too many conservation groups keep carving up the landscape, and calling it a victory. We aim to rally public support around the proposal to protect the remaining 800,000 acres of roadless lands on the Custer Gallatin National Forest north of Yellowstone National Park as Wilderness. These vital wildlands contain world-class wildlife habitat and critical landscape linking the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to other large ecosystems to the north, creating connectivity crucial to the preservation of both the region's and the Earth's threatened biodiversity. Because these dangers have been kept from public awareness, we aim to respectfully open up a needed, hard conversation.
Recent Articles & Publications
Winter 21/22- Joe Gutkoski , Mountain Mystery, Outside Bozeman
January 10th- - Mike Bader, The Fish and Wildlife Service Must Reject Gianforte’s Political Grizzly Bear Petition, Counterpunch
January 6th- - George Wuerthner, Treat bison as the matchless legacy they represent, Independent Record
January 5th - Joseph Scalia, Guest opinion: Greens making unacceptable compromises, Billings Gazette
December 29th - George Wuerthner, Paradise Lost? Custer Gallatin NF Approves Expansion of Grazing by Yellowstone, The Wildlife News
December 28th -Todd Wilkinson , The Climber-Conservationist Who Literally Put Greater Yellowstone On The Map, MoJo
December 22nd - George Wuerthner, Start treating Yellowstone bison the way they deserve, BDC
December 22nd - Sara Johnson, Rivers are Protected When We Protect Our Forests, Counterpunch
December 16th - George Wuerthner, Guest View: Forests on public lands should be carbon reservoirs, Register Guard
December 15th- George Wuerthner, Another Yellowstone Bison Slaughter, The Wildlife News
December 14th - Law et al, Strategic Forest Reserves can protect biodiversity in the western United States and mitigate climate change, Communications Earth & Environment
December 15th - Mike Garrity, Big Victory for Grizzly Bears and Wild, Free-Roaming Elk in Montana, Counterpunch
December 8th- Todd Wilkinson, Meet a Conservation Group That Goes Where Most Fear To Tread, Mountain Journal
December 3rd - Stephen Capra, Democrats and the Wolf Slaughter, Counterpunch
December 2nd - Steve Kelly , More grizzlies in Northern Continental Divide die from car collisions, poaching, Missoula Current
November 29th - Steve Kelly , Sen. Tester’s Wilderness Act Doesn’t Go Far Enough, Counterpunch
November 7th - George Wuerthner, Infrastructure Bill Promotes Subsidized Logging, The Wildlife News
November 5th - Mike Garrity, The good, bad, and ugly of Tester's Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Act, The Hill
November 3rd - Joseph Scalia, Can the Wolf Unite Us? Environmental Leadership in Polarized Times, Counterpunch
October 22nd - Phil Knight, What Will It Take to Wake Us Up?, Counterpunch
October 12th - George Wuerthner, The Industrial Forestry Paradigm is a Threat to the Forests of the Northern Rockies, Counterpunch
October 8th - Howie Wolke, Why We Need Big Holistic Wilderness, Counterpunch
September 22nd - Jim Furnish, Forest Service "Debacle" In Black Hills Must Not Be Repeated Elsewhere, Mountain Journal
September 22nd - Mike Garrity, Clearcutting Yellowstone, Counterpunch
September 11th - John Potter, Bozeman, Montana: Capital Of The New Unwild West?, Mountain Journal
August 18th - Phil Knight, Meditations on Loving the Land, Counterpunch
August 17th - Todd Wilkinson, Last Trek Of The Human Wolverine, Mountain Journal
August 16th - Joseph Scalia, Wildness Ought To Make Us All The Wiser, Mountain Journal
August 12th - George Wuerthner, Wild Bison Restoration, Rewilding Earth
August 11th - George Wuerthner, Good Fire / Bad Fire: a False Paradigm, Counterpunch
August 5th - Phil Knight, A Yellowstone Wolf-Watching Guide Wonders Aloud: What Century Are We Living In?, MoJo
Watch Our Promotional Video
Save the Wild Gallatins! - Wilderness Podcast
Grizzly Bears and Mountain Bikes Don't Play Nice...
Ongoing Support
Consider an ongoing donation of $10 per month.
Donate
Make a donation at a dollar amount that is comfortable for you.
If you prefer to pick up a pen...
Please send your check to:
Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance
P.O. Box 5256
Bozeman, Montana 59717
Thank you!
