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The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is world renowned for its wealth of wildlife, geology and wildlands. Here you can still find all of the pre-1492 mammal species like the grizzly bear, wolf and wolverine. Yet today, the Yellowstone we know and love is under threat from human pressures and we are running out of time to save it. Yellowstone National Park forms the core of the ecosystem but the surrounding National Forest lands play a vital role in ensuring wildlife, flora as well as fauna, have a fighting chance in the face of human encroachment, including recreation as well as other development, and climate change. Wilderness designation protects wildland outside the park to the east, south, and west, but the Northern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem lacks such protection.

 

The communities of Bozeman, Big Sky and Jackson, even West Yellowstone, Gardiner and Cooke City, are growing in population. Visitation numbers for the wildlands outside of the park are skyrocketing. Underfunded and understaffed, and bowing to financial and political interests, the Forest Service is not adequately safeguarding and stewarding the wildlands in the Northern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. 

 

Therefore, we must present the Northern Greater Yellowstone story to the American people and introduce our proposal to protect the remaining roadless wildlands as federally designated wilderness. The wild still remains, at least for now and wilderness is the gold standard of conservation. The Northern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem deserves nothing less. Without wilderness protection, the heart and soul of this spectacular region are at risk.

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Film has proven its value at informing and inspiring individuals and building advocacy movements. We plan to use film to tell the Northern Greater Yellowstone's story and present our wilderness proposal. By showcasing the beauty of the ecosystem, its unprotected wildlands and wildlife, we can emotionally connect with an audience that will become champions for the cause. We seek to reenergize the wilderness movement and present the wilderness idea to a new generation of Americans as being ever more relevant in this time of unrelenting pressure to develop the remaining roadless fragments of our public lands. 

 

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem belongs to all Americans and the wildlife that calls it home. We are running out of time to save Yellowstone as we know and love it today. The American people deserve to be informed and presented with our wilderness proposal to properly call on Congress to act.

 

Our film project is composed of six, ten minute chapters. They are as follows:

 

1. Our Wilderness Vision (GYWA Wilderness Proposal)

2. The Wilderness Idea

3. U.S. Wilderness History

4.  Wilderness Values

5. Yellowstone National Park

6. The Gallatin Range