Conserving Nature in Greater Yellowstone: Controversy and Change in an Iconic Ecosystem

The story of how Yellowstone, established in 1872 as the world’s first national park, has become synonymous with nature conservation-and an examination of today’s challenges to preserve the region’s wilderness heritage. For more than 150 years, the Yellowstone region-now widely known as the twenty-three million acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem-has played a prominent role in the United States’ nature conservation agenda.In this book, Robert B. Keiter, an award-winning public land law and policy expert, traces the evolution and application of fundamental ecological conservation concepts tied to Yellowstone. Keiter’s book highlights both the conservation successes and controversies connected with this storied region, which has been enmeshed in change.During the 1980s, leaders in Yellowstone embraced ecosystem management concepts to recover a dwindling grizzly bear population and to support wolf reintroduction.Since then, management policies in the region’s two national parks and adjacen