Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative | Hacker News Reader

Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

y2y.net

107 pointsAmorymeltzer53 comments

This is such a fine initiative. If I was President this sort of thing would be a priority (connecting all the national parks in the US). Vote for me 2024!

Bring back the Buffalo! Create wildlife corridors from Rocky to Mississippi!

> Create wildlife corridors from Rocky to Mississippi

Are there any funds which currently seek to do this? I’d be interested in doing it myself

I'm afraid I'm unaware of any funds. My state funds restoration areas on the scale of 80 acre+ parcels, but corridors would require an unbelievable amount of contiguous spaces. I imagine it would be a multi-century project to establish such a thing with all the arm twisting.. I mean incentives required.

Just for geographic scale, Google says the distance from Denver to Memphis is 1000+ miles.

Though of course it would probably make sense to start along a river. Maybe the Arkansas if you want to start at the Colorado Rockies: length 1400+ miles.

But the Missouri is an option that could connect up with the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Unfortunately that is quite a bit longer at well over 2000 miles (because a river does not run as a crow flies).

Anyway, it’s going to take a fair bit of money, so there will be plenty to pay seven figure executive salaries making it a cracker of idea.

People also tend to live near rivers, so it would be quite difficult.

I did look at the Form 990 for this charity. As of 2019, about a $2.5M budget, and only one salaried employee, making a not-at-all-princely salary.

Of course, with that amount of money, they can't do much more than fund studies.

The problem with rivers is that there are cities all along them. I can’t even imagine the cost.

At 1000 miles, the cost of any corridor from the Rockies to the Mississippi is pretty much unimaginable anyway, so why not fantasize about the right way of doing things?

Or to put it another way, the distance itself is beyond what people tend to imagine.

And any route across the Great Plains is going to run across prime farmland.

Farmland is a lot cheaper than any land in a city.

Until you take away the farmland. Then the land in cities becomes worthless.

Prime farmland is not as cheap as is ordinarily imagined. In part because it’s value is based on the income it generates and in part because revenue generation means it is often not for sale since selling means finding another investment with similar properties.

For tldr;/context, the Y2Y initiative's main goal is to establish (or, re-establish) "habitat connectivity"––the idea that organisms can move freely within an ecosystem without too much deleterious impact of human interactions.

This is incredibly ambitious, because the "Yukon to Yellowstone" region is massive –– 2,100 miles long, from northern Canada to the Western US.

One of the landmark achievements of this organization is not necessarily any particular kind of project but rather their skill in bringing together really diverse stakeholders across a massive geography to work toward this goal.

But, because "connectivity" is really the primary mission, and because roads/highways are some of the most substantial human barriers to habitat connectivity, a large majority of Y2Y projects involve making roads safer for wildlife––and people too.

It's a massive region, but because the region very sparsely populated, it seems doable. There will be fewer NIMBYs to object to having a road rerouted or a an area deemed wild. On the other hand, some of those NIMBYs are property owners who will have political or financial interests that conflict with conservation.

I attended a private meeting of landowners that border Yellowstone on one side -- many small moments that could be described.. however, it is easy to say that almost every person in that meeting was distinctly territorial ..

those landowners (mostly) prefer to keep things exactly as they are now, not "your big plan from the city" .. however (mostly) they are there in that location due to personal history and (mostly) think and talk in terms of "stewardship of the lands" and some even claim personal relationships with some of the more prominent creatures that cross their lands. Short version is - most will say that they know far better than you what the wildlife wants in order to thrive, if it is scientifically true or not. Secondly they (mostly) will actively tell urban environmentalists to keep their "opinion" to themselves, and there is the door. Is this surprising among people who managed to own and live on land like that, in the 21st century ?

ps- almost no one in the meeting spent the majority of the calendar year on their lands, that I could tell. Also construction of any kind is rarely done as far as I know.. time between changes is certainly measured in years.. even in California, a registered private forest landowner must file and wait for years to make small changes to structures, or other serious landscaping.

pps- elaborating on "those landowners (mostly) prefer to keep things exactly as they are now" .. they are in a social and legal system right now, and for decades, that approaches changes with huge barriers.. personal objection merges with legal prevention and finance limitation.. You think they have a few hundred FAANG shares to cash out to make some change? no, money is on different paths there and half that I could tell, were pretty limited with the cash flow. The point is, it is personal will PLUS personal finance limitation PLUS legal oversight PLUS decades-learned behavior

ppps- each attendee was/is deeply aware of the natural world there. Thinking a lot more about this now, I suspect that the meeting I was in, many years ago, in California, was a direct component of this 'Yellowstone to Yukon' plan, though I have no details.

> almost no one in the meeting spent the majority of the calendar year on their lands

And this is the thing. Many are absentee landlords, and their 'stewardship', such as it is, amounts to doing little-to-nothing until the borders of far-flung suburbs edge up to their property, then they can either sell it to Wal*Mart or outlet store developer and make a tidy profit, or contract with a housing developer to get it rezoned, parcel it out, and make a huge profit turning it over to homebuyers.

They are all territorial and have personal relationships with the land until someone waves a few $million in front of them.

well frankly, the obvious flaming on those landowners here, more than just being obvious, is causing me to reflect on my own bias while posting on this real meeting I attended, instead of fighting personal demons in some outrage internet comment. First and foremost -- why did the people in that meeting bother to show up? maybe because the ones in the room (mostly) DO care about the wildlands. So my comment about "there is the door" was my own projection.. no one in that meeting said that, I did while thinking about it.. Those people did meet and probably some of them are now part of this proposed corridor action

Were you present as an owner of wild lands? Would you join this proposed plan?

I presented a small bit of technical detail at that meeting as part of the convening environmentalist organization; zero interest in computers there, basically. re: decisions, the authority of a single vote YES/NO is at a maximum in that crowd; even getting the physical meeting was a year+ of prep IIR.

I do hope you find allies. There are people out there with genuine conservationist intent. These days I hear way more about the people who insist on their rights to do whatever they want with "their" land.

> They are all territorial and have personal relationships with the land until someone waves a few $million in front of them.

this describes real estate developers.. there are plenty of those, and plenty more waiting if they could. But wilderness land owners are (mostly) NOT the real estate developers really because .. ? test question..

What I witnessed in Teton Valley is that a branch of the Rockefeller family (aka has to be somebody with unlimitedly deep pockets) was able to convince over half of the traditional longstanding ranches to sell and now all that land is being cut up into 2.5 ac lots and planned subdivisions. It’s still mostly undeveloped though, aside from the roads and utility connections

>until someone waves a few $million in front of them.

Not sure how familiar you are with the land values around Yellowstone (particularly in Wyoming)… a few million ain’t gonna cut it

Per hectare.

In my own experience, “urban environmentalists” are in the awkward spot of frequently having strong opinions about wilderness management while being utterly ignorant of it. The people that live on or near the lands usually want to preserve it and have nuanced perspectives based on many years of first-hand experience managing the land. It is genuinely eye-opening to manage a large wild property, which I have. Nature is complex.

My experiences as a (former) rural landowner have made me sympathetic to rural landowners. Many of them are very in touch with the ecosystems they own. It is completely believable that they have relationships with some of the wild animals on their property. This is somewhat normal if you have resident animals you regularly come in contact with; many higher animals recognize and respect the boundaries of other animals, including but not limited to humans, but it is a negotiation of sorts. Wild animals are pretty clever and self-aware. I know of more than a couple examples where there is a cooperative relationship between the humans and some wild animals, an explicit quid pro quo.

> NIMBYs are property owners who will have political or financial interests

to my ear, the word NIMBY has an urban flavor that does not describe rural or wilderness landowner behavior.

The worst NIMBYs are the ones in rural areas who think that because their family has owned the land for 3 generations they have a natural right to it. Never mind that it was stolen from indigenous peoples who have a better claim on those grounds, because the current landowners will say those people never "used" the land, they were just visitors.

Edit to add an example: https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.7/north-extremism-how-a-trail-...

Everyones land was "stolen" from someone else. Everyones.

There is no place on this entire planet, where a domicile sits, that wasn't taken from another by force. No where. Nada.

You think natives didn't ever kill each other over territory? Hunting rights, especially in times of famine? You do realise that all of the Americas were settled, then resettled again, and again, in multiple waves of europeans (all natives settled the new world too, they didn't evolve here), by those we call natives, with blood and spear?

We just displaced the last "thieves", who displaced those before us, and so on.

The only unfairness is if we signed treaties, to end the fighting, and then did not honour them.

Those are being addressed, at least in Canada, by the courts.

Note: where's my family's land, from 500 years ago, taken when the French invaded, or 2000ya when the Romans, and so on??

Why don't I get my people's land back?

Is it because I am white? Or, because it was 500 years ago, not 200?

Is it OK, because a white man killed my family and took the land of another white man?

Or...? Why?!

Natives lost their land, as did billions before. But none are alive today, and I could care less about historical loss.

I do care about poverty, and right to societal cohesion and access. I don't care why, what historical reason led to things, I just care about fixing what is a problem now.

If you look at native americans, their reservations are their biggest source of poverty.

Enough.

Make sure every child has access to good food, clean water, housing, and education. The rest will solve itself.

Your thoughts presented would cause you to be cancelled in Canada right now.

I speak them all the time, and most agree with me.

You’re not disagreeing with each other. The people doing the canceling aren’t necessarily in the majority

echo chambers are a helluva drug

>The only unfairness is if we signed treaties

Apart from the literal genocide, you mean?

If you don't think it's a problem that land was stolen, then I'm sure you won't object to that land being stolen again from the current owner and used for it's highest society-wide agreed-upon purpose (not just the purpose that the current owner prefers)

This comment's type of thinking wants to have it both ways. In this mindset, the landowner gets to decide what to do with the land and to control it because they 'own' it. This ownership is because they are descendants (or paid them) of the first white people who took land from native peoples. This 'right' is sacrosanct, and the government (i.e. other people) have no right to tell them not to mountain-top-removal mine it, etc etc.

However, this sacrosanct ownership right is on very shaky ground, hence the hostility to questions about land use. If first-come first-serve counts, then native / indigenous folks should have the land. If people with power can take the land for other uses legitimately, then there's no reason why any particular landowner has sacred rights to their property - the government would be justified in taking the land to support buffalo habitat without ANY compensation, just as white settlers took native land by force without any compensation.

Ultimately, these folks want a simple, completely indefensible rule: "Whoever was here first gets sacred property rights to this land... except if it was an indigenous person, we took it from them fair and square. But that was OK because it was olden times, and so you can't be mad about it, and definitely you can't reverse that decision or take this land from us or even restrict what we can do with it, that would be theft!"

You really don't understand the difference between your governement, and a group of invaders?

Native North Americans are not "special". If they have claims, then everyone has claims.

Yet you failed to respond to this point, and instead, discuss race, claiming the issue is that white people did something.

What?!

In my post, I described how those found here when Westerners arrived, were not the first here. This is historical fact. There were waves and waves of immigrants to the new world, over land bridges, over the pole, and by boat.

All before the 1500s. Going back thousands and thousands of years. All resulting in displacement, war, violence, death, and seizure of territory and land.

But to you, all is important is... what? The last event?

If so, where is my historical land? When do I get it back?

But I guess that's not important too, because it is ok (as I said before) for one white group, to invade and take from another?

Here's another example. This isn't from the old world, but the new.

When the US ceeded from the UK, it took over land vacated by empire loyalists.

Do those people get their land back too? Of so, why not?

And of your response is, "it was native land, there before, so the loyalist has no claim!", then why does the native have claim, who stole it from the peoples there before them?

The point is, you either have to go back to the very first person to settle land, back millions of years in the old world, and tens of thousands on the new, and give the land back to their descendants...

Or you have to pick a point. Is it "but white people did it!"? Or is it "the last guy that had it!"?

If so, see my empire loyalist claim, and so on..

Or is it "the guy who has it now"?

Which is it?

And beyond all of this, not a single native north American alive, has had any land "stolen" from them. Their ancestors lost land, yes, but not people alive today.

How do you address this?

It sounds to me that your logic is "a people somewhere lost land, like happened all through human history", so therefore "the laws of the US should be null and void re: land ownership".

I don't get it.

It's like saying "wars happen, and people died, so it's ok if Bob murders Judy".

Feeling that you own the land you legally own doesn't seem that bad. Especially if your family has owned it for generations.

And it's definitely not NIMBY-ism.

I should note that, in the western US, a lot of the land use fights are over things like ranching land, where the users of the land don't own the land (it's BLM land--owned by the US government).

That's a separate, but also very interesting issue, that is almost entirely unknown to us big city people.

I think Indian Reservations have similar issues. They're "sovereign nations" in some sense, but the land is often owned by the US Federal Government, who doesn't like anyone doing things to it.

In the US a lot of that territory is Native American land/reservation. Feel free to convince them you know how to best use their land.

On a smaller scale, we have completed a similar project in my state in Australia, and the benefits for both wildlife and humans is really something I'm finding fascinating. There's a very notable increase in mobility for animals and I'm seeing animals near my house I've not seen anywhere nearby before, especially different species of birds but also bigger marsupials, even Kangaroos, and I live in suburbia.

Couple the nature corridor with native flora in your yard and in the parks for humans and you really do see animals flourishing. Again, birds in particular are absolutely reveling in it. I now hear diverse birdcalls throughout the day and I feel like I'm back in my childhood where I lived in the outback. This nature corridor goes from the coast, through suburbia as revegetation projects, across a low mountain range and into the plains, a fantastic diversity of habitats for wildlife now interconnected.

The default thinking is that cars are what shoes away animals, and it's partly true, but it's really the infrastructure and what we take away to build it that causes issues. You can have cars, roads, and a more symbiotic relationship with nature if you're smart about your infrastructure and make sure to account for nature's use of the land.

Same with your home, if you have a yard don't just flatten it and keep mowed lawn. Native flora is easier to maintain, better for the animals and better for the soil and water runoff. You become part of the nature-corridor.

Where do you live? You paint such a lovely picture that I want to visit it one day. I'm planning a trip to Australia sometime in the next year.

There should be a standard of though-puts every X distance whereby a road MUST provide an under-pass FULL STOP.

Animals need to be able to roam

Here in Ontario it seems that the standards for new divided highways now include wildlife over or underpasses, at least in the north.

Yeah, I think you bitches invented this idea!!

https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/810535303

You should always look up any (US-based) charity on Charity Navigator. Some of them are basically just jobs programs for the founder, their families, and their friends. Not this one.

This one gets a hugely positive rating. Although it's hard to see what it's based on. The latest IRS form 990 available for it is for 2019.

It's always a good idea to look at a charity's actual accomplishments, not its intentions.

Do we know if any animals are interested in doing this kind of migration?

Or am I missing the point?

Doesn't seem to specifically target animals who navigate and migrate the whole way between the two, but instead focuses on that entire region and improving human <-> nature touch points and making them co-exist with less friction.

For a book taking place in a near future using that idea a secondary plot device : New York 2200 by Stanley Kim Robinson.

That author in general is clearly behind those initiative and put them in his work.

This is super interesting because it’s basically the Agenda 21 corridor project meets regionalization.

Could we build a bike path along this corridor while we’re at it?

If it is confirmed that energy production relieves Yellowstone Caldera pressure, should we build geothermal energy plants there?

For the greater good, despite conservation efforts.

Are there no other power generation opportunities besides this one? not enough information to decide here; many facets to public policy.

Most other opportunities are not super-volcanoes, threatening to cover a large portion of the USA with dust.

Defusing that threat could be desirable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera

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