Tribal co-management of National Parks (Part IV): Big Cypress National Preserve

For the last installment of my National Park co-management series, I'm looking at Big Cypress National Preserve. Big Cypress covers more than 700,000 acres in southern Florida, north of the Everglades National Park. 

Big Cypress National Preserve (Antonio Chavez/Wikimedia Commons)

Big Cypress was the first National Preserve in the United States (Glacier Bay, another National Preserve I covered here, was a National Monument but became a National Park and Preserve in 1980). Parkland designations have a variety of meanings, but in the case of Big Cypress, the "preserve" designation didn't only preserve the swampland, it also preserved the preexisting land uses. Indigenous peoples thus retained their traditional use rights, as did other folks living in the swamp.

Big Cypress is the traditional homeland of the Calusa, Creek, Seminole, and Miccosukee peoples, among others. They have lived in Florida from time immemorial. Before contact with the Spanish, there were many nations and many peoples living throughout the state. After the arrival of the Spanish, disease, violence, and the slave trade decimated Florida's Indigenous population. Those who remained coalesced into broader Creek and Seminole groups. 

During Andrew Jackson's presidency, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which invalidated earlier treaties the United States had made with Florida Native peoples. The U.S. Army invaded Seminole territory and marched thousands of Seminole, Creek, and other Southeastern Indigenous people west to land that is known today as Oklahoma. The Seminole fought back for decades, eventually taking up residence deep in the Florida swampland. The US Army assumed that they would die there, and eventually abandoned the fight. 

Instead, the swamps of southern Florida have allowed the Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes to thrive. The Seminole and Miccosukee have several reservations near Big Cypress and enjoy statutory rights to use the federal swampland as they traditionally would. Today, the Seminole Tribe of Florida is likely the wealthiest Tribe in the country. It operates 7 casinos in Southern Florida and owns Hard Rock International, the parent company of the Hard Rock Cafe franchise. Forbes Magazine valued the Tribe and its business holdings at $12 billion. The next richest Tribe in the United States, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota in Minnesota, have an approximate net worth of $2.7 billion.

The homelands of the Seminole and Miccosuke peoples in Big Cypress were first protected because of a massive, futuristic airport project. In 1968, two years before the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to complete environmental impact surveys on proposed projects, the state of Florida proposed the construction of the Everglades JetPort, an airport for the future. Five times the size of JFK International Airport, the Everglades JetPort was designed for supersonic flight. Boeing was working on an American answer to the Concorde, and the JetPort was  to have six runways to land those jets. It would connect to both Florida coasts through a 1,000 foot-wide transportation corridor on either side, capable of "handling tracked air cushion vehicles traveling at speeds of 150 to 250 miles per hour."

As construction began, the undersecretary of the Interior asked Dr. Luna Leopold, the son of Aldo Leopold (author of A Sand County Almenac), to conduct the state of Florida's first Environmental Impact Survey. Dr. Leopold found that the construction of the airport would almost certainly destroy Everglades National Park. The proposed runways would be only six miles north of the Everglades' northern-most boundaries, destroying vital waterways and wildlife corridors for endangered species like the Florida Panther.  

In order to build the airport, Florida would have to fill in thousands of acres of swampland. The loss of swampland would have almost completely destroyed the water flow into the Everglades. Additionally, the Big Cypress swamps allow the  aquifer that provides the drinking water for all of South Florida to re-fill. Building a giant airport would not only jeopardize that process, it would potentially contaminate the ground water with hazardous substances commonly used at airports, like jet fuel.

The reaction to the environmental impact survey was enormous – most of it in opposition to the airport. Construction on the JetPort halted in 1970, after only one runway was built. The federal government acquired the land and established Big Cypress National Preserve in 1973 by an act of Congress.

Perhaps because of the time period in which the Preserve was established, the amount of public support for the parkland designation was remarkable. The project was supported by environmentalists, Tribal interests, and everyone else living there. In addition to the Seminole and Miccosukee, the swamps of south Florida were home to many white settlers who lived off of the swampland. These people, sometimes called Florida Crackers or Gladesmen (or women), were instrumental in the establishment of the Preserve. 

Unlike the other parks I've covered in this series, which were either owned by Tribal Nations or were federal land at the time they became parks, Big Cypress was a conglomeration of private land rights that were purchased expressly for preservation. The designation of National Preserve, the first in the country, preserved preexisting land uses, including Traditional Seminole and Miccosukee practices, as well as fishing, cattle grazing, and oil and gas exploration (note, however, that no new grazing permits are being issued).

What is most remarkable about this project is that it predates quite a lot of important environmental regulation. Much of the Clean Air Act was passed the same year the JetPort project died --1970. NEPA was also enacted in 1970. The Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972. The Endangered Species Act was enacted in 1973. Tribal interests, conservationists, and the people of Florida came together to prevent the construction of this airport before many of the conservation mechanisms we would use today existed. 

They were able to protect Big Cypress using older tools. 

Recently, the Collier Resources Company bought permits for oil exploration in Big Cypress. They gouged hundreds of miles of trails into the park to search for oil and gas reserves using a sonar-based system. Environmental organizations and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have spoken out about the damage the exploration has done. The National Parks Conservation Association is campaigning for the government to acquire Big Cypress's mineral rights to prevent any future extraction. 

This is the last post in my series about co-management of National Parks, so I want to offer a few over-arching observations. More so than I expected, co-management is a story of survival and of growth. The four parks I looked at were based on the four parks mentioned in this 2022 speech. Each park is unique and beautiful. Each co-management agreement is similarly unique. 

John Leshy spoke about the unique place that public trust land has in American politics at the California Lawyer's Association's Environmental Law Section Conference this year. (He covered similar topics in this interview) He argued that it can be a uniquely bipartisan issue. The creation of Big Cypress seems to exemplify that. The project was helmed by then-Senator Lawton Chiles, a Democrat, but had broad support across Florida.

I learned from Professor Leshy's talk that co-management is not defined anywhere in public lands law. He implied that this made further proliferation of these agreements more difficult. Though I don't doubt the difficulty of negotiating these agreements, it's possible that the process might make the management agreement fit with each ecosystem better. In each park, the co-management agreement has been different, according to the history, the landscape, and the interests of the Tribe(s) involved. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to land management in the United States. That's a good thing. 

Tribal co-management of U.S. National Parks (Part II): Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve

 N.B. The Hoonah Indian Association are an Alaska Native Village in Hoonah, Alaska. They are a majority Tlingit Alaska Native People. Glacier Bay has been the home of the Huna Tlingit since time immemorial. I will use the spelling "Hoonah" when referring to the political entity and the city of Hoonah, but the spelling "Huna" when referring to the people, since that is how they prefer it. 

Glacier Bay (Photo: Christopher Michael, Wikimedia Commons)

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is located in southern Alaska, west of Juneau and not far from the Canadian border. It is the homeland of the Huna Tlingit people, and can only be accessed by plane or by boat. The National Park Service (NPS) operates a lodge and park ranger service in Bartlett Cove, 10 miles from the small town of Gustavus, the closest town to the park. Most visitors to Glacier Bay come via cruise ship, where they can take in the views from the safety of a floating hotel. Hiking trails are only available near Bartlett Cove, but sea kayaking, boating, and rafting are popular ways to access the park.

Glacier Bay is currently co-managed with the Hoonah Indian Association, a federally-recognized Alaska Native Village whose community has been the steward of the land within Glacier Bay National Park for centuries. The Hoonah Indian Association are a largely Tlignit community in Hoonah, across the sound from Gustavus. Tlingit people lived on and cultivated the land in Glacier Bay National Park until the "little ice age," a period of global cooling lasting from approximately 1300 to 1850. During the little ice age, the glaciers stretched south, covering the land and filling the bay. The Tlingit communities moved south as well, taking up residence in their current villages. As the glaciers began to retreat in the late 19th century, archeologists and geologists began to petition for the protection of the bay because of what could be learned from the melting permafrost. 

John Muir visited Glacier Bay many times, and he frequently wrote about it. He was fascinated by the insight that the retreating glaciers could provide into the development of the Sierra Nevadas, particularly Yosemite Valley. Muir's visit and writings on the area generated popular and scientific interest. Glacier Bay became particularly important to glacial geologists. In response to gold prospecting and increased tourism, these scientists, with the support of Muir, campaigned to make Glacier Bay a National Monument. 

Glacier Bay National Monument was created by presidential declaration in 1925, not long before Canyon de Chelly (see Part I, here). As compared to the Najavo Nation, the Tlingit were in a much poorer negotiating position during the campaign for federal protection. The Navajo Nation was able to negotiate with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Park Service to preserve their rights to Canyon de Chelly because they had a treaty agreement with the United States that gave them ownership over land, including Canyon de Chelly. 

The Tlingit were in a different situation. Russia ceded Alaska to the United States in 1897. The treaty between Russia and the U.S. for the transfer of Alaska and the Organic Act of 1884 recognized Native claims to the land. By 1897 the United States was no longer making treaties. The Dawes Act of 1887 made treaty-protected reservation land alienable by assigning private title to individual Tribal members. The Huna Tlingit were allotted land in Hoonah and organized into the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) in 1912, alongside other nearby peoples.

When Glacier Bay was designated a National Monument in 1925, the Tlingit were barely consulted. There was already fairly limited communication between the NPS and the Tlingit villages. Most of the land surrounding Hoonah was already under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service, which had done little to disrupt daily life at that point. The majority of Tlingit and ANB activism in that period was focused on labor organizing, since most Tlingit men worked for fisheries and canneries. For the first few years, the NPS did little to interfere with Tlingit hunting and trapping in the park.

But, in the 1930s the Alaskan Brown Bear became a fixture of the national imagination. Conservationists wanted to create a bear sanctuary in Alaska where they could increase bear populations so that tourists could see them from their boats. They proposed expanding the size of the Glacier Bay National Monument to include land that could be used for a bear sanctuary. Over renewed protest from the mining industry, President Roosevelt expanded the National Monument in 1939, again without consultation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) or the ANB.  In reaction to the expansion, the BIA, the ANB, and the NPS reached an agreement giving the Tlingit the privilege to hunt and trap in the park for subsistence. The agreement was informal, and not recorded. Non-Huna Tlingit did not have permission to hunt in the park.

Throughout this period, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was paying a bounty for seals. Though the Tlingit were ostensibly only allowed to hunt for subsistence, data suggests that they also redeemed seals for money, some of which were likely hunted in the park. Huna Tlingit people began complaining because they were being excluded from the Park by white residents under the guise of NPS policy. In 1946, the NPS, BIA, and ANB reached a new agreement. It recognized three rights: that the Huna Tlingit would be allowed to carry firearms while in the park, that they would be permitted to hunt hair seals within 100 ft of the waterline, and that the agreement would be re-negotiated in 1950.

Huna Tlingit park usage was renegotiated every few years until 1966. By then, park officials were becoming more and more concerned with the health of the seal populations and the aesthetic violence of seal hunting. Visitors to the parks didn't like to see any vestige of hunting, particularly carcasses. For tourists and park officials, the hunting disrupted the purpose of the park. They had no problem with "traditional" hunting, which they believed left no trace and did not involve firearms. 

Park Service officials argued that the Tlingit were hunting beyond the health of the seal population, estimating that 1,200 seals were taken from the park of a total population of only approximately 4,000 in any given year. However, when more accurate data estimated that the seal population in the park was more likely between 7,000 and 8,000 seals, the conservation argument lost ground. 

The NPS then argued that since the Tlingit community no longer needed the seals for survival, so they shouldn't have unrestricted rights to hunt seals in the park. A park biologist went so far as to say that "These alleged hide hunters, entering the bay in large boats, sometimes killing 200 seals on a single trip, were trying to 'outdo the whites in their resource-rape.'"

This argument was based on the takes of two Tlingit hunters, George Dalton and James Austin. Huna Tlingit hunters consider neither the use of firearms or hunting for money to be non-traditional. Sealing had always been part of their life, and tools had always changed with technology. Ironically (and revealingly), the NPS later cited the same two men as the last true subsistence hunters in those waters.

NPS action on sealing was prompted by a series of legal issues. In 1947, the Tlingit and Haida Tribes filed suit against the United States, alleging an illegal take of more than 17 million acres in six designated areas in southeastern Alaska, including Glacier Bay. In 1959, the U.S. Court of Claims found for the Tribes, but remanded the case for further hearings on relief (177 F.Supp. 452). In 1968, the same court approved $7.5 million dollars in damages to the Tribes (389 F.2d 778). The rulings acknowledged the Tlingit and Haida's native title to the land comprising Glacier Bay but resolved their claims by compensating them for the land. 

For the NPS, the resolution of the Tlingit and Haida native claim to Glacier Bay potentially affirmed the NPS's right to modify the hunting privilege and exclude Tlingit hunters from the park. Additionally, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971) terminated Native title to the rest of Alaska, vesting land rights to most of that land in the State of Alaska.

Then, the Marine Mammals Protection Act (MMPA) was passed in 1972. The MMPA provided an exception for Alaska Native hunting that allowed them to hunt in National Parks for subsistence and cultural activities. Advocates for the sealing ban in Glacier Bay realized they had to act before an exception under the MMPA was granted to the Huna Tlingit. 

On April 4, 1974, the Chief Park Ranger informed the Mayor of Hoonah that the NPS would be enforcing a general ban on the killing of wildlife in National Parks in Glacier Bay. The NPS did not provide any written notice or allow for comment. Between 1974 and 1992, no permits were granted to Tlingit hunters. Glacier Bay National Monument became a National Park and Preserve in 1980.

In 1992, the Tlingit staged a protest and entered into negotiations with the NPS. By 1997, the NPS agreed to build a Tribal House in Glacier Bay, a space in the park where Tlingit people could establish cultural practices. The project was stalled for lack of funding until 2013. The Tribal House, Xunaa Shuká Hít, was dedicated in 2016. 

In July, 2014 President Barack Obama signed the Huna Tlingit Traditional Gull Egg Use Act, which allows Tlingit people to resume harvesting gull eggs in Glacier Bay once the NPS established harvesting regulations. The NPS now has an agreement with the Hoonah Indian Association to harvest eggs in the park, and works with cruise lines to have the Hoonah Indian Association provide guide and cultural interpretation services. 

Sealing in the park is still banned. 

The majority of the history in this post is based on information found in Land Reborn: A History of Administration and Visitor Use in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, available online here. Chapters 1-6 and 10 are especially relevant.

Tribal co-management of U.S. National Parks (Part I): Canyon de Chelly National Monument

The National Park system is often portrayed as the United States’ crown jewel, the one thing that we have that no other country does. Frederick Law Olmstead, the mind behind Central Park (and the Wooded Island near where I grew up), set the stage for the National Park System in 1865 as Chairman of the Board of Commissioners for the development of Yosemite. Though at the time Yosemite was just tract of land gifted by the Federal government to the state of California for the purposes of “public use, resort, and recreation,” Olmstead saw it as a place for ordinary people to contemplate the natural world to maintain perspective on industrialization. Yosemite became a template for the rest of the National Park System.

Today, the United States has 425 National Park sites managed by the National Park Service (NPS). Those 425 parks constitute 3.5% of the land in the United States. Today, only four of those 425 National Park sites are co-managed with Tribal Nations. They are Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Grand Portage National Monument, and Big Cyprus National Preserve.

Olmstead’s idea of a National Park completely ignored the people already living on the protected land. In managing our National Parks, the NPS has largely done the same. Each blog post in this series will cover the co-management of one of the four parks that works with Tribal entities.

Canyon De Chelly National Monument

N.B. The Diné are the sovereign people of Canyon de Chelly and the surrounding area. The federal designation for the Diné’s government is the Navajo Nation. To avoid confusion, I will use the term Navajo Nation or Navajo Council when referring to the Diné government but will otherwise refer to the people as the Diné. 

Canyon de Chelly (photo courtesy of Professor Lisa Pruitt)

There are approximately 80 Diné families with the right to live in Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Canyon de-SHAY) National Monument. Traditionally, they grew corn, squash, and had orchards. Rising temperatures and drought conditions have made it harder to farm recently. Today, most families spend only part of the year in the Canyon.

Canyon de Chelly is in Chinle, Arizona, in the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States. The park encompasses three main canyons as well as approximately one half-mile of land on the edge of each canyon. Canyon de Chelly National Monument is unique because it is situated entirely on land owned by the Navajo Nation. National Parks are typically created on federal land by Presidential proclamation pursuant to authority conferred upon the executive by the Antiquities Act of 1906.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument was established in 1931 by an act of Congress, predicated on a Navajo Council agreement with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. At the turn of the 20th century, non-native peoples were moving west and looting the archaeological and religious sites in Canyon de Chelly, some of the most significant Anasazi and Hopi Pueblo sites in the country. White archeologists were prominent advocates for federal preservation of the Canyon, though the Navajo Nation was reluctant.

In 1925, at a meeting with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Navajo Council agreed to accept the establishment of a national monument in the Canyon, so long as it would not interfere with any Tribal rights, specifically the right to graze, run tourist services, and restrict entry to the Canyon.

In the final agreement, the Navajo Nation would retain all land and mineral rights, including oil and gas, surface use rights, and would be given preferential treatment in furnishing animals for the use of visitors to the monument. The National Park Service would maintain, preserve, and restore cliff dwellings in the canyon, as well as other areas of historical and scientific interest, and would have the right to construct trails, roads and facilities that may be necessary for visitors to the Canyon.

However, none of the new NPS employees appointed to the Canyon de Chelly were Diné, and by 1934 the Navajo Council passed a resolution requesting that the NPS relinquish their rights to the monument. The NPS and the Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to sort it out, but administrative conflicts persisted.

The NPS authorized the Thunderbird Ranch, a property near the Canyon owned by non- Diné people, to house and serve park visitors. The hotel increased traffic to the Canyon, prompting the Diné living there to argue that their right to provide horses for those visiting the park included the right to run businesses, like the hotel, that enabled tourists to access the park. The NPS was not moved. 

 

A sign at Canyon de Chelly National Monument (photo courtesy of Professor Lisa Pruitt)

In the winter of 1951, a Norwegian tourist got lost in the Canyon and ended up breaking into two hogans (traditional Diné houses) belonging to a Diné family who lived in the Canyon in the summer. He stole shoes and an overcoat, which he ended up burning by falling asleep too close to the fire. After he was rescued, the Diné family whose hogans he had broken into were upset and demanded repayment for the overcoat. The issue was resolved when the Catholic mission the Norwegian was staying at paid for the coat.

Minor though that incident may seem, it reflects the kind of discomfort that the families living in the Canyon must have felt as an increasing number of tourists came onto their homelands on roads and trails built by the NPS.

More significantly, in 1951, the NPS opted to plant Russian olive and Chinese elm trees in the park to control erosion, despite suggestions that plants indigenous to the area, like cottonwood, might work better. The plants grew well and quickly, to the point that they threatened the archeological sites in the canyon. In 2005, the NPS and the Navajo Nation began working together on the Cooperative Watershed Restoration Project to remove invasive tamarisk and Russian olive trees. The NPS stated that:

aggressive infestation by tamarisk (Tamarix ramosissima, T. chinensis, and their hybrids) and Russian olive (Elaeaganus angustifolia), in combination with intensive historic grazing and tour operations within the riparian corridors of the canyon floor, have created the need for an integrated and collaborative approach to managing all resources (natural and cultural) within the Canyons and their associated watersheds.

The issues identified above are ones that the Diné people living in the canyon have been complaining about since at least the 1950’s and are likely largely because of the NPS actions. The use of tamarisk and Russian olive trees to combat soil erosion was effective. However, the density of the tamarisk root structures made streams cut deeper into the ground. The native plants are less effective at erosion prevention, but allow “braided meandering” that better preserves the characteristics of the canyon.

Relations between the Park Service and the Navajo Nation continue to be rocky. However, as Indigenous land management methods gain greater attention for their ability to help us adapt to and combat climate change, the Park Service is encouraging greater Tribal involvement.

My Rural Travelogue (Part XXXIV): Taking care of Iceland's rural roads and providing electric car chargers in remote locales

One thing I noticed on my recent visit to Iceland is how much maintenance I saw on what could only be considered rural roads.  I'm not just talking their Highway 1, on which you can circumnavigate the island.  Because it is two-lane for nearly the entire 16-hour journey, some might consider it rural, but given its high use by tourists and residents, I do not.  I'm talking unpaved (also known as unsealed) roads, like the one that we took south from near Reykholt (the place called Reykholt that is north of Rekjavik, as we were traveling back to Selfoss having been to see the Langjokull glacier) to the northern end of Thingvellir National Park.  Along the way, we were on Road 52 (unpaved for that segment), which meets Road 550 (paved).

There we saw two road graders in action, in addition to several signs indicating road works were in progress.  

Road 52, north of Thingvellir National Park

Road 52, north of Thingvellir National Park

We also saw road works on a minor road near Hella, in South Iceland.  

Near Hella, Iceland

Near Hella, Iceland

In fact, we saw more work on these minor roads--including unpaved ones--than we did on major roads.  I found this interesting in that it suggests the government is making rural transportation a priority.  (A post about the political significance of taking care of rural roads in the United States is here.)  

We also found of interest the electric car charging infrastructure.  Overall, it is not very extensive.  I saw only one bank of perhaps half a dozen Tesla chargers.  That said, there tend to be one or two car chargers in even very isolated places, like Reykholt (see details of location above) and the Highland Center Hraunejay, along a stretch of "highlands" road, seemingly leading nowhere but with a small lodge and dining room, in South Iceland, mostly to facilitate ecotourism to the area.  (We were there for lunch before visiting Haifoss waterfall, and adjacent Granni, meaning neighbor and after hiking into the valley at Gjain).  While we didn't see a lot of electric cars on the road in Iceland, it's clear the charging network will be far flung and ready for them: 

Several charges at Hotel Ranga, near Hella, South Iceland

Charging Station at N1 convenience store, Reykholt, Iceland
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2023

Charging stations at Highland
Center Hraunejay, above and below 
(c) Lisa R Pruitt 2023

In comparison, here is what the sole gas pump in Reykholt looked like (the orange electric charger pictured above to next to the minimart, not visible behind the gas pump: 

Convenience store in Reykholt, location of the orange electric car charging station in photo above.
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2023

And here is the sole gas pump at the Highland Center: 

Highland Center Hraunejay, South Iceland
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2023

Finally, here is a photo of the public transit bus stop in Reykholt; it sits in front of the convenience store pictured above:

Public transit bus stop, Reykholt, Iceland

Speaking of rural transportation, the New York Times reported this story today out of Huron, California, in the central Valley.  Lyft and Uber don't operate there, but it offers electric car share services, as reported by the Los Angeles Times 18 months ago. 

The impact of national parks on rural spaces

The National Park system of the United States includes 423 unique sites spread across the country’s states and territories. A majority of these public parks border rural areas, resulting in unique opportunities and challenges for many small communities across America. 

National parks are often economic and social boons to rural areas. Whitefish is a town in Flathead County, Montana that attracts large crowds during summer months by virtue of its proximity to Glacier National Park. Previous posts involving Glacier can be found here. Despite having a population of roughly 8,000 permanent residents, the town features robust lodging and dining amenities to handle massive crowds, with an extensive downtown area and a ski resort to draw year-round visitation.

With roughly 73 percent of the surrounding Flathead County’s land owned by the federal government, Whitefish is one of the many small cities across the United States experiencing a period of strong economic growth due to its location adjacent to public lands and the natural amenities associated with them.

At the same time, closeness to public lands can strain rural communities past their realistic capacity for population and resources. The resulting gentrification prices locals out of their own communities, in the interests of the tourism industry and wealthy out-of-state residents. Posts from this blog about rural gentrification can be found here. 

However, an often overlooked issue facing rural communities comes from the internet. Social media can transform little-known corners of the country into viral sensations in an instant, overwhelming communities that lack the infrastructure to deal with such population surges. 

An article posted by The Guardian documents the struggles of Kanarraville, a town of only 350 residents located next to Kanarra Falls, a natural slot canyon river located on the same federal tract of land as Zion National Park. Once a relatively unknown destination, the area now sees an annual influx of 40,000 to 60,000 tourists due to the falls’ online notoriety.

Not only does the overwhelming number of visitors consistently overload the town’s resources, but the river itself is a watershed tapped by the town for drinking water. Tens of thousands of guests trek directly through the river on their hike up the canyon every year, leading to sanitation concerns from local residents.

The town of Estes Park sits at the gateway of Rocky Mountain National Park, with tourists flocking from across the country to visit the mountains (and the hotel from The Shining). The Guardian estimates that Estes Park accommodates up to 3 million people over the course of its peak summer months, despite its population of just 5,366. As a consequence, the area features a higher police funding per capita than 97 percent of departments across the country as it struggles to keep the swells of tourists under control.

In order to find a solution for this ever-growing problem, rural communities may want to turn to other countries for inspiration. A publication in the Journal of Rural Studies documents Norway’s efforts to balance nature conservation on public land with local concerns, opting to adopt a process that brings rural areas into the decision making process. Spurred by concerns over what tourism in the name of conservation efforts may mean for people’s livelihoods, Norway has opted to decentralize traditional land management operations in certain municipalities, giving rural voices more power to decide how these parks will be implemented and maintained. 

Breheimen National Park, located on the Skjåk Municipality, is one of the areas receiving this treatment. Breheimen has only been open since 2009, giving locals the unique opportunity to ensure the national park grows in a way that is as responsive to their needs as possible. While the long-term effects of this strategy are yet to be seen, handling such complex situations in this way could work wonders in the United States, giving more agency to rural communities in need.

Two stories of extreme political division in micropolitan Montana

The New York Times reported from near Great Falls, Montana today, and the Washington Post reported from Kalispell, west of Glacier National Park, near the Canadian border.   

The headline for Reid Epstein's front page story in the Times is "Where Facts Were No Match for Fear."  As suggested, disinformation plays a role in the division in that north central region of the state.  The headline for Lisa Rein's Washington Post story is "Montanans used to live and let live. Now bitter confrontations cloud Big Sky Country."

Both lengthy pieces are well worth a read.  The Kalispell story, which involved confrontation and open carry of guns at a parade there, reminded me of the opening scene of the book Gunfight, by Ryan Busse, published last week.  It depicts the participation of the author and his family in a Black Lives Matter rally in Kalispell, where they live, and their encounter with a pistol-toting MAGA supporter.  That scene, too, was very tense.  I have a review of the book forthcoming in the Daily Yonder tomorrow, so you can read more then and there. 

Two big WaPo stories out of Montana: rural gentrification in (1) the coronavirus era and (2) in politics

Here's the rural gentrification story, which drew sharp criticism out of Montana when it was published yesterday.  The headline is, "New homes on the range: Weary city dwellers escape to Montana, creating a property gold rush," by Lisa Rein.  A lot of the complaining was based on the fact Ms. Rein didn't interview the folks being displaced by urbanites moving to Big Sky Country (also known as the last best place).  But other complaints were based on this statement, which overlooked the significant Black Lives Matter protests in Bozeman, which in many ways is the quintessential example of rural gentrification in the mountain west right now: 

"We are 98 percent Caucasian,” said Candace Carr Strauss, chief executive officer of the Big Sky Chamber of Commerce. “We haven’t, thankfully, seen a lot of the unrest other places have seen.”

Here is more great context, just before that quote in the story:

The mask police lay low. In a hyper-divided country, Montana’s politics are balanced. Its demographics less so, but that is part of the appeal for many who are coming here.

And on the nature of the latest round of gentrification sweeping the state, there's this:

The newest migrants are different. They’re escaping fear, of the pandemic and of the social justice marches they believe are bringing violence to their door. Montana can bring them back in time.

The other story is about the governor's race, in which Greg Gianforte, the Republican who slugged a reporter when Gianforte was running for U.S. Representative two years ago, is challenging a Democratic candidate with much deeper roots in "the Last Best Place."  In short, Gianforte, who made his money far from Montana, represents rural gentrification.  I can only imagine the politics in the state capital if he wins.  Kathleen McLaughlin reports: 

Cooney, 66, is a well-liked Democrat, a sitting lieutenant governor and grandson of a 1930s Montana governor, with decades of public service experience. His opponent is two-term Rep. Greg Gianforte, 59, a Trump-aligned Republican running largely on his credentials as a self-made multimillionaire tech businessman.

* * *  

In a state where voters routinely split the ticket and vote across party lines, retail politics and personal connections have long mattered. The 2020 gubernatorial contest has morphed into something different, led by ad spending and partisan identity centered on President Trump. It is a reflection of the polarization gripping the nation, which now threatens this traditionally bipartisan state.

Gianforte has put $8 million of his own money into the race, and it'll be interesting to see where that gets him.  Meanwhile, outgoing governor Steve Bullock (D) is trying to unseat first-term U.S. Senator Steve Daines (R).  Bullock has been a popular governor who has worked across the proverbial aisle, and it'll be interesting to see where that gets him in a race which, at this point, is very tight. 

And back to gentrification for a moment, don't miss this High Country News piece from a few years ago about Bozeman--and 10 reasons not to move there.

I first visited Montana in 2009 for a "rural law" symposium.  I wound up publishing this article on the challenges of delivering health and human services to rural folks.  I learned so much about Montana geography from that project, which focused on four counties that were rural to varying degrees (Wheatland, Gallatin (Bozeman), Sweetwater, and Big Horn), and one that was urban/metropolitan (Yellowstone County, home to Billings)  Two years later, I returned for my first Big Sky vacation, starting in Glacier National Park (Kalispell (Flathead County) and Browning (Glacier County)) and working my way down to Salmon, Idaho (via Missoula and Darby (Ravalli County)).   In 2016, I returned to Missoula for the Bill Lane Center's Echols Family's Rural West Conference.  Most recently, in 2017, I flew in to Bozeman and worked my way, via Livingston, to Gardiner, on the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park.  From there we made our way into Wyoming, to the Grand Tetons for the total eclipse.  I admit to having my own not so secret desire to move to Montana.  

Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXI): Montana and Blackfeet tribe divided on reopening

Browning, Montana, near east entrance to Glacier National Park, August 2011

As the number of coronavirus cases and deaths increases in Montana, albeit very slowly and in proportion the state's sparse population, the Blackfeet Nation has continued to keep its territory closed (part of Glacier County, population 14,000)--including the eastern gateway to Glacier National Park in northwest Montana. 

Coffee shop, Browning, Glacier County
Montana, August, 2011

But the western entrance to the park, toward Kalispell and Whitefish (Flathead County, population 90,000), has re-opened.  Here's the coverage from NPR, from which this excerpt is taken:

The Blackfeet Nation, whose reservation borders Glacier National Park, is maintaining a two-week quarantine order and lodging restrictions for non-residents. Restrictions are set to expire at the end of the month, but tribal leaders have already extended them once and could do so again. That uncertainty has businesses dependent on the roughly $110 million local tourism economy looking for ways to survive until next season.

* * *  

Tribal leaders say restrictions are protecting reservation residents with limited access to healthcare, particularly elders, who commonly live with their children and grandchildren. So far there have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 on the reservation.

Glacier Falls, east of the Continental Divide 

I wonder abut the extent to which this Blackfeet decision has been influenced by how hard hit the Navajo nation has been hit in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Prior coverage of the pandemic in Montana is here and here.

Postscript:  screenshot of Twitter feed on June 19, 2020 from journalist/columnist in Flathead County, on the west side of Glacier National Park

Black Lives Matter in rural America (Part I): Protests spread to unexpected places, small towns, flyover states

Facebook post about a BLM protest in Vermillion, South Dakota

Anne Helen Petersen, who writes for Buzzfeed and lives in Bozeman, Montana, started this week collecting information on Black Lives Matter protests in "small towns and rural places."  Her initial collection was on her Twitter feed, and I was skeptical off the bat because it included major cities like Portland, Maine (largest city in Maine) and Lexington, Kentucky (second largest city in that state).  But some of the places she was highlighting were more truly rural, and I appreciate the point she is making.

Petersen also wrote a Buzzfeed story headlined "Why the Small Protests in Small Towns Across America Matter." The dateline is Havre, Montana, population 9,310, where the protest was organized by Melody Bernard of the Chippewa Cree from the nearby Rocky Boys Reservation.  Petersen reports that an African American football player for Montana State University-North (but who grew up in Atlanta), Dorian Miles, wrote this encouraging post on his Facebook page after participating in the march:

SPEAK AND YOU WILL BE HEARD! Today we did what had to be done in Havre. A SMALL town of predominantly older white Americans stood with me to protest the wrongdoings at the hands of police EVERYWHERE....Today we stood together for an injustice. Today people who don’t look like me or relate to me showed love and support. I was overwhelmed to see the people I saw today marching in protest to the public lynchings that have been done by the only people whose job is to PROTECT and SERVE their community.

It's a theme you'll see throughout this post:  Defying stereotypes that rural people are consistently  conservative, static, ignorant and racist.

Here are just a few of the places Petersen's Twitter feed has documented as hosting protests.

Twitter screenshot from June 6, 2020
re: BLM protests in East Texas

Benton, Kentucky
Healdsburg, California
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
Solvang, California
Alpine, Texas
Taylorville, Illinois
Charlottetown, PEI, Canada
Ridgway, Pennsylvania
Lander, Wyoming
Enterprise, Oregon
Paoli, Pennsylvania
Kalispell, Montana
McCall, Idaho
Merrick, New York
Belfast, Maine
Riverton, Wyoming
Vidor, Texas
Conway, New Hampshire
Palmer, Alaska
Williamstown, Massachusetts
Canton, New York
Emporia, Kansas
Brownsville, Pennsylvania
Huntsville, Texas
Forks, Washington
Spencer, Iowa
Boulder, Utah
Lynchburg, Virginia (home of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University!)
Hoover, Alabama (high school students arrested for violating curfew)
Andrews, Texas
Frostburg, Maryland
Mt. Shasta, California
Edna, Texas
Lewiston, Maine
Moab, Utah
Hazard, Kentucky
Murphy, North Carolina
Mad River Valley, Vermont
LaGrange, Illinois
Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada
Hartwell, Georgia
Avon, Connecticut
Williston, North Dakota

Craig, Colorado

Moses Lake, Washington

Butte, Montana (along with Missoula and Bozeman)

Wolfeboro, New Hampshire

From June 7, Kalispell, Montana

I've seen lots of reporting in the vein of Petersen's, though I believe hers was the first.  Here's a Washington Post opinion piece by Judy Muller about a protest in Norwood, Colorado, where she lives.  The headline is "My tiny, white town just held a protest. We’re not alone." Norwood, population 510, is in San Miguel County, in the southwest part of the state.  

And here's a story by Peter Salter in the Lincoln Journal-Star about protests in Harvard, Nebraska, population 1,013, part of the Hastings Metropolitan Area.   The headline is "'We won’t allow that foolishness in our small town' — In the heart of Nebraska, a peaceful and powerful protest."  Here's an excerpt which, like the Buzzfeed story out of Havre, Montana, features a black football player, one of the only African Americans in the town:

Twitter account out of Nebraska panhandle 

Harvard’s police chief showed up at the protest in short sleeves, because he wasn’t expecting trouble.

“I’m not in favor of any excessive force at all,” Wayne Alley said from the steps of the small city hall. “And I’m for everything that you guys stand for. I wish you the best of luck.”

The town’s only black man was there with a microphone, because he’d started this.

“I woke up that morning and thought we needed to do something,” Jermaine Guinyard said a day later. “Even in small-town Nebraska, we may not deal with police brutality, but we have injustice and inequality to deal with.”

The running back who helped carry Harvard to the six-man football state championship in November was there, too, because Guinyard, his former teacher and coach, needed his help — and his connections.

“My role was putting it out there,” said David Reazola. “Mr. G’s not a social media guy. I have a pretty decent platform. But it was pretty cool how quickly the word spread.”

And that is how an estimated 50 people — many of them students, but some of them families pushing strollers — gathered Tuesday in the center of their small town, in the south-centeral part of the state, to protest the killing of a black man by a Minneapolis police officer, and to call attention to the work that needs to be done in their own community

My friend and colleague Prof. Hannah Haksgaard, who teaches at the University of South Dakota School of Law, shared the image at top of this post from her Facebook feed in Vermillion, South Dakota, population 10,571, home of the University of South Dakota.

Sarah Smarsh (author of Heartland) is also collecting "rural" protests on her Facebook feed and posted some screen shots on Twitter, where she wrote:

I've commented many times on the class lines of political movements. The working poor folks I come from weren't (aren't) civically engaged, not because they didn't care but because, in the hard pursuit of basic survival they had no time to look up from fields and factory lines and retail shelves.   

While many such essential services have not lessened, there is nonetheless a global slowing--of production, of consumption--that, while causing economic loss in one sense, is creating a new wealth of energy in another.  This is true to varying extents for every economic class, albeit amid the energetic payment we will all make to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Smarsh notes that USA Today has been mapping BLM protests, and Petersen mentions in her Twitter feed this story by Reuters.   

Meanwhile, these shots of a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Harrison, Arkansas came across my Twitter feed on Thursday night.  

This left-leaning commentator from
Fayetteville, Arkansas, the
University town two hours away,
observes the perceived politics and
lack of anonymity associated
with rural places.

I know Harrison, population 13,087, very well.  It is the town where I was born, in the regional hospital previously known as the Boone County Hospital and now the North Arkansas Medical Center.  I grew up 20 miles south of there in an even smaller town, Jasper, county seat of Newton County, population 8,000.  Boone County, population 37,000, is 96% White, 2.6% Hispanic or Latino, and 0.4% Black.  This post from several years ago is about Harrison and Boone County's history as an outpost of the KuKluxKlan.

I shared these screenshots with my mom, who has lived in Newton County her whole life, and it was important to her to tell me that "the protest in Harrison is organized by a local person and is not affiliated with organizations that are rioting in more metropolitan places." Like lots of folks--apparently including many police--Mom is struggling to differentiate between peaceful protestors protected by the First Amendment and looters who are committing crimes.  (Don't miss this Codeswitch episode on the "outside agitator," including Martin Luther King, Jr., being labeled as such). My mom's comment also reveals her love for the rural and her rural lifestyle; she's always been sensitive when I have written anything negative about my hometown--however fact-based and newsworthy--on this blog.

In any event, three prior posts about Harrison are here, here and here.

In a similar vein, the Southern Illinoisan published this story, by Molly Parker "In wake of Floyd death, rural, white Southern Illinois towns are reckoning with racist past."  Parker writes:

Some of these communities — Benton, Herrin, Carterville, Anna — were “sundown towns” where, by official policy, black people were not allowed after dark into at least the 1960s in some cases, according to research by James W. Loewen, author of the book “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism.”

Kalispell Montana, in the screenshot above, is also a place associated with racism; in particular, white supremacist Richard Spencer is a part-time resident of nearby Whitefish, also in Flathead County, gateway to Glacier National Park.

In short, all of these protests run counter to our expectations of rural folks, just like the women's marches spreading to rural places did in 2017.

But then there have been other types of protests this past week, like this one out of Idaho, where people turned out to turn away a rumored "antifa" protest.  The headline for the Washington Post story by Isaac Stanley-Becker and Tony Romm is "Armed white residents lined Idaho streets amid ‘antifa’ protest fears. The leftist incursion was an online myth."  A similar report from Humboldt County in far northern California is in the Lost Coast Outpost.  And here's a story from the same news outlet about a BLM protest in the city of Fortuna.  

And while "redneck" is non synonymous with "small town" or "rural," it is often conflated with these geographies--and with the South--in the national imaginary.  I therefore share this piece from medium.com by Southern Crossroads headlined "Rednecks for Black Lives."  

This seems like a good opportunity to also share a story from NPR this morning.  Michele Block, reporting on the hundreds of voices singing, Lean on Me in Washington, DC, two days ago, noted that Bill Withers, who wrote and recorded the song, considered it a "rural song."  She explained by playing an interview with Withers who shared an incident when he was in the Navy and returning home to West Virginia from where he was stationed in Florida.  He had a flat tire while driving through rural Alabama and a man who Withers said looked like he could have been out of the movie "Deliverance" came upon him.  In due course, the man walked to his home and returned with a tire for Withers, and even helped him change the tire.  Withers said incidents like that gave him hope, and it gives me hope, too--just like these protests in rural places give me hope.

Postscripts:  Here's an op-ed published in the L.A. Times on June 9 by a high school student Lilian Smith of  C'oeur d'Alene, Idaho:  "My Idaho town shows how the Black Lives Matter movement can resonate in deep red communities."

The Takeaway with Tanzina Vega did a great interview with Anne Helen Petersen re: her writing about rural and small town where Black Lives Matter protests have occurred.  I especially appreciated the attention to the rural concept of "lack of anonymity." 

Here is the Daily Yonder story on the matter.  

Coronavirus in rural America (Part XXVIII): Montana's hi-line

Hi-Line is the moniker Montanans use for the strip of northern counties that border Canada, and one of those counties, Toole, population 5,324, is featured in a radio story that ran on NPR this morning.  The story was actually reported last week by Nate Hegyi, but just picked up nationally today as part of the America Amplified 2020 series.

Four of Montana's 10 coronavirus deaths have occurred in Toole County's seat, Shelby; these are mostly attributable to an outbreak at the county's only assisted living facility, called Marias.  Here's an excerpt focusing on the good news:  the county's preparedness, attributable to the fact that the Chicago to Seattle (and vice versa) Amtrak train stops in Shelby, the county seat, twice daily.  This means that, even though Shelby might seem like the middle of nowhere, it is connected by mass transportation to the rest of the world, and therefore vulnerable to coronavirus.  Hegyi quotes William Kiefer, CEO of Marias Medical Center:

We believe that everyone staying in their homes and following the guidance of the CDC is incredibly important.  To this point it's been very successful in Toole County.

Hegyi also addresses small-town ingenuity:

There's also something else that Marias Medical Center did that other U.S. hospitals should all take note of for future pandemics. It planned ahead before the virus even reached our shores. 

We have a group of dedicated people here that thought, 'Wow, if it does hit the United States, we're a very rural frontier facility and we should do everything in our power now."

Hegyi clarifies:

Back in January, Marias began purchasing and storing personal protective equipment. The excess masks, face shields and gowns reduced the chances of exposure for their staff after the outbreak in the hospital's assisted living facility took hold. However, Kiefer says he wishes they were wearing them regularly before the virus arrived in Shelby because once the first patient tested positive, many of the medical center's employees were unwittingly exposed to the virus. 

Thus Marias Medical Center in Shelby has been left short-staffed.  Further, it has just 21 beds and two ventilators, but it has formed an alliance with medical centers in other hi-line counties, including those in Kalispell, Browning, Conrad and Cut Bank.  Marias also has plans to air evac patients to Helena, as necessary. 

Kiefer comments:

Although we're small, we're not isolated.  People do move around quite a bit.

And as Hegyi concludes, in the context of a pandemic, "it's that movement that can kill." And that is why orders limiting movement --or at least screening those who are moving--are appropriate at times like these.

Here's the Billings Gazette's April 19 coverage of what is happening in Shelby and Toole County.  It's a very deeply reported story by Jeff Welsch, heavy on lack of anonymity and history, among other rural themes.  An excerpt quoting Dwaine Iverson, a CPA in Shelby, follows:

When you drive down Main Street and don’t see a car, it’s frightening.  Impacts are everywhere. And if we don’t do something to keep (businesses) alive, when we get all done with this ... Main Street now, with the shutdown, is going to look like that all the
time.

The story continues:

Iverson recalls his wife, Barbara, who works at the Heritage Center, and three daughters, all nurses in other Montana communities, initially warning him he "wasn't taking it seriously enough" when COVID-19 first gripped Seattle and surged toward Montana. Soon after, Barbara was in quarantine at home, even though she was off-duty when the virus hit.

Then the first three residents died.

More from Iverson: 

It feels real because you know the people who died.  They’re prominent people around here. They come from large families. They were personal friends of mine, clients of mine. That brings it home.

* * *

The biggest issue is families can’t even get together to grieve. That type of thing makes it so tough because the whole grieving process is so critical to go through and could affect the rest of your life. When you can’t give somebody a hug, how important is that?

Another resident, Michael Bashor, commented: "We all pretty much know who they are."

This Billings Gazette story features great photos, too, from Larry Mayer.

And here's a Montana Public Radio story from 1 April indicating that Governor Steve Bullock ordered health screenings of those arriving in Montana via train or plane.  An earlier post about coronavirus impacts in Montana is here, and an even earlier one is here.

My own very long 2010 law review article, featuring lots about Montana's human, political and physical geography in relation to the delivery of health and human services to children is discussed here.  What a treat it was for me to give talks at the University of Montana in Missoula in 2009 and 2016, and to vacation there in 2011 (Glacier National Park, Missoula, Ravalli County/Darby) and 2017 (Bozeman, Livingston, Gardiner).

I'm a huge fan of "the last best place" and Governor Bullock.  For still more on the Big Sky state, search "Montana" here on Legal Ruralism.