At the invitation of the World Wildlife Fund and the Grasslands Foundation, a group of perhaps thirty people gathered at Chico Hot Springs to talk about ways to stimulate Great Plains economies as a way of protecting communities and ecosystems. Chico Hot Springs is located at the base of Immigrant Peak, in the Paradise Valley of the Yellowstone River. It is just north of Yellowstone National Park in an area emblematic of the Northern Rocky Mountains ecosystem. It is a landscape very different from the landscape we had gathered to discuss.
The grandeur that surrounded us seemed poignant and revealing. People had driven through and flown over hundreds of miles relatively flat, dry, grazing land to get to this paradise of enterprise to discuss ways to create new paradises in the lands whose beauty is perhaps too subtle for common enterprise. Thirty people for two days and nights can run up a sizable bill and part of such a bill could go a long way to securing any area both economically and ecologically. I’m not complaining about the choice of venue for the meeting. In fact, it seemed the perfect place to discuss just how a landscape should show-case its uniqueness if it intends to capitalize on its particular amenities. I may be attributing this to the wrong person, but I think it was Bruce Babbit who said that the economy of the West is moving from one of extraction to one of attraction. (I wish I’d have said that.)
Chico Hot Springs has clearly made that transition. What was once one of hundreds of natural hot springs in the Yellowstone Valley is now a Spa! It no longer is witness to the ravages of the immigrants for whom the mountain is named. Now the hot spring is surrounded by a hotel, a bar, a restaurant, a convention and wedding facility, and large equestrian center. Everything is thoughtfully situated to take maximum advantage of what is available – to extract (or attract, if you will), as much of the “value” of the landscape as is possible, without consuming any of it. Chico Hot Springs is a sort of non-consumptive economic engine that facilitates human existence and eco-stewardship in a land that might well be considered marginal habitat for most species. That is exactly what our little group of thirty was trying to find for the Great Plains.
We’d come to talk about land that is often considered marginal in lots of ways. But is the Great Plains truly marginal habitat or is it simply fashionable to speak of it in that way. Could such rhetoric really be a way to mask a lack of imagination? I’m not sure about that, the Great Plain’s problems are certainly real, but some of what I heard at our meeting made me wonder.
State and Federal agencies were represented, land trusts, a Montana Senator, and the Governor. The first morning was taken up by presentations concerning the depressed and depressing demographic statistics of the Great Plains. There was fascinating stuff about wolves, and ranch management, and the harvest of native grass seed. A half dozen conservation groups weighed in on the importance of finding ways to sustain wildlife habitat. We were briefed on the farm bill and heard glum predictions concerning the relative commitment to conservation vs. support payments. Even though most of the information was not new to most of us, it underscored the daunting nature of what we had gathered to explore.
That afternoon we began to hear from a raft of folks about how they were trying, through enterprise, to turn the natural amenities of the land into enough commerce to keep their children on the land and to keep the extractors and detractors out. We heard about wildlife viewing as a salable commodity, the idea that hunting could be a product of the land. Jill and I talked about grass-fed and field harvested buffalo. We heard about agri-tourism and eco-tourism: trail rides, good food, scenery.
We heard a great deal about scenery and, though I live in an extremely beautiful landscape, I thought it might be overly optimistic to believe that people would pay significantly for scenery. Scenery ain’t like peaches. I’ve heard it said many times, “You can’t eat scenery.” But I have seen what the sight of quality gazing on the enormous scope of the Great Plains can do to people. I’ve seen people from all over America and Europe stop dead in there tracks when they first walk out onto our deck and look out over the Cheyenne River drainage. And that is what two of the main presentations were about. A couple people in our group had recently been to Namibia – that’s in southwestern Africa – to study this new nation’s approach to conserving communities and large spaces. The presenters gave power point shows with descriptions of several large “game ranches”. Ah ha, I thought, game: lions, elephants, giraffes. Of course people pay big money to see such exotic animals. Though buffalo, pronghorns, deer, and prairie dogs are interesting, they are not lions, elephants, or giraffes. But the presenter went on: “Some of the most successful reserves are not in the main game viewing areas. Some of the most profitable operations depend for there draw on intangibles like solitude and scenery.”
Solitude and scenery? That we got. I was assured that people were coming all the way to Namibia, from all over the world, to share in, and pay for, Namibia’s solitude and scenery. Apparently, such eco-tourism was a huge industry. It was supplying the money to keep Namibia’s large, open space… well, large and open. That was what I was at this Chico meeting to do: try to figure out a way to keep America’s Great Plains large and open. Despite a plethora of differences between the Namibian situation and the situation on the Great Plains, it didn’t take me long to see that here was a model for the conservation of the Great Plains that matched the scale of the land itself. Here was an approach that, as a back drop for some of the other programs we had heard about, had a chance of success.
Maybe you can’t eat scenery like you can eat peaches. But maybe I’ve been thinking about it wrong. Maybe the fruit is the product of nurturing. Maybe, when I stare out from my deck to the Cheyenne River, I’m not looking at the peaches. Maybe I’m looking at the tree, and the fruit is yet to come.