GALLATIN GATEWAY, MONT.-- Last week, 17 federal judges gathered at the Gallatin Gateway Inn. This inn, the last of its kind, was built by the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad to attract tourists en route to Yellowstone National Park. The judges met to hear policy analysts explain a new environmentalism.

Gallatin Gateway is a perfect setting for meetings. It's on the geographic margins between Yellowstone National Park and Montana's "Big Sky" country, and on the cultural margins between the new and the old West.

Americans are increasingly concerned about our wildlands. Historically we looked toward federal custodians. But, if you believe that Congress will respond with large appropriations, read no further.

The federal government has made promises it cannot afford to keep. The implications preclude an expanded federal wildlands system. What will happen when actual spending cuts become unavoidable? As the 104th Congress demonstrates, environmental expenditures are prime targets.

There is a strong tendancy for such organizations to be run for the benefit of those in charge. This has profound implications for those in the agency and for those they are to serve.

BOZEMAN, MONT.- Snow is still ten feet deep on the Spanish Peaks just south of town, but summer is coming to the Gallatin Valley. Greening fields and the sudden emergence of kayaks and mountain bikes tells us the annual crush of tourists will soon arrive in the region's national parks and forests.

New demographics and cultures are defining the next American West. Newcomers, urban and affluent, are escaping cities to build better lives. They work with information and manipulate symbols rather than stuff, and bring with them an utterly different value system for the land. A value system based on a romantic notion of the West's ecosystems and communities.

Our Stolen Future, Vice President Al Gore writes in the book's Foreward, discusses "compelling and urgent questions that must be answered." He calls it the sequel to the first enviromental benchmark, Silent Spring. He's wrong.

Our Stolen Future marks the end of an era of public susceptibility to ill-founded hysteria and crisis entrepreneurship. Unlike Al Gore, serious and intellectually honest environmentalists demand factual and logically consistent foundations for reform. Hype and posturing are passé in the environmental policy arena.

I just returned from the other Washington, the one on the Potomac. I met with people in think tanks, universities, the federal judiciary, and intellectuals from the Reagan Administration. A common question was, "are the Republicans in the 104th Congress brain damaged or just cowards?"

Water is precious to life on earth. Healthy organisms, ecosystems, and weather cycles depend on it. A sufficient supply of clean water is the critical first step to improving public health in every society. Just because everyone needs water, however, doesn't make managing it easy. Developing countries are struggling for water. The World Bank says $600 billion is needed in the next decade to avoid water shortages.

Economic analysis can promote environmental quality. By identifying subsidies, inefficiencies, and new opportunities, economists apply their powerful analytical tools to environmental ends.

Beneath Greater Yellowstone, powerful thermal energies relentlessly shift tectonic plates. The subsurface motion creates rifts and faults, occasionally volcanoes and earthquakes. The fundamental tensions are always there.