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Overview
The bicentennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (2003-2005) will focus attention upon the Upper Missouri River, especially the 139 mile Wild and Scenic portion in Montana. This section is extremely attractive, with magnificent white limestone cliffs and spectacular topographic relief. Currently, the area receives modest commercial and private recreational use. However, with the impending Bicentennial, the success of Stephen Ambrose's recent book, Undaunted Courage, and Ken Burns' PBS special on Lewis and Clark, interest in and recreational use of this section is increasing dramatically. As a result, a national treasure is at risk. It is this threat, which will last well beyond the Bicentennial, that motivates this call for proposals.
The river corridor is a mosaic of land ownership. Private lands are mixed with state and federal public lands managed by several agencies. The river corridor is managed by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM). On the BLM lands, ranchers lease rights to graze cattle, which congregate in the river's lush bottom lands.
Why did Free offer this contest?
The increasing national attention to this stretch of river has produced growing conflict among recreationists and between recreational and traditional agricultural uses. This has prompted some people to lobby the federal government to consider designating the area a national park or a national monument.
Local ranchers are concerned such a move would threaten their grazing rights and restrict resource development during especially difficult economic times, and experience shows that conventional approaches to environmental protection (e.g., establishing federally designated protected areas and carefully limiting human use) are often insufficient to protect threatened resources.
The cooperation of private landowners, people with huge emotional and economic investments in their land, makes protection more effective. As noted in the booklet, The View from Airlie: Community based conservation in perspective, produced by the Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg Foundation:
The real trouble with the protected area strategy is that it tends to omit humanity from the realm of nature and from the enterprise of nature conservation. Humanity can't be omitted. Homo sapiens is an ecological reality, and ineluctable part of the larger landscape outside of protected areas, where most of the Earth's biological diversity resides. Realism, not to mention justice, therefore demands that efforts to conserve biological diversity must be efforts to address human needs too.
Creativity, flexibility, and adaptability are essential to coordinate environmental protection across ownerships. Given the constraints inherent to large governmental bureaucracies, these qualities are elusive under politically centralized management. The challenge of enlisting the support of private landowners has created a niche for a new breed of environmental activist, namely, environmental entrepreneurs. Environmental entrepreneurs specialize in identifying conservation opportunities, mobilizing resources, and building a constituency for conservation. As demonstrated by the success of Ducks Unlimited, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and hundreds of local organizations, these efforts are a vital piece of the conservation challenge.
Creative, constructive ideas are highly valuable in the environmental policy field. Past debates have degenerated into images of Jane Fonda chaining herself to a tree or unemployed loggers advocating spotted owl stew. FREE sees an open niche for academics, environmental activists, and politicians of any party. Bravery and creativity are required to propose reforms that support both local communities and ecosystems.
For example, consider the CAMPFIRE program in Zimbabwe, the National Audubon Society's oil and gas leasing program in their Rainey Preserve, the Texas State Park's move towards self supporting management, and the Malipais Borderland group in the American Southwest. We find especially creative the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance's successful effort to raise $16 million to purchase timber rights for the Loomis State Forest in Washington, and the creation of an independent trust to manage the Baca Ranch in New Mexico as it moves into Forest Service administration. We wish to encourage such examples of "outside the box" thinking.
As Alexis de Tocqueville explained early in our history, Americans excel at building voluntary institutions to pursue shared interests. It is in the spirit of de Tocqueville, FREE invites the exploration of alternatives to achieving conservation goals on the Wild and Scenic portion of the Missouri River.
