The politics of barstool biology: Environmental knowledge and power in greater Northern Yellowstone

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Geoforum 37 (2006) 185–199

The politics of barstool biology: Environmental knowledgeand power in greater Northern Yellowstone

Paul Robbins

Department of Geography and Regional Development, Harvill Building, 437A, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States

Received 5 March 2004; received in revised form 21 September 2004

Abstract

Critical researchers of underdevelopment have established a well-known record celebrating the environmental knowledges of sub-sistence communities in contested wildlife conservation zones. Similar battles are being fought over science, uncertainty, and wildanimals in the American west, however, with far less attention to local epistemologies. Often dismissed as ‘‘barstool biology’’, theecological knowledges of local hunters in the Northern Yellowstone ecosystem are rooted in environmental experience and situatedpolitics. How does local hunter knowledge diverge or converge with that of state officials, environmentalists, ranchers, and otherconstituencies, and to what effect on wildlife management policy? This paper seeks to answer that question, reviewing recentresearch amongst local resource users, managers, and activists in Montana. By rendering empirical the question of local knowledgearound America�s oldest national park, rather than trying to ‘‘read it off’’ political affiliation, education, or livelihood, a clearer pic-ture of power, knowledge, and conservation emerges. The results suggest that emerging management policies have developed fromthe discursive alliance of landowners, outfitters, and environmentalists, shifting priorities towards enclosure and exclusion in wildlifeat the expense of other silent constituencies.� 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: Privatization; Wildlife management; Political ecology

1. Introduction

Austin: How could you possibly fall for that story?It�s as phony as Hoppalong Cassidy. What do yousee in it? I�m curious.Saul: It has a ring of truth, Austin . . . Somethingabout the real westAustin: Why? Because it�s got horses? Because it�sgot grown men acting like little boys??Saul: Something about the land. Your brother isspeaking from experience.Austin: He�s been camped out on the desert for3 months. Talking to cactus . . . I drive on the free-way every day. I swallow the smog. I watch the

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news in color. I shop in the Safeway. I�m the onewho�s in touch! Not him! . . . There�s no such thingas the west anymore! It�s a dead issue! It�s dried upSaul, and so are you!

Shepard (1981), True West, Scene 6

In the early winter of 2003, the Stockgrowers Associ-ation of Montana forwarded for the approval of thestate legislature what they held to be a novel and revo-lutionary model of wildlife management. Rather thanhaving the state (sovereign managers of regional wild-life) distribute hunting tags for elk on a traditional‘‘one man one elk’’ basis to hunters, they suggested aprocedure where licenses be given directly to landown-ers. These landowners then in turn could sell ‘‘lettersof authorization’’ to the highest bidder for access tothe animals and the right to hunt the land (AssociatedPress, 2002). The proposal set in motion a round of

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186 P. Robbins / Geoforum 37 (2006) 185–199

argument, lobbying, pamphleteering, and acrimonythat occupied the legislature early in its session andengaged a range of vociferous constituencies throughoutthe state before reaching an impasse (Associated Press,2003).

This proposed management institution is hardly un-ique. In the past several years a host of other measures,including grazing rights retirements, conservation ease-ments, reserve programs, and game farm regulationshave unsettled the traditional management of wildlifein Montana, pitting social classes, wilderness ideologies,and rural and urban areas against one another in anongoing effort to reshape the regulation of nature. Norare the ecological implications of such changes trivial.As elk populations influence browsing and tree growth,which in turn impact stream flow and biodiversity, theecological ricochet of each policy has the opportunityto reverberate throughout the state�s complex ecosys-tem, influencing aspen and willow growth, amphibianand reptile survival, and the quality of streams and riv-ers (National Research Council, 2002).

How do we explain the explosion of these kinds ofnew environmental policy throughout the US West?What causes them to take the form they do?

The search for answers to similar questions hasprompted a call for the extension of research in politicalecology to ‘‘Northern’’ and ‘‘developed world’’ contexts.This effort seeks to extend the critical investigation ofconservation politics from traditional concerns in ruralAfrica, South Asia, and Latin America to areas in theUS, UK, and throughout Europe (McCarthy, 1998; St.Martin, 2001).

Silence on these questions in the field of political ecol-ogy, whose central focus has long been the struggle ofproducer communities and traditional knowledges, isborn of disciplinary and subdisciplinary habits. The pro-ject inherited from anthropology and geography ofresearching things ‘‘far away’’ has made it difficult toturn the gaze of analysis to things nearer to home (atleast the home of Anglo-American researchers). Simi-larly, Anglo-American social scientists sometimes findit easier to study, recognize, and valorize only the envi-ronmental knowledges and practices of third world peo-ples (McCarthy, 2002).

It is therefore the intention of this paper to describeresearch that explores an environmental conflict inNorthern Yellowstone Montana with explicit attentionto lessons learned in similar conflicts in the developingworld. Specifically the paper asks: How does localhunter knowledge diverge or converge with that of stateofficials, environmentalists, ranchers, and other constit-uencies, and to what effect on wildlife management pol-icy? The results suggest (1) that coherent constituenciesspecifically converge around knowledge claims aboutbiophysical processes (how nature works) and rights tothe environment (who controls nature), (2) that policy

coalitions have emerged between groups with divergentviews through discursive compromise, but that (3) somecoalitions have failed to form, specifically between localhunters and environmental groups, despite stronglyoverlapping views of nature and policy. This outcomeis the product of the complex way that some knowledgesare celebrated while others are denigrated. More gener-ally, then, the research raises questions about how dis-course coalitions (following Hajer, 1997) actuallyfunction, and about the relationship between knowl-edge, policy, and power.

The paper begins with a discussion of emerging con-flicts in elk and wolf management in the Greater North-ern Yellowstone Ecosystem, pointing to political,ecological, and demographic changes that portend shiftsin regional economy. In Section 2, dominant explana-tions typically used to explain ecological knowledge inthe region are explored, along with a contrasting reviewof lessons from political ecology. The next sections dis-cuss methodology and findings from research in theBozeman/Gardiner region of Montana amongst keyplayers in the struggle for control of wildlife, followedby a discussion explaining the way these systems ofknowledge achieve do or do not achieve consensus andpolitical efficacy.

2. The problem of the Northern Yellowstone elk herd

Northern Yellowstone is the traditionally more iso-lated and economically marginal flank of the bustlingnational park. Integrated with tourism since the North-ern Pacific Railroad established the first access to thepark and originally home to the first park entrance,the Gallatin/Bozeman area remains one of the less welldeveloped regions of the park, though perhaps the bestarea for wildlife viewing (Fig. 1).

The migrations of the Northern Yellowstone elkherd, currently numbering around 9000 individuals,bind this northernmost part of the park together withthe humanized ecosystem beyond. Annually these ani-mals move from their high country summer range inthe heart of the park outward into the lower state forestsand private ranchlands of the valleys beyond. Here theyprovide meat supplies for local hunters, capital for localoutfitters, and a crucial economic resource for hoteliersand others servicing the hunting and tourism commu-nity. The rising and falling of the herd�s population,therefore, is a central economic and political concernfor the region�s residents. For managers inside the park,likewise, the actions of regional landowners and huntersis crucial in their management decisions, since animalsspend significant time outside of Yellowstone�s bound-aries, and since hunting has, until recently, been the onlymechanism for anthropogenic control of the herd�sdemography.

Fig. 1. The study area in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

P. Robbins / Geoforum 37 (2006) 185–199 187

Attention to the region is acute amongst environmen-talists nationally, who have observed and supported theexperimental reintroduction of the Gray Wolf to this re-gion for whom elk are an important prey base. The fac-tors thought to determine the health of the elk herd, theappropriate population for the region, the impact of theelk upon local vegetation, and the relationship betweenhunting, natural predation, and vegetation dynamics,together represents areas of serious debate, with high re-gional stakes.

The fate of the herd, moreover, represents a more gen-eral case of environmental history in the Unites StatesWest. Like other conflicts in the region, it is highly publi-cized and politicized, with observers and policy makersfrom outside the region holding significant influence.More than this, the elk population problem is one thatcrosses public/private boundaries, involves multiple stateagencies, and is subject to constant agency intervention.So too, like countless conflicts at the border of the humanand non-human world, it is one in which it is difficult toseparate human and environmental drivers; elk popula-tion change can be attributed to fire, drainage changes,climate trends, overpopulation, under-hunting, and ahost of other causes. Currently, management in the regionis under particular scrutiny as a result of three central fac-tors: the statewide expansion of the elk and its local con-traction, the return of the wolf to the area, and the shift inland ownership from ranchers to amenity buyers.

2.1. Elk, wolves, and subdevelopments

Rebounding dramatically from near-extinction inMontana at the turn of the century, 7–8 large elk herds

currently summer in Yellowstone. There are roughly6000 elk within the northern range herd that migrateeach winter into Forest Service lands in and aroundthe increasingly developed Paradise Valley. Manage-ment of the elk has historically entailed vacillating man-dates including periodic bans on hunting as well asoccasional mass population controls, as in the late1950s when the Park Service depopulated the herd.The population reached an all-time high just prior tothe Yellowstone fires of 1988, under a coordinated effortbetween the Parks Service and the Montana Departmentof Fish, Wildlife, and Parks (DFW&P), who regulatesthe herd through licensing and extensive population sur-veys (National Research Council, 2002).

Arguably, the park service and DFW&P togetherhave turned the Northern Yellowstone Ecosystem intoa vast elk production system (or elk machine), creatinga resource that draws park visitors in the summer andhunters in the winter. This has not been uncontroversial,since many biologists argue that an oversized herd hasled to overbrowsing of aspen and willow communities,leading to a decline in riparian conditions, and an over-all decrease in biodiversity both within and outside thepark (Fig. 2) (White et al., 1998).

Simultaneously, a parallel controversy has emergedaround the Gray Wolf. The last Gray Wolf in Montanawas likely shot prior to 1935. Considered a nuisance forranchers and a competitor for hunters, the wolf�s absencewas little mourned within the region, though it continuedto provoke strong sentiment amongst native communi-ties and extra-regional environmental groups. In 1993,however, 45 wolves in five packs returned to NorthernMontana, crossing the border from Canada. Two years

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Fig. 2. Instability in elk herd dynamics over the 20th century.


later, intentional reintroduction of the animals wasundertaken in the Lamar Valley of Northern Yellow-stone. As of December 2002, about 216 wolves havecome to inhabit the Yellowstone ecosystem. 24 packsand 14 breeding pairs live in Greater Yellowstone Eco-system overall. Until a recent split, the largest of thesepacks totaled 37 animals, a pack size without precedentin recent memory (National Research Council, 2002).

These ecological changes have occurred amidst a rapidtransition towards new land ownership in the region. Asin much of the west, new land buyers are commonly non-residents, whose wider production margins allow them toranch their properties with less concern towards profit-ability. Land cover change under new ownership, there-fore, has commonly meant the removal of livestock, butoften also the expansion of irrigated hayfields specificallydesigned to attract wildlife. Conservation easementsunder amenity ownership and higher wildlife tolerancehave resulted in higher animal density on some proper-ties, especially those posted against hunting; traditionalaccess by local hunters has often been ended under newownership. Elk have come to occupy posted propertyfor long periods and can be seen grazing on lawns andoutside trailers and houses throughout the Paradise Val-ley, which stretches north from the park along the herd�sline of migration. Elk have increasingly expanded theirhabitat, moreover, into the Paradise Valley and aroundDome Mountain, an area previously marking the termi-nal point in annual movement (Lemke et al., 1998).

2.2. Policy prescriptions

A precipitous decline in herd numbers, evident since1994 (Fig. 2), has led to a storm of controversy and calls

for altered regulation, the policy prescriptions for man-aging the environment summarized by type in Table 1.These range from market incentive schemes like ‘‘wild-life partnerships’’ to subsidies like ‘‘block management’’,and also include private trusts for the purchase of devel-opment rights and grazing allotments, as well as regula-tory reform of management, especially of private gamefarms.

Proffered by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks,block management represents an effort to secure accessto private lands for hunting, which is slowly eroding,by providing development investment money for land-owners in exchange for leaving the land open to a fixednumber of hunters. Money comes from licensing feesand is provided for rural landowners to support habitatand wildlife management. Landowners enrolled in blockmanagement must allow hunters onto their land duringthe hunting season, though in fixed numbers to avoidovercrowding. Hunters visiting the land sign-in at adesignated location, and abide by distance and safetyprovisions set by the landowner.

A wide range of habitat easements and grazing retire-ment systems has also been instituted by organizationslike the Montana Elk Foundation and other regionaland national land trusts. Easements take varying forms,many involving state agencies, but some based on pur-chasing land rights directly. Through direct paymentsto landowners, private land can be placed in more wild-life and watershed friendly systems of cropping androtation. These easements reflect recognition that pro-duction rights in land are paramount, but that the exclu-siveness of rights can give way to environmentalinterests through proper incentives. Similar preserva-tionist efforts have been extended to landowners with

Table 1Key emerging policy types in Greater Northern Yellowstone

Policy Explanation Type

Block management State Fish Wildlife and Parksprogram to compensate land owners in returnfor habitat creation and protection onprivate property, conditioned on openingland for access to local hunters

Incentive:subsidy

Habitat easements Private capital (sometimes accompanied bystate grants) paid to land holders inexchange for the temporary orpermanent retirement of development anduse rights on private land

Trust

Grazing retirements Private capital paid to land holders in exchangefor retiring their use rights for grazing on public(especially forest service) lands

Trust

Wildlife partnerships Shift of hunting licensing towards licensedistribution to land owners rather than individualhunters; licenses would be transferable andmarketable to highest bidding hunter

Incentive:market

Game farm deregulation Decreased stringency for the creation andmaintenance of wild animal confinementoperations, especially elk farms

Deregulation


rights to public land. These efforts aim not at retirementof private ranchlands in the region, but instead of graz-ing allotments held by their owners. These Forest Ser-vice allotments are exclusive and long-term rights tohigh-country grazing held by older family ranches inthe area.

Wildlife partnerships, like those advocated by theMontana Stockgrower�s Association, promote the directdispersal of hunting licenses to landowners (rather thandirectly to hunters), who may in turn sell them to thehighest bidder. These represent a system of fee huntingwhere elk nuisances are compensated to landholdersthrough higher tag revenues, especially from non-localbig game sports hunters.

Private game farm regulation, as enacted by FishWildlife and parks in the past few years has broughtgrowth in this industry to a halt. While elk continue tobe held on private land, no new farms have been allowedsince 2000. An increasingly aggressive campaign hassought to deregulate this economy, however.

2.3. Uncertainties and unknowns

Support for each of these programs varies widely,both because of disagreements about what the rightand wrong environmental outcomes of legislationshould be, as well as because empirical uncertaintiesabound. Such uncertainties arise from a range of contro-versial and contradictory scientific and lay claims madeabout the regional ecosystem. Climate and fire may eachplay a significant role in elk demographic change. Wetsummers and recent fires may have led, for example,to exaggerated and unsustainable growth during theearly 1990s. Recent drought as well as hard winters

may be a significant factor in population decline(National Research Council, 2002).

Disturbance and habitat may also play a role. Someresearch suggests, for example, that grazing by cattlemay improve elk habitat (Short and Knight, 2003). Cat-tle decline on public and private lands may not favor elkexpansion, therefore. Herbivore impact may play a con-tradictory role, however, as many biologists suspect thatthe area�s sagebrush grasslands are overgrazed.

Social ecology and animal adaptation also may play asignificant role. Elk have shown a remarkable ability tolearn in the past, and though their numbers are locally indecline, they may respond well to posted land and shel-ter themselves from both human and animal predation.This means the expansion of habitat, coupled with de-creased hunting, may yet be a recipe for herd regrowth(Lemke et al., 1998).

Finally, uncertainties surround the health of the herd,especially with the outbreak of Chronic Wasting Disease(a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, related toother prion-driven diseases like Mad Cow) in elk herdsthroughout adjacent states and Canadian provinces.Though science on the disease is young, there are ques-tions about the degree to which private game farmingand large-scale enclosure of herds have increased therate of disease transmission.

Given such (perhaps inevitable) uncertainty, whatsorts of policy prescriptions can we predict are goingto dominate, knowing what we do about political trajec-tory and momentum throughout the West? How willnew regional economics and demographics influencethe way these questions are answered? What does thistell us about the politics of environmental knowledgein a changing political economy? It is tempting to view


the controversies along the established narrative of‘‘environmentalism’’ versus ‘‘wise use’’ and to see a sim-ple trajectory unfolding from the area�s demographicdynamics, where old, utilitarian, and environmentallyunconcerned residents give way to ‘‘green’’ immigrantsand conservation policies. Such a prediction might bepremature, however.

3. Environmental knowledge and policy in the US west

A great deal of ink has been spilt in recent years onenvironmental conflicts throughout the US west, stem-ming from the movement of urban immigrants intorural areas (Beyers and Nelson, 2000). Generally, bothacademic and journalistic accounts of this shift havefocused on the conflict between resource developmentand environmental preservation (Walker and Fortmann,2003), values of newcomers versus long timers (Shum-way and Otterstrom, 2001), and rural versus urbandivides (Alm and Witt, 1997).

A resulting dominant research narrative of environ-mental conflict has emerged that draws attention tothe way old economies of primary extraction (likeranching and mining) increasingly return marginal eco-nomic benefits (Corkran, 1996) and are giving way totertiary economies of environmental consumption. Asranching and mining slowly die, a new generation oflandowners arrive. Their visions and goals for the landimmediately come to conflict with those of earlier resi-dents and lead to more conservation-oriented practices.Freed from the chains of primary extraction, pristineenvironments recover, while earning capital value intourism and recreation. Newcomers are considered moreenvironmentally knowledgeable than rural old timersand more environmentally concerned (Jones et al.,2003). Most conflicts are therefore understood to besymbolic fighting grounds for more basic and funda-mental rifts between property-rights-oriented wise useadvocates and collective-oriented environmental conser-vationism (Wilson, 1997).

The policy-related research questions that predomi-nate in this work reflect the assumptions of this account.How much do production oriented old timers reallyknow about ecosystems anyway (Reading et al., 1994)?Since economic growth may be congruent with wildlifeprotection (Rasker and Hackman, 1996), how can weconvince local resource dependent people to participatein conservation and trust science in decision-making(Weeks and Packard, 1997)?

Research reflecting this way of thinking about North-ern Yellowstone ecology is revealing. Reading et al.(1994) analyzed views of ecosystem management andcontroversies in the region using a formal surveytool to scale individuals along axes of opinion andknowledge. Devising attitude scales for ‘‘ecosystem

management’’, ‘‘utilitarian’’, and ‘‘libertarian’’ views,individuals were scored to show major concerns and pre-dict changes in the region. Unsurprisingly, ‘‘locals’’ werefound to be both more utilitarian and libertarian thanthose raised elsewhere.

The analysis further queried local people�s environ-mental ‘‘knowledge’’, using test questions on like ‘‘theaverage elevation of the Yellowstone plateau is roughly3000 feet above sea level’’ [false] and ‘‘all plants andanimals are of equal importance to an ecosystem�s main-tenance and functioning’’ [false] (Reading et al., 1994:357). They concluded that locals had a ‘‘relatively goodunderstanding of the natural world’’.

3.1. A political ecological alternative: elk knowledge

is situated knowledge

Such an approach is not without problems, however.Recent research has shown that old timers and new-comers in the west do not consistently hold divergentvalues (Smith and Krannich, 2000) and though econom-ics and environmental attitudes are related, participa-tion in the amenity economy is not any guarantee ofconsistent environmental views (Morris and McBeth,2003). Moreover, though immigrants are usually wealth-ier than longer term residents (Shumway and Otter-strom, 2001), their desire for more environmentalamenities (e.g. unblocked views of wildlife) does notnecessarily reflect ‘‘better’’ environmental knowledgeor ‘‘greater’’ environmental concern. The elision be-tween environmental consumption and ecological con-cern may be one more rooted in the class biases ofthe analysts than in the class characteristics of theanalyzed.

As McCarthy has explained, for example, the shift inregional politics, and the emergent backlash in the formof the Wise Use movement, is more than a case ofpoorly formed environmental ideas giving way to greenidealism. McCarthy argues instead that Wise Use re-flects a environmentally sophisticated understanding ofthe produced character of the natural world (as opposedto an assumption of pristine wilderness) and a critiqueof the classed and geographic parochialism of manyenvironmentalists (McCarthy, 1998: 140). So too forWalker, the specific character of the changes in the ruralUS west reflect less a greening of the landscape than a‘‘gentrification’’ of the rural neighborhood (Walkerand Fortmann, 2003). Similarly, Wilson has demon-strated that the character of western land struggles arenot always exclusively about two sides of an divide,but rather the articulation of persistent colonial concep-tions of rights and access, embodied in contemporarystruggles (Wilson, 1999).

Political ecology has been especially trenchant in itsrethinking of environmental ‘‘knowledge’’. Being lesssanguine about unilinear measures of green ‘‘IQ’’ and


simple tests of the ‘‘rightness’’ or ‘‘wrongness’’ of localecological understandings, research in the field haspreferred instead to explore ecological information incontext (Seager, 1996). While Reading et al. (1994)refreshingly vindicate the knowledge of locals using testquestions on the region�s elevation and the number ofbear attacks annually, political ecology concludes thatsuch a notion of knowledge can be problematic. Re-search seeks instead to reveal varying knowledgecommunities within a nexus of property and laborrelations that condition variable and shifting discoursesof society and nature (Robbins, 2000a,b). In this way,knowledge is not something an individual has ‘‘more’’or ‘‘less’’ of, but rather reflects the specific forms ofpractice undertaken in daily life; thick in some areas,thin in others, knowledge is embedded in daily politicaland environmental activity.

A political ecological explanation of emerging policyin Northern Yellowstone, therefore, requires approach-ing actors (biologists, hunters, and environmental activ-ists) with a view to relating and querying their politicalpositions, ecosystem demands, and ecological claimsmore holistically. Rather than ask, ‘‘who is right orwrong’’ about elk, one might better query, what bureau-cratic and economic imperatives condition elk knowledge

and how does the production of elk knowledge create

opportunities and barriers for alliance, leading to shifts

in local land management, policy, and the flow of value

from the ecosystem? By showing the positionality of allclaims in the region, such an approach not only turnsthe gaze of critical ecology �inwards� towards the firstworld, but also ‘‘upwards’’ towards the state institutionsthat participate in, but are not independent from, strug-gles for environmental power in the region (Robbins,2002) (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Elk browsing in burned areas recove

4. Method: eliciting knowledge axes

Research proceeded in two phases throughout 2003.During the middle winter, archival searches were per-formed on key organizations in the region that lobby,coordinate, and advocate in the Greater Northern Yel-lowstone Ecosystem. These organizations were selectedto represent the range of ostensibly disparate constituen-cies in debates over elk populations in the region, includ-ing hunters, outfitters, environmental interests, andranchers. Informal interviews with leaders and represen-tatives of these organizations were held over the courseof two weeks, along with interviews with state officials atthe Montana Department of Fish Wildlife and Parksand at Montana Wildlife Extension. Results of the inter-views and archival work were analyzed to determine dif-fering specific claims about how the ecosystem works, aswell as differing resource and policy priorities. Informalinterviews with residents of Gardiner and BozemanMontana in local settings (coffee shops, bars, and stores)extended the investigation to understand differing prior-ities, frustrations, and opinions on the elk question.

From these open-ended interviews, a set of 20 quoteswas sampled, to represent divergent policy priorities,claims about ecosystem process, and normative ideasabout the environment more generally. These quoteswere paraphrased slightly where necessary, usually forlength (Fig. 4) and printed on a set of cards to adminis-ter in follow-up. This second phase queried basic demo-graphic information from interviewees, and thenrequired respondents to sort the provided quotes from‘‘most agree’’ to ‘‘most disagree’’, with the relative posi-tion of each quote recorded for further analysis.

The results were subject to an inverted factor anal-ysis to determine common patterns of response and

ring from the 1988 Yellowstone fires.

Fig. 4. Items for sorting response.


consistent relationships between specific quotes—be-tween claims about ecosystem process and policy prior-ity, for example—within respondent sets. This approach(commonly referred to as Q Method), is designed toelicit coherent subject positions within individuals forcontrolled comparison (Brown, 1980; McKeown andThomas, 1988; Robbins and Kreuger, 2000). Rather

than measure respondents position on a pre-set scale,the combination of priorities is interpreted to revealthe range of patterns of cognitive connections articu-lated by respondents themselves.

As such, the sample was purposive, comprising 30interviews, including all of the original interviewees, aswell as several recent migrants to the region, ranchers,

Table 2Factor characteristics

F1 F2

Eigenvalue 10.95 3.39No. of defining variables 21 9Average relative coefficient 0.800 0.800Composite reliability 0.988 0.973SE of factor scores 0.108 0.164


hunters, and unaffiliated advocates and authors ofletters to the editor of local papers. Members andemployees of three organizations were deliberatelyover-sampled (Greater Yellowstone Coalition, MontanaOutfitters and Guides Association, and Montana Wild-life Federation). The sampling strategy in this methodwas not, therefore, designed to elicit ‘‘expert’’ local eco-logical knowledge per se (as advocated by Davis andWagner, 2003), but instead to reveal divergences inknowledge and relate them to other political and eco-nomic concerns and ideas (Robbins, 2000a,b).

5. Findings: narrative axes of ecological and politicalknowledge

Results of the factors analysis, coupled with interviewdata, reveal two dominant axes, which capture the rangeof variability in response, supported by follow-up dis-cussion and transcribed interviews (factor statisticssummarized in Table 2). Their distinguishing statementsets are shown in Tables 3 and 4. Each factor showsan association between specific claims about ecosystem

Table 3Distinguishing statements for Factor 1—Dysfunctional ethology: access

Statement

Access to wildlife is a collective good that cannot and should not be privatiThe reintroduction of the wolf to Yellowstone has improved ecological condinside the park by easing the foraging pressure of wild ungulates

Elk have learned how to tell posted from unposted land; they havebecome a nuisance where hunters are not allowed

Estimates of elk numbers made by the Montana Fish, Wildlife,and Parks Department tend to be significantly higher than the actual pop

Around Yellowstone, cattle are playing the ecological role that bison used tintense cattle grazing, for short periods, improves wildlife habitat byremoving decadent growth and encouraging important forage

When it comes to Chronic Wasting Disease, game farms are easy to pick onbut they can actually be managed through double fencing and collaring to

Table 4Distinguishing statements for Factor 2—Bureaucratic ecology: intervention

Statement

The ‘‘Montana Wildlife Partnership’’ [where a share of huntingpermits are distributed directly to landowners by the Fish Wildlife andParks Department] is the sort of initiative that the stateshould pursue in the future

When it comes to Chronic Wasting Disease, game farms are easy to pick onbut they can actually be managed through double fencing and collaring to

Yellowstone is no more a natural ecosystem than the public and private lanThe reintroduction of the wolf to Yellowstone has improved ecological condthe park by easing the foraging pressure of wild ungulates

Over the last half-century, changes in the density of different kinds of vegeta[grasses, willow, and aspen] in and around Yellowstone Park are largely achanging climate, snowfall and rainfall

A healthy ecosystem around Yellowstone requires a program of ‘‘natural rekeeping human hands off natural processes

function, normative ideas of how nature should be man-aged, and policy measures.

Any given individual may sit along differing points ofcommitment relative to these claims. As a result, thesefactors and their inverse map out coherent narrativeecologies. The factor scores of respondents are summa-rized in Fig. 5.

5.1. Dysfunctional ethology and access

Factor 1 reflects relative commitment to the centralimportance of access to wildlife as a normative socialgood. This factor also shows a high support for wolfreintroduction efforts, a concern about elk nuisances

Rank z-score

zed 3 2.00itions 2 1.14

2 0.93

ulation�2 �1.12

o; �3 �1.21

,reduce any serious risk

�3 �1.46

Rank z-score

3 1.48

,reduce any serious risk

2 1.3

ds outside the park 2 1.12itions inside �2 �1.31

tionresult of

�3 �1.4

gulation’’: �3 �1.88

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-1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8Dysfunctional

Ethology: AccessPrivatized Habitat:

Exclusion

Anthropogenic Ecology:Intervention

Regulated Wilderness:Non-intervention

Ranching

Environ orRecent Migrant

Outfitting

Hunting

State/Federal

Fig. 5. Axes of environmental knowledges and priorities.


on posted lands, a general trust in the wildlife popula-tion estimates by the Department of Fish Wildlife andParks, and strong disagreement with the notions thatcattle grazing improves wildlife habitat and that gamefarms can be managed against the risk of Chronic Wast-ing Disease.

The resulting picture of social ecology is one of col-lective priorities undone by dysfunctions of privatiza-tion—the nuisance of elk and the risk of game farmsare linked to an ethos of exclusion. Such collective prior-ities, especially concerning wildlife, are typical of bothstate game management personnel and hunters, espe-cially those hunters with no linkage to the amenity eco-nomy, touring, or guiding of out of state hunters. Here,wildlife is viewed as a collective good and a commonproperty resource, at least for Montanans. Some envi-ronmentalists and outfitters also scored positively onthis factor, though they vary widely in their level of com-mitment to the position, with some representatives ofenvironmental organizations expressing ambivalence.

In follow-up interviews both biologists/managers andhunters describe resource management issues as those ofrights to nature, asserting that the American revolutionwas fought over elitist issues surrounding access to the‘‘king�s deer’’. Amongst these individuals there is astrong insistence that ‘‘doctors as well as ditch diggers’’have a right to nature, especially to hunt. When the statelegislature begins to debate the possibility of licensinganimals to landowners rather than citizens, adherentsto this position mobilize politically, specifically opposing‘‘privatization of wildlife’’.

For those committed to this position, the centralenvironmental problem is that of habitat fragmentation

in areas outside the park resulting from land ownershipchanges and posting of land against hunting. For theserespondents, especially hunters and advocates for hunt-ers, land use and posting practices on private lands inthe last 20 years has created a shift in elk behavior, lead-ing to altered migration and resident herds in locationswhere they cannot be culled or managed. This modelof elk behavior further points to risks in the disease ecol-ogy of the population. As herds come to occupy privatelands in larger and denser concentrations, the risk ofcommunicable diseases rises, including that of ChronicWasting Disease.

Such a model is by no means without support in eco-logical science. Dynamic modeling of herd migration isunderdeveloped at present, however, as is the ethologyof elk learning behaviors. As a result, many of theseclaims are plausible, but untested.

5.2. Privatized habitat and exclusion

This position is mirrored by its reverse view (highnegative loadings on this axis), which insists that stateauthorities tend to overestimate game numbers, that ac-cess to nature is by no means a guaranteed right, andthat private game farms can be managed securely. Theseindividuals insist that elk, deer, and even wolves, arepotentially enclosable goods.

The related follow-up interviews reveal that individu-als who load negatively on Factor 1 share a distrust inecological information from state and federal environ-mental authorities, and include both large and smalloutfitters in the sample, especially those firms that outfithunters from outside the state, as well as a researcher for


the state wildlife extension agency. Large landownersand also tend toward this end of axis, including espe-cially ranchers and those who represent ranchers in thesample, though most assert indifference on the questionof access/exclusion, as do some environmentalists.

Ecological problems are, in this view, a product oftoo little flexibility and attention to individual rights ofowners and operators. These respondents were mostvociferous in their insistence that bureaucratic manage-ment and the inherent limits of the state had causedimbalances in wildlife dynamics, most commonly point-ing to the way elk herd habits and growth respond tolicensing and permitting process born of agency needs,rather than ecological process. The insistence on fixedseasonal time frames (a 1 month hunting season), forexample, is said to cause too little herd attrition inlate-migration years. So too, the migratory nature of re-gional herds consistently defies the hunting districts inwhich they are set, making limits set region-to-regionuseless for targets that should be set herd-to-herd. Thus,in this view, the temporal and spatial framework withinwhich the state is forced to function (hunting seasonsand hunting districts) is fundamentally non-ecologicalsince these districts and seasons do not coincide withthe spatial and temporal scales and variability inherentin ecological process. Elk are neither absolutely over-populated nor under-populated according to this view,but over-dense in many areas and too few in others,both a nuisance and a scarce resource, with little balancebetween. Finally, private game farms, if managed care-fully, are by no means ecologically problematic, and reg-ulations, which have been on the increase in the lastdecade, are needless impediments to proper stewardship.Thus commitments in Factor 1 (whether positive or neg-ative) articulate ecological outcomes in terms of rights;one end emphasizes the ecological outcomes of rightsof access, while the other focuses on rights to property.

As with the reverse end of the axis, there is some evi-dence to support these claims. Elk intrusions have beencostly for producers throughout the region (Torstensonet al., 2002). Recent studies have also demonstrated the‘‘grazing effect’’ described by these respondents, withcattle grazing acting to benefit wildlife habitat (Clarket al., 2000; Short and Knight, 2003).

5.3. Anthropogenic ecology and intervention

Factor 2 shows relative commitment to issues of‘‘hands on’’ or ‘‘hands off’’ management of nature,regardless of concerns about equity, access, and bureau-cracy. High Factor 2 scores reflect an insistence thatYellowstone is no more natural an environment thanother lands (public and private) outside the park. Thisposition further opposes ‘‘natural regulation’’ of theecosystem, insisting that changes in the ecology arenot the product of natural trends and rejecting claims

that the wolf has acted to improve Yellowstone ecology.Respondents who rank high on this factor generallyinsist on the anthropogenically produced character ofenvironments, being more relativistic about the ‘‘pristi-nity’’ of areas both inside and outside of YellowstonePark. Normatively, these respondents see no reason thatabsolute ‘‘wilderness’’ conditions be maintained, espe-cially considering the role of humans in creating and fos-tering presently desirable ecological conditions. Highintervention respondents included some ranchers andoutfitters. Some hunters and hunting advocates alsoscored on the positive end of this axis, though most wereindifferent or neutral on the question.

This position too is in some elements plausible, andnot without support in the field of environmental his-tory. Without question, wildlife populations were heav-ily regulated in the pre-Yellowstone era by nativehunting populations (Kaye, 1994). Most of the effortson the part of the park�s founders, moreover, were forthe control and elimination of many of the human im-pacts (hunting predominantly, but also fire and otherland modifications) that had created the ‘‘pristine’’ con-ditions encountered in the late 19th century (Jacoby,2001).

5.4. Regulated wilderness and non-intervention

At the other end of axis two, is a commitment to theidea that nature is best left to its own devices, and theecosystem health is a result of ‘‘natural regulation’’and ‘‘hands off’’ natural processes. Despite recent pre-cipitous declines in the Northern Yellowstone elk herd,regulated wilderness advocates point generally to theoverpopulation of elk and the decline of native vegeta-tion. So too, they are the most likely to support wolfreintroduction and limit wolf control measures, suggest-ing that Lotka–Volterra predator/prey relations willserve to balance populations at optimal, if dynamic, lev-els. This position suggests that willow and aspen cover-age in particular is in decline, with ‘‘downstream’’ effectson smaller fauna, beavers, and drainage dynamics. Thisfactor also stresses the degree to which climatologicalfactors may have driven some forms of environmentalchange, but that wolf populations have, to a great de-gree, improved ecological conditions by culling the elkherd. As one respondent explained, ‘‘yes, people didhave to reintroduce the wolf, because they got rid of itin the first place, but now everything can be left alone’’.Commitment to this position was most commonamongst both hunters and environmentalists, thoughsome advocates from both groups were indifferent.

To be sure, the case for a wolf-centered ‘‘natural’’regulatory regime too is supported by environmental sci-ence. Hard winters have been shown to be as importantto herd demography as predation, emphasizing the nat-ural regulation of herd size. At the same time, human


impacts throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystemhave been shown to be high (Patten, 1991), while in theabsence of predation, elk have been shown to graze outaspen and willow stands (White et al., 1998).

6. Discourse compromises: from knowledge to policy

The fact that each of these points of view has somesupport in the scientific literature and that each may re-flect some portion of the ‘‘truth’’ is less important indetermining policy outcomes than the relationship thateach account has to the larger political economy ofrights and management. Significantly, none of these fourpositions, or narrative ecologies, is exclusively associ-ated with the policy types described before. Wildlifepartnerships, block management programs, and landtrusts are each advocated by individuals and groupswith varying priorities, each accepting somewhat differ-ent accounts of scientific fact to support or refute them.Arguably each of these policies represents a cluster ofconcepts and priorities around which to govern nature,therefore, rather than a single, narrow, instrumentallogic or point of view (Table 5). In their establishment,moreover, these represent compromises between differ-ing stories about how nature works.

Habitat easements and grazing retirements reflectcombined commitments to exclusion and non-interven-tion. These of course make sense for landholders, whoare paid directly, and to those related communitieswho hold that private incentives have historically pro-duced viable ecosystems. But more than this, these pol-icy measures are attractive to a range of individuals andgroups, including some environmental groups, who arehappy to sacrifice public access, about which they aresometimes ambivalent, to achieve ‘‘hands off’’ manage-ment. Disinterested in, and somewhat hostile to, humanpredation (hunting), environmental lobbies supportthese easements with the hope that the return of naturalpredators will achieve more stable elk herd demography.Private land owners, on the other hand, who express astrong sense of stewardship, see coalitions with greensless problematic than state intervention or bankruptcy.In this way a position apparently hostile to preservationachieves compromise with preservationist goals by bal-ancing collective and exclusive notions of wildlife. Inthe case of grazing rights, by subsidizing the producer

Table 5Policy prescriptions as discursive compromise

Commitment Discursive compromise

Private wilderness Exclusion and non-interventionPrivate nature Exclusion and interventionPeople�s nature Access and interventionPeople�s wilderness Access and non-intervention

to retire use of high-country public land without chal-lenging the productive use of private holdings, progres-sive preservationist groups concede the exclusive rightsin land held by the producer while insisting on the pri-macy of preservation mandates on public wildernessland. This coalition might best be understood as theconstruction of private wilderness.

Those who are less sanguine on the ‘‘natural’’ regula-tion approach to land, especially outfitters and somelandholders, may nevertheless cling to an ecological nar-rative overlapping with exclusionary visions of propermanagement. High interventionist views of nature(rejecting natural regulation) coincide with exclusionaryviews in their confidence that landholding stewards canresponsibly and safely manage game farms. While not a‘‘wilderness’’, human made elk ranches are productiveforms of nature, which remunerate proper stewardship.So too market systems that allow landholders to harvestcompensation by selling hunting rights to high bidders,compromise an interventionist view of natural manage-ment with a private rights view of proper incentives; theresult is a combined support for ‘‘wildlife partnerships’’as advocated by the Stockgrower�s Association. Such aposition might be described as a coalition built aroundthe idea of private nature.

Block management, on the other hand, is policy thatexplicitly incorporates elements of access with those ofan interventionist ‘‘humanized’’ natural landscape onprivate farm or ranchland. This program represents aneffort to institutionally formalize the traditional rela-tionship between hunters and landowners in the region,wherein hunters were allowed access to land throughlong-term relationships, family friendships, and otherinformal networks of association. As these relationshipshave faded with increasing property transfer, the statehas intervened as an access broker, subsidizing the socialcapital formation required to overcome the potentialfriction between landholders and gun-toting strangers.Adherents to this compromise, also share some commonvisions of what is wrong with current ecology, includingits undue stress on wilderness area protection instead ofhumanized environments, and its simultaneous trend to-wards risky enclosed environments like game farms.Notably, this vision is most closely associated with somestate agents, especially contact people between FishWildlife and Parks Department and large landholdergroups. Like conceptual alliances formed around private

Policies

Habitat easements and grazing retirementsWildlife partnerships and game farm deregulationBlock managementNone


wilderness and private nature, this people�s nature repre-sents a compromise that allows problems to be reframedunder conditions of demographic and politicalupheaval.

The final possible compromise, however, hinted at bythe dense clustering of some environmental groups andsome hunting organizations in the quadrant of thefactor space marked out as prizing both access andnon-intervention (Fig. 4), does not exist in any form ofpolicy. This people�s wilderness space is an empty set,represented by no specific policy measures and by nocoordinated intercommunity conversation. To a degree,the divisions between ‘‘greens’’ and ‘‘guns’’ have ave-nues for erosion through the advancement of some com-mon policies (e.g. game farm restrictions) that mightunify these communities. For the most part, there isno coordination or common ground, however. Whatdoes this silent space—between collectivist views ofaccess and preservationist views of regulated wilder-ness—suggest about the relationship between discourse,power, and policy?

7. Discourse coalitions or power/knowledge?

According to theorist Maarten Hajer (Hajer, 1997),environmental consensus emerges as historically dispa-rate groups settle on coherent stories about how theworld works or ‘‘discourse coalitions’’. These coalesceinto statements of policy and in turn impact the world.

Yet collectivist access rights to wildlife, held espe-cially by in-state hunters and working class urban andrural residents, along with the groups who representthem, have been eschewed (or at least ignored) by envi-ronmental advocates, many of whom share remarkablysimilar accounts of how natural processes work. Howcan people share discourses and not form discoursecoalitions? In part, the divergence is a product ofenvironmentalist aversion to hunting itself. The subtledistinction between an environmentalist�s view of non-human wilderness and that of a hunter, for whomhuman hunting is a form of natural predation, clearlysuggests greater divergence of discourse than is reflectedin the method outlined above.

More directly, however, there is a general class-baseddistrust between rural hunters and even locally bornenvironmentalists. There is also reversal in the trajectoryof each group�s respective regional political power.

While the total population of in-state hunters has notdeclined appreciably in Montana (unlike most westernstates), their relative economic clout has. The mean an-nual income of an in-state hunter falls between 30 and35 thousand dollars. That of out-of-state hunters is be-tween 50 and 75 thousand. So too, where in-state hunt-ers may purchase gasoline and shells, averaging $47 perday, an out of state hunter spends $207 per day without

a guide and $478 per day with one (King and Brooks,2001). So too, the reason of access for the two groupsis quite different. Whereas 39.2% of in-state huntersrated meat procurement a ‘‘very important’’ reason forhunting, only 17.3% of out-of-state hunters respondedsimilarly (Allen, 1988).

For out-of-state hunters, the collective ownership ofwildlife by Montana residents is a therefore a matterof little concern in their consumption of the huntingexperience. For native hunters, who sometimes relyheavily on these animals for meat, the collectivist ideol-ogy is located in household economics. Perhaps moretrenchantly, since meat from hunting is important butnot a survival threshold resource, the decline in collec-tivist priorities challenges a deeply held culture of hunt-ing, which itself reflects a more deeply held notion ofwilderness equity, expressed in the constant call amongstrespondents for ‘‘access’’, which links hunting and nat-ure (if not ‘‘wilderness’’ per se) to democracy.

Hunters see coalitions formed against access, some-times including environmental organizations, not simplyas assaults on instrumental interests (‘‘our’’ resources)but more profoundly as attacks on populist democraticvalues and an abuse of economic power: class war.Indeed, as one hunter complained in a local sports-men�s meeting discussion on nuisance emergency huntsperiodically called by FW&P at the behest of largelandowners:

‘‘We peasant hunters are asked to drop everythingand come out to take care of a problem, but arenever let on the property during the [hunting]season.’’

These are also matters of little concern for most non-hunting members of the environmental community.Nevertheless, hunters and environmentalists share aremarkably similar view on how nature operates andfor whom. They have a common distrust of argumentsfor both exclusive and produced nature. They wouldseem like ideal partners either in opposing exclusivistand productivist approaches to nature (e.g. wildlife part-nerships). And yet they are not. Interviews, furthermore,reveal antipathy for the other group amongst somemembers of each community.

Within the urban environmental community, huntersare sometimes regarded with disdain, and are commonlydescribed as those who do not know much about theenvironment. Whether discounted as ‘‘barstool’’ or‘‘windshield’’ biologists, hunter knowledge is rarelytaken seriously; typical derogatory anecdotes involvemen with beer in the back of their pick-ups. In inter-views with other competing constituents as well as eco-logical experts in the region, local hunters, more thanany other groups, were generally associated with‘‘weak’’ ecological knowledge. As their position in thesocial economy of the region declines, their influence


over emerging discursive bargains also erodes. So too,does the clout of their interpretation of ecological sys-tems and events. Marginal in coalition building, largelyas a result of altered class configurations, hunter knowl-edge is ‘‘barstool biology’’. This is somewhat ironic,considering the remarkable similarity in environmentaldiscourses espoused by hunters and environmentalists.

On the other hand, many environmental groups andrecent migrants to the region have begun to espouse a‘‘respect’’ for landowner knowledge, especially that ofranchers. Landowners are ‘‘close to the land’’ and have‘‘generations of experience’’ in land management. As aresult, the concession towards embracing or toleratinga view of private wilderness on the part of environmen-talists has been coupled with a shift in claims about whoknows more about the land. This shift has made appar-ently intractable problems appear more amenable tonegotiation.

So while the emergence of a ‘‘wilderness’’ constitu-ency represents a possible shift in the regional imaginaryof nature and opens the possibilities for compromise andchange on issues of wildlife management, the degree towhich the least economically powerful participants inthe struggle are increasingly marginal in the discussionsuggests the limits of renegotiating the terms underwhich nature is produced. If this remains the case, thefuture of Montana wildlife and our very understandingsof socio-environmental processes in the region will bemediated through exclusivist ideologies of propertyand nature.

In this sense, Hajer�s formulation, and that of othertheorists, goes a long way towards explaining policy,but in practice it may fall short of the mark. Firstly, itremains essential to understand how some stories be-come more powerful than others, specifically throughclassed, gendered, and raced processes. Environmental-ists and hunters may tell similar stories about nature,but they tell different stories about themselves and aboutone another, which together with their respective chang-ing political/economic fortunes, make coalitions moredifficult. They are each not just the authors of complexstories, but also (in the sense offered by Foucault,1980) the product of those stories.

On the other hand, crude ‘‘interest’’ or ‘‘class ideol-ogy’’ based accounts of discourse coalitions, where peo-ple�s knowledge, information, and ideas are vulgarlyforged by position in a struggle, are also inadequate.As Macmillan observes, by ignoring the complexity ofconstructions of the environment necessary for creatingregulatory outcomes, such accounts work

‘‘. . . by attributing an action or effect to an individ-ual or institutional interest without specifying theprocess that makes that connection. Is it cognitive,for instance, with people�s mindsets determined bytheir structural position?’’ (MacMillan, 2003: 189).

So debates over nature and environmental uncer-tainty cannot be seen as simple rhetoric or ideology,but rather as more deeply contested truths, that peopleform and defend based on highly variable personal, idi-osyncratic, experience. In that way, there are actually no‘‘hunters’’ ‘‘environmentalists’’ or ‘‘ranchers’’ at work inthis struggle, not in any essential sense (and intra-groupvariability in the Q analysis underlines this). The resolu-tion of policy debates occurs through discourse coali-tions, but these are themselves configured in complexsystems of power and knowledge that also form andreproduce identity.

Of course, ‘‘scientific’’ research efforts to resolveuncertainties about ecosystem management will inter-vene and mediate many of these policy debates in the fu-ture. The impact of elk browsing, the role of the wolvesin the ecosystem, and the importance of anthropogenicherd regulation through hunting are all currently under-going rigorous investigation. In the presence of inevita-ble uncertainty, however, it will continue to be theeconomic and discursive power of some coalitions to ele-vate some kinds of elk knowledge as legitimate and todenigrate others as mere ‘‘barstool biology’’ that willwin the day.

Acknowledgments

The research described here was funded by aNational Science Foundation Biocomplexity Grant(#BE-CNH #0216588). Thanks go to Sheila McGinnis,Dave McGinnis, Dave Bennett, and Duncan Patten, aswell as to the anonymous reviewers of earlier drafts.Thanks also to Delia Hagen and Julie Guthman, amongseveral folks at the Berkeley Workshop on Environmen-tal Politics. Kevin St. Martin and Richard Schroederconvened the excellent workshop that kicked this workoff.

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Documents

The politics of barstool biology: Environmental knowledge and power in greater Northern Yellowstone