FAILURE TO ACT
There will always be people who argue that zoning is an invasion of their freedom to build a home where they choose. Seatbelts and non-smoking areas could also be seen as an invasion of our freedoms, but we recognize that these practices are in our best interests. We know that specific behavior creates specific outcomes. When we choose to ignore that fact and allow known consequences to irreparably damage the future, we are not choosing freedom.
Together, the property owners of Raynolds Pass have the power to manage the future of their landscape and plan for an agricultural and rural residential community which preserves open space, water, wildlife, and public health and safety. We do not have to resign ourselves to the commercialization and urbanization that we see in communities around us.
Gallatin Gateway/West Yellowstone
This 1927 poster described the Gallatin Valley as key access to one of the most popular National Parks in the world, Yellowstone. The Raynolds Pass Hwy 287 and 87 route is increasingly busy as the number of visitors to the park increases and 18 wheelers find it easier to navigate than the Gallatin Canyon. Raynolds Pass is a highly desirable location for commercial development just like the town of West Yellowstone.
Photo by Todd Wilkinson
“Once upon a time, members of a famous elk herd could wander easily through it. This bird's-eye view can't hide the impact of rural sprawl rapidly filling the southern Gallatin Valley outside of Bozeman, on the edge of the Gallatin Range. The proposed gravel pit is proposed to be dug into pastoral land just north of here and out of the picture. It is another example of how former farm land, with some of the richest, deepest soils in the state and important habitat for wildlife is getting covered—a consequence of weak land use planning and zoning being exploited by developers in Big Sky, citizens say.”
—Rob Sisson, “Montana's Gallatin Valley And Wildlife Paying Big Price For Growth In Big Sky,” Mountain Journal, July 18, 2023.
West Yellowstone, Montana, is a gateway community for Yellowstone National Park. While its year-round population is approximately 1,100 people, the community hosts over 4 million visitors annually. The region’s tourism puts an enormous stress on the community’s services and infrastructure, including roads and wastewater. The community’s medical and first responder services are particularly stressed as most of the calls are related to tourism, but the expenses are paid for from local budgets.
Senate Hearing 115-532: Challenges in gateway communities of national parks, October 19, 2018. (2019). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office.
Bozeman
Jen Clancey, “Luxury six-story development coming to downtown Bozeman,” Explore Big Sky, November 10, 2023.
Not so long-ago, Bozeman, featured in the left photo, had elk herds and expansive agriculture. As seen in the right photo, Bozeman has evolved into the #1 fastest growing micropolitan city in the U.S. for six years prior to and again in 2022.
—Eli Fournier, “Love It or Lose It,” Outside Bozeman, Summer 2023
Bozeman’s growth isn’t slowing down.
Big Sky
Big Sky, Montana, has meant many things to the people who live there. For over 9000 years, multiple bands of indigenous people used the area in their seasonal search for life sustaining resources. Today $10,000,000+ private residences in One&Only Moonlight Basin are offered as wilderness retreats, abundant with open space, moose, deer, elk, and eagles on multi-acre parcels.
Since the 1950s, an exponentially growing number of people chose a life there because of the natural amenities and human conveniences it offered. But each time they open their door, that world changes and it remains in a constant state of change.
“While Taylor Sheridan’s series Yellowstone is fiction, the portrayal of unscrupulous capital investors from Wall Street seeking to make a killing on real estate is not. Two of the fastest-growing categories in job creation have been real estate brokers and various kinds of outfitters/guides.” “They’re all out there telling people they can live their dream by owning part of the West,” Ringling says. “You can’t fault people for falling in love with Montana. Compared to where they’re coming from, they see all of this open space and ask, ‘What’s the problem?’ The problem is, it ain’t Montana anymore when the valleys turn into giant suburbs and the rural people, pastures and wildlife get replaced by subdivisions.”
– Multi-generation Montana rancher and professional land protectionist Rock Ringling, quoted in Todd Wilkinson, “Montana, In the Wake of ‘Yellowstone’ and ‘A River Runs Through It’,” Mountain Journal, February 27, 2023
“While GYC (Greater Yellowstone Coalition) was battling the New World Mine in the mid 1990s and working behind the scenes to get the land deals expedited, Glick said no conservation organization, not even his own group GYC, was carefully scrutinizing the rapidly-expanding footprint of human development in Big Sky. It was about to erupt with the pending approval for construction of major homes, a lodge, roads, a golf course, private ski hill, trails and other facilities at The Yellowstone Club and adjacent developments.
Glick showed up at a meeting of the Madison County planning board when development plans for The Yellowstone Club were pending approval. He knew he would be the lone voice from the environmental community.
‘I was alone expressing concern basically about the impact that significant development would have over time on the Madison Range. I said we needed to look at this cumulatively, given what had already happened at Big Sky. You can’t turn back the clock but you can be smarter looking forward,’ he said. ‘What I always say about Big Sky is it only has three problems—location, location, location. When you put major development in the heart of a narrow mountain range, as occurred in the Madisons, the wildlife habitat and passageways animals use to move can easily become fragmented. And that’s exactly what has happened.’”
– Dennis Glick, quoted in Todd Wilkinson, “‘Unbroken Wilderness: ’Big Sky and The Human Appetite for Consuming Wildness,” Mountain Journal, May 15, 2020
“Once the intersecting valleys converging at Big Sky were contiguous forest filled with abundant wildlife. Over time, as the footprint of development has expanded, it's become a gauntlet that wildlife avoid. There are problems too related to the local sewage treatment and worries about wildfire. For the most part, environmental groups have been missing in action when it comes to gauging Big Sky's impact on public lands.” Photo courtesy Chris Boyer (kestrelaerial.com)
—Todd Wilkinson, “‘Unbroken Wilderness: ’Big Sky and The Human Appetite for Consuming Wildness,” Mountain Journal, May 15, 2020