Just northwest of Yellowstone National Park the majestic Taylor Fork watershed is a high and scenic mountain valley of primarily public lands draped with sagebrush-grasslands. This is critically important habitat for grizzly bears, elk, deer, wolves, mountain lions and bison migrating in and out of the Park. Its headwater streams provide flows to the Gallatin River.

The U.S. Forest Service currently leases two small cattle grazing allotments on 16,000 acres of public lands here to provide forage for 450 cattle for about three months every summer. Because cattle congregate in the most important wildlife habitat areas of the watershed, their grazing comes at the expense of native species over a much broader landscape including more than 150,000 acres of critical wildlife habitat on the Porcupine, Buffalo Horn, Sage Creek and Tepee Creek watersheds. Wildlife migrations - in particular wild bison on a total of more than 300,000 acres of public lands northwest of the Park are also adversely impacted by the presence of cattle and the current controversy in Montana surrounding the potential for transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle. That controversy has resulted in the death of over one thousand bison outside of Yellowstone National Park in the last few years.

These public lands are nearly all part of the Gallatin National Forest along with 9,000 acres of critical elk winter range in the watershed owned and managed by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks as the Gallatin Wildlife Management Area. The disruption of this wonderful landscape by such a very small amount of cattle grazing is symbolic of the problem with public land livestock grazing across the west where conservation opportunities are lost over millions of acres of beautiful landscapes of wild and remote public lands solely to support a few ranchers.

With generous assistance from the A.B. Schultz Foundation of Alta, Wyoming, Western Watersheds Project's Montana office is working to resolve those conflicts through cooperative means. Similar conflicts with federally subsidized government allotments have been solved through voluntary buyouts and permanent retirements including the Blackrock/Spread Creek allotment in northwestern Wyoming just east of Grand Teton National Park. Applying this proven solution to the Taylor Fork watershed will require slightly over $100,000 to permanently retire both of the Taylor Fork cattle allotments, but only when both the ranchers and the Forest Service agree to the retirement of the two allotments.

At this time negotiations continue with both the ranchers and the Forest Service and good progress has been made, but more remains to be done.

Interested readers can help by calling the Gallatin National Forest's Hebgen Ranger District in West Yellowstone, Montana at 406-823-6961 and let District Ranger Bill Queen know you want the Taylor Fork managed for wildlife. Ask him and other officials to work with WWP to permanently retire the Cache/Eldridge and Wapiti allotments so that wild bison and other wildlife can resume their natural roles in this wonderful and wild landscape.

Glenn Hockett is Montana Director of WWP. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.