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This chapter shows how materially instrumental or utilitarian aspects of social life can acquire moral and religious meanings. It argues that the use of natural resources in Yellowstone underwent a process of “moralization” that had important institutional effects on the area (e.g., more government attention, scientific research, censuring, public sentiment, emotional disgust). The chapter documents the emergence and interaction of three “moral visions” (utilitarian, spiritual, biocentric) in Yellowstone in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in order to explain this process of moralization. To demonstrate the effects of this process, and how the meaning of Yellowstone changed from its early years, the chapter ends with an analysis of how new moral visions were institutionalized into new laws and policies, both nationally and locally, culminating in the creation of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—thus creating the social conditions for eventual intractable contemporary conflict that would soon follow.

This chapter examines how dramatic social change in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) after 1970 ramped up competing moral commitments. It draws on a wealth of longitudinal data about demographic, economic, and cultural rearrangement to show how the area transitioned, in striking fashion, from old west to new west. It makes two arguments: First, that this large-scale social change has important moral causes and consequences, as competing groups erect and protect new moral boundaries in the fight for nature. Second, this new social and moral arrangement fostered protracted environmental conflict. The chapter presents the cast of characters involved in GYE conflicts, and then documents the rise of conflict using a host of original time-series indicators, across a variety of institutional fields (e.g., lawsuits, voting segregation, congressional attention, scientific disputes, public responses, interest group conflict, carrying capacity conflict).

This chapter investigates an “outlier” case of environmental conflict, where things did not follow the same social patterns observed elsewhere in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). The case study involves conflict over a plan to drill 136 natural gas wells just to the south of Yellowstone, in Sublette County, Wyoming. This plan is not unusual, given that this county includes two of the largest gas fields in the United States and that most residents of this county and state support this economically beneficial activity. But in a radical reversal, a large group of miners, outfitters, ranchers, and other old-westerners acted against their own economic and cultural traditions, starting an environmental movement to oppose drilling in this particular area. The chapter shows that the intense negative reaction to drilling in this area is caused by a violation of strong moral boundaries linked to old-west place attachment.

This chapter describes the snags and coarse woody debris (CWD) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Severe forest fires, such as those that occurred in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of 1988, create ephemeral forests of dead trees. For many people the trees are both an eyesore and a waste of salvageable wood. Harvesting the wood of burned trees is an option in many areas, but ecological processes in national parks are allowed to proceed whenever possible with minimal human intervention. The standing dead trees, commonly known as snags, have been falling to the ground and decomposing for millennia in most forest ecosystems. The approach to estimating the conversion of downed CWD to charcoal is based on the volume of a tapered cylinder.

This chapter looks at the large-scale fires of 1998 that swept through the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, most notably in Yellowstone National Park. It resulted from a combination of drought, above-average temperatures, and numerous dry thunderstorms with lightning strikes and high winds. One of the biggest concerns of the public during and after the fires of 1998 was how individual plants and animals fared. Some of the greatest public concerns were for large animals, particularly Elk. Elk mortality and population responses after the fires took some surprising turns. The public interest in how fires affect water availability and quality.