Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Like, it bugs the hell out of me that the rest of the outdoor industry was going full steam ahead until legislators took action against PFAS, which is what's happening now.

That's why it's... been removed this is another episode I've already done some interviews with some chemists about this shit but I want to talk about like outdoor winter clothing because it's one of the coolest times like I really love to be outdoor in the shorter seasons like last week I was in I'm not going to say where I was because I just don't want to run into people at like the fucking middle of nowhere gas station I was in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem but not in the park and I was sleeping in the mountains for a week and like it went 20 degrees Fahrenheit or so which is like minus six Celsius.

It'll get up to the single digit Celsius in the daytime, which is like the worst temperature.

The worst temperature to be outdoors is rain and hovering above and below freezing.

Welcome to Bison Jam, the podcast that covers wide-ranging topics from Yellowstone National Park and the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

I'm your host, Hugo Sindelar, an assistant professor of film at Montana State University.

In this episode, we are continuing our series about the wildlife of Yellowstone.

I am joined today by Katy Duffy.

Katie has conducted field studies, including banding projects of owls and songbirds in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem for more than 35 years.

She worked as a supervisory resource education ranger for the National Park Service in Yellowstone and Grand Teton for 32 years.

Finally, she has taught numerous Yellowstone Institute classes on birds and other aspects of natural history.

Because it brings you up short when you realize that little half-ounce bird got through winter with all its adaptations.

I've spent large chunks of my life in the Mojave Desert, in the Sonoran Desert, in the Great Basin Desert, the Great Plains.

Right now I live right on the edge of the Great Plain ecosystem and the Rocky Mountain, Intermountain West ecosystem, Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, right there where it all converges.

And I will see areas where they graze cattle and where they don't graze cattle.

And where they graze cattle, it's far more productive, far more lush, not just for cattle, but for all the wildlife around as well.

Is there something about you that you would like me to know?

No, but I-- there is in the back of my mind, like, I would love to, um, talk a little bit about your role on town council and the idea of the stewardship idea and the commitment to leave Jackson, um, and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem or at least better than we found it for the next generation.

And I just feel like that is, uh, that, that's an impossibility.

Um, we have to try, for sure, but you have been here since the late '80s, and you've seen so many changes.

Now, the challenge with something like grizzly bears is it is a gigantic conservation success story.

They have, it's particularly in, in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the Northern Continental Divide around Glacier National Park.

But they have, uh, in, in the Yellowstone area, like I'm in Wyoming, like this is a s- thing I've been watching for my whole life, right? They went from being listed, there were about 137 bears, and today there are over 1,000.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, it is.

So grizzly bears, there've been multiple attempts to delist grizzly bears, two attempts to delist grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Mm-hmm.

Apex predators which have been previously threatened or endangered are typically regulated on an individual group base- basis, case-by-case basis.

So this was the same of grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Democratic administrations come in and say, "No, no, no, we have to...

We cannot delist and deregulate and, uh, have states manage unless all the populations," I think there are five or six if I recall correctly, "are fully recovered, fully reestablished." And so far we don't see that.