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Guest Essay

By Arthur Middleton

Dr. Middleton is a professor of environmental science, policy and management at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for 17 years.

Each summer, as I drive along the river valleys between Yellowstone National Park and Cody, Wyo., I see new cabins jutting from ridge tops, subdivisions in former hayfields and fences separating them all.

Though population and housing density have been rising in this region for decades, some of the recent growth may be thanks in part to a cultural juggernaut: the television show “Yellowstone,” starring Kevin Costner as a charismatic Montana rancher who battles developers.

The show, which returns to Paramount on Sunday for the second half of its fifth season, made owning a piece of this landscape glamorous around the same time the pandemic and remote work drove more people to do so. Home values in Bozeman, Mont.; Jackson, Wyo.; and Cody have shot up since 2018. One study published after the fourth season found that close to two-thirds of tourists reported that their visit to Montana was at least partly inspired by the show. While there is no data explicitly linking the television show to development, it only takes a small number of new homes in each valley near Yellowstone to change its future.

I see mounting development as a grave threat because of how it is carving up an ecosystem that must stay relatively intact to function. Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, and several nearby national forests, protect a broad, high-elevation plateau. Every summer, this lush island at the heart of the ecosystem creates a feeding bonanza for tens of thousands of hoofed mammals — including elk, pronghorn, bison, bighorn sheep and moose — allowing them to fatten up and nurse their young. In the fall, as the snow piles up, they migrate down to valleys and plains in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, to shelter........

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