The Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee celebrates six decades of cooperative conservation
By Kristen Pope
Chip Jenkins, Superintendent of Grand Teton National Park, knows he has to pay attention to what happens beyond his park’s borders. He points to the Snake River, which he says is “arguably the lifeblood” of the park. “The headwaters are up in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. It flows through Yellowstone, flows through the John D. Rockefeller Parkway, through Grand Teton, and on through the community. So it’s affected by what goes on outside the boundaries of Grand Teton National Park.”
It’s not just water, but also people, plants, and wildlife that cross boundaries, which is why Jenkins and other regional land managers participate in the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee (GYCC). The committee is not a formal decision-making body, but instead aims to foster voluntary collaboration and cooperation among agencies. Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, the GYCC shows that the simple act of coming together, even without extensive power and resources, improves conservation of large, complex landscapes.
The committee’s purview—the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—is approximately the size of Maine, with Yellowstone located right in its heart. Described as “one of the largest nearly intact temperate-zone ecosystems on Earth,” it is home to vast herds of wild bison and elk, grizzly bears, wolves, bald eagles, and even lynx and wolverines.
It also spans three states—Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming—and includes national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, and other federal, state, and private lands. Because each land manager has their own unique policies, regulations, and priorities, issues that affect a broad area can get complicated. The GYCC, which began in 1964 as a Memorandum of Understanding between the US Forest Service and National Park Service, has evolved over the decades to address this challenge.
“In the beginning, it was just the national parks and forests agreeing to communicate and collaborate at that time on routine matters,” says Tami Blackford, GYCC executive coordinator. Over the years, the group took on larger, more collaborative projects. In the 70s, members worked together to develop consistent management direction for grizzly bears. In the 80s, the group worked to aggregate their management plans and in 1990 they released a draft Vision for the Future, which culminated in the 1991 Framework for Coordination.
As the GYCC focused on wider projects, it only made sense to bring more land management agencies to the table. In 1999, the committee brought in the US Fish and Wildlife Service and in 2000, it created an executive coordinator position. In 2012, the Bureau of Land Management joined, followed in 2020 by the state wildlife directors of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. While cities, counties, private landowners, and tribes are not official committee members, the GYCC welcomes their engagement.
Together, committee members build relationships, exchange information, collaborate around cross-cutting issues, and support each other’s work through annual grant opportunities. “There are really rich opportunities to share and coordinate and not duplicate effort,” Blackford says. The GYCC’s three strategic priorities are maintaining resilient landscapes, responding to increased visitor use, and strengthening coalitions, partnerships, and communications.
Jenkins, who currently chairs the committee, says the committee “provides a framework and form where we come together on a regular and routine basis. First and foremost, it provides the catalyst for us building relationships where we get to know each other as people. We get to know each other in terms of the work that we do, the challenges that we face, and what we’re trying to do.”
More than 300 people participate in the GYCC’s nine subcommittees, which tackle the transboundary challenges of fire management, hydrology, invasive species, whitebark pine, native fish, wildlife, climate change adaptation, and clean air. Coordinated research and planning efforts have led to joint products like the 2021 Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment and the 2024 Whitebark Pine Interagency Agreement.
The GYCC also funds around $250,000 of projects in priority areas each year. The 2024 round of selected projects focused on the ecological health of birds, creating smoke ready communities, stream restoration, and more. One project addressed long-term monitoring of whitebark pine—an important fall food for grizzly bears—in northern parts of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, while another project funded an outreach and prevention campaign about invasive species in the region.
“The Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee’s fingerprints are on a lot of really cool projects in that part of the world,” says Brian Nesvik, the just-retired director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “While a lot of that ground is protected, there are still some real conservation needs. So the [GYCC] doing the work they’ve done over all these years is a really good thing for the ecosystem.”
Arthur Middleton, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley thinks the committee has especially shined on certain issues, like work with grizzly bears and migrating ungulates. “The GYCC really is a place for these emerging issues to more rapidly become understood and kind of integrated into the planning across all those units,” he says.
In other cases, limited funding and personnel hours, as well as the spectrum of things the committee cannot control—like climate change and what happens on private lands—means the non-decision-making body’s power has been limited. “I think like anything that’s existed for 60 years, the GYCC has had its ups and its downs in terms of meeting its mission and intended goals, Middleton says, though he points to the positive impacts of the organization saying, “I strongly feel that conservation has been improved by the GYCC.”
Jenkins acknowledges there have been bumps in the road, but believes the teamwork is paying off, pointing to the recovery of grizzly bears, wolves, and bald eagles, among others. “The reason that we have had these conservation successes is because people at the local community, at the state, and at the federal level have chosen to pursue and to work towards improving the condition of the ecosystem,” Jenkins says. “Yes, it’s been contentious, yes there have been fights, yes there’s been political compromise, yes there’s been litigation, but arguably the ecosystem is in better health and better shape today than it was 60 years ago. And it’s because people set out to be intentional and thoughtful about the decisions that they want to make and recognize that they need to do that in a collaborative way.”
Kristen Pope is a freelance writer who lives in the Tetons. Find more of her work at kepope.com.
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Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee Photo:
