Ecology and Economy in Accord---More or Less

Popular wisdom has it that a healthy ecology means a lousy economy. In this view, saving endangered creatures, like snail darters or spotted owls, leads to losing jobs, taxes, even whole communities. Preserving habitats implies closing industries. The choice has seemed to be between enough greenery and enough greenbacks.

That perception may be changing, at least in some portions of the country. One place where the change is under way is near Yellowstone National Park, where research of a professor of economics at the University of Montana is being received with glee by ecologists.

The ecologists and biologists needed cheering up, because they believe the greater Yellowstone area ecosystem--which supports more biodiversity than any other in the temperate zone--is gravely threatened by present government policies. The 18-million-acre area has a lot of government; it falls within four states and under the jurisdiction of a whole alphabet-soup array of federal agencies. The biologists' research indicates that some of those agencies have policies encouraging land-use practices that could eventually doom Yellowstone's spectacular wildlife and even its scenery.

Part of that research came about because of the area's intrinsic interest to biologists and the agencies funding biological research; part of it arose from the need to study the effects of the wildfires that consumed more than a million acres of the region's forests in 1988; but some of it was commissioned by a group perhaps hoping to overcome the limitations of too many government branches operating with too much red tape.

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition is an umbrella organization that brings together a wide range of citizen interests. The coalition set up a research program--Greater Yellowstone Tomorrow--with ambitious aims. According to Science Magazine, the program's director has stated, "What we want to do is get enough solid data to develop an integrated ecosystem management plan that will keep the Yellowstone area a wonderful place to live for both humans and wildlife."

With human concerns explicitly in the equation, social scientists were needed in the research program. Economist Thomas M. Power was among them. His research for the coalition reviewed how the region's economy had changed during the past two decades, looking not only for changing dollar amounts but also trying to identify changing patterns of dollar flow.

Power's solid data outlined an unexpected picture. Between 1978 and 1987, wages and salaries in the greater Yellowstone area had declined by some $80 million a year--yet the region seemed to be thriving. In fact, it was healthy, in part because of a 43 percent increase in what Power calls "footloose income," the proceeds from pensions and investments. "Footloose," though uncommonly poetic for economic jargon, aptly describes income that arrives no matter where its intended recipient goes. It is not tied directly to available jobs.

People receiving this footloose income, those who are rich or retired or both, have chosen to live in the Yellowstone area because of its natural attributes, not because of its employment opportunities. Yet the presence of these people and their income has led to many new jobs, chiefly in providing local services. Thus, to the pleasure of the economists, the area is enjoying an improving financial picture; to the pleasure of the ecologists, this economic health depends on the health of the Yellowstone ecosystem.

It all sounds like a win-win situation, except that the policies of all those government agencies favor the traditional economic activities in the area--ranching, mining, and logging. Furthermore, the participants in those activities aren't planning to fade away quietly. They want intensive grazing, clear-cutting, and strip mining to continue--practices that might detract from the natural beauty and ecological balance of the area and thus might harm the basis for its new economic strength.