Greening Where It Is Green: Yellowstone National Park

With the Yellowstone Environmental Stewardship or YES! Initiative, the Park

is demonstrating that the world’s first national park is also a world leader in its sustainability programs.

 
Why is this bull elk smiling?

Because this bull and his entire harem have 15 acres of prime Kentucky blue grass—cut, watered, fertilized and meticulously maintained with nary a weed—to graze on leisurely.

“An animal jam”—which could be anything from a chipmunk to a grizzly bear, but in this case elk —is the first thing you might encounter when you drive into Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming, home of Yellowstone National Park Service headquarters.

I know I did. Magnificent to behold, they are the center of attention of both visitors who want to get “up close and personal” and Park Rangers whose duty is to keep them at a

safe distance and while directing “animal jam” traffic.

I came to talk with Jim Evanoff, Environmental Protection Specialist at Yellowstone. He graciously agreed to spend a few hours educating me about Yellowstone’s history, environmental challenges and what Yellowstone is doing to meet them. Then he took me on a tour of Yellowstone that was truly spectacular. If you’ve been there you know what I mean. If not, go.

In his 29 years in the NPS, Evanoff has worked in the Grand Tetons and at Mount Rushmore, where one of his duties was to repel down the faces of the Presidents and pull plants from cracks in the carvings.

The past 20 years he’s been at Yellowstone. Now, as Environmental Protection Specialist, he is on the frontlines of Greening of Yellowstone efforts. A big part of that job is building

and maintaining relationships both public and private.

“When Congress passed legislation for Yellowstone as the nation’s first national park in 1872, there was a double mandate— preserve and protect the park and provide for the enjoyment of the people. That’s a really tough balancing act that we still are given today,” explained Evanoff.

Preserve and Enjoy

Evanoff recounts a Yellowstone history that is full of pendulum swings between “preserve and enjoy”. Today everyone is working hard to establish a balance that enhances both. (What’s more, when you look at some of the historic photos – especially of how visitors used to be encouraged to feed the bears and fish with no limits – you wonder: “what were we thinking?”)

In 1997, during Yellowstone’s 125th Anniversary, Evanoff said the staff was asking the hard question: “What we were going to do for the next 125 years to preserve the park?”

Out of those discussions Evanoff said “we developed a program called the ‘Greening of Yellowstone’. That program is still alive and well today.

Back in 1997 we identified a whole list of initiatives we wanted to undertake in all the major categories— transportation, energy, waste and education. A lot of those projects have been completed, a lot are still in the planning stages, but we are very, very active in our sustainability program.”

“Instead of operating in a vacuum, we just love to see what we do in the Park trickle out into the surrounding areas,” noted Evanoff. “I’m the chairman of our sustainability committee and we are looking at projects that could be applicable throughout the ecosystem and not just in Yellowstone. So we are taking that bigger view.”

Yellowstone Environmental Stewardship Initiative (YES!)

In 2008, the Park launched its “Yellowstone Environmental Stewardship Initiative (YES!). Working with its fundraising partner, the Yellowstone Park Foundation (www.ypf.org), they identified 26 projects where private support from individuals, foundations and corporations can make a difference and accelerate progress.

According to the YPF, YES! “is a multi-year initiative and action plan designed to achieve significant greening and sustainability goals by 2016… (and) will further reduce its ecological footprint, increase operational efficiencies and better preserve Park resources for future generations.”

Yellowstone is part of the last big intact ecosystem left in North America. “When you combine the all the National Forests and the Grand Tetons, it comprises 10 million acres it has every big intact species that was here in prehistoric times, which was not true 15 years ago before we reintroduced the wolf,” said Evanoff.

That brings us back to the elk munching and relaxing on the lawns outside Park HQ —and the power of public/private partnerships.

Elk and Smart Sprinklers

In 1886 the US cavalry was brought in to Mammoth Hot Springs, then known as Fort Yellowstone, to control exploitation of Yellowstone’s resources by the public. My interview with Evanoff took place in one of those buildings constructed of all local materials back in the 1890s. By the way, each building is still being used today as either offices or employee housing.

“One thing that we didn’t like was that the cavalry planted 15 acres of Kentucky blue grass to keep the dust down,” said Evanoff.

“Now that Kentucky blue grass is a part of the National Historic District and by law we have to maintain the integrity of that historic district which means cutting, fertilizing maintaining that lawn so in terms of the feeding frenzy for the elk who have no natural predator

here because the wolves won’t come in that close to the buildings.”

“Currently, we go through half a million gallons a night watering this lawn. They run off a timer. The sprinklers come on at 10 at night and go off at 6 in the morning, whether it’s raining or not,” said Evanoff.

“So, working with the Yellowstone Partnership Foundation, we’ve partnered with Rain Bird, a leading manufacturer of irrigation products. Rain Bird has proposed to install a ‘smart’ sprinkler system that will cut our water consumption by 70% by using state-of-the-art controls to sense the moisture in the ground and the humidity in the air or if there’s an oncoming storm to decide how long the sprinkler should go on.”

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Negotiations are moving ahead so that installation can begin in the spring of 2010. This project, coupled with the Mammoth Hot Springs hydro-power clean energy project (which recently received $1.6 million in ARRA funding and the YPF is helping secure the balance) will reduce water consumption by 16 million gallons and save $125,000 annually.

Evanoff could not hide his enthusiasm describing the benefits of the new irrigation and hydro-electric power upgrades. His excitement only grew when the topics of snow, transportation, trash and propane came up.

YES! Goals

By 2016 reduce

•      Greenhouse gas emissions by 30%

•      Fossil fuel consumption by18%

•      Water consumption by 15%

•      Electricity consumption by15%.

Plus divert 100% of solid waste from landfills. Learn how you can help. Contact the Yellowstone Park Foundation at www.ypf.org.