Into the Woods with Scott Carrier
00:00From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour,a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.I'm David Remnick.In a secluded valley in Montana, a place of deep forests and few roadsand a population of grizzly bears,there's a conflict over a hiking trail.Now, often in stories like this, we find the interests of loggers or developers
00:31or ski resorts or dam builders at odds with the viewof environmentalists.But in the Yack Valley,the Pacific Northwest Trailpits nature loversagainst nature lovers.Scott Carrier,the producer of the podcast,
00:45Home of the Brave,recently drove up to the Yack Valleyto try to understandjust what's going on.In America,we have 11 national scenic trailsfor long-distance hikesthrough areas of the highest scenic quality.
01:08The Appalachian Trailand the Pacific Crest Trailare the best known,both over 2,000 miles long.National Scenic Trails are like national parksin that they're designated by Congressand managed by the National Park Serviceand the National Forest Service.
01:26Anybody in the country can go there for a short walk and a picnicor you can start walking and keep walkingfor four to six months until you get to the end of the trail.One of our newest National Scenic Trailsdesignated by Congress in 2009,is the Pacific Northwest Trail, the PNT.It's 1,200 miles long,starting on the continental divide
01:49in Glacier National Park, Montana,just a few miles south of Canada,and running west,roughly parallel with the Canadian borderto the Pacific Ocean in Olympic National Parkat the northwest corner of Washington.It's an arduous route,crossing 12 separate mountain ranges.
02:08You go up over a mountain rangeand then down across a riverValley, then up over a mountain range and down across a river valley, over and over, like atheta wave, 1,000 miles long. It takes three to four months to complete, and much of that time,about 30 percent, you're walking through grizzly bear habitat. This year, the first hikerthrew on the trail was Justin Smith, 22 years old. I met him at the end of June in theYacht Valley, 180 miles into the hike.How would you summarize the trip so far?
02:46Miserably exciting.Painstaking, guinea pigging.It can get pretty crazy out there, especially just right now.There's a lot of timber down, and there's a ton of snow,probably, you know, 12, 15 foot snow banks in some places.It can sink right through and twist an ankle pretty easy, I'd say.Are you worried about the grizzly bears?Well, I've done a lot of backpacking in bear areas before,
03:17and I carried two cans of bear spray along the trail.I was in a heavily wooded area, and maybe 20 or 30 yards out, I heard a growl.I can't really specifically say if it was a grizzly bear, though.I wish I could, but it could have been a moose.It could have been a wolf.It could have been a cougar.It may seem kind of crazy to go hiking in a place where you can be mauled by a wolf or a mountain lionor be killed and eaten by a grizzly bear.
03:50Grizzly bears are dangerous, but it turns out people are even more dangerous to them.You know, an uncontested fact of grizzly bear biology is that human beings are the number one threat to grizzly bears.And that could be through habituating them to food sources,where they then will come into a camp and potentially attack a hiker.Natalie Dawson is a wildlife biologist.If a bear gets in a conflict with a human,it usually means that that bear is removed.You know, people like to say, well, we can just relocate bears,
04:25but the reality is when you relocate a bear,in many cases, you give it a death sentencebecause you put it into a new place where it doesn't have a home rangeand it doesn't know where any food resources are.And so what more often happens is the bears is killed.because of the interaction with humans.Grizzly bears used to occupy most of the western half of the lower 48,one continuous population from Nebraska to California, from Canada to Mexico.
04:54Now they live on just 3% of that land in discrete, isolated populations.For example, the PNT begins in Glacier National Park,where there's a population of 700 grizzlies,which is considered to be a healthy population for that area.But just 180 miles west of glacier in the Yak Mountains where I met the hiker Justin Schmidt,the population of grizzly bears is close to extinction.Grizzly bears are hanging on by a thread, as many people would say here in northwestern Montana.There's less than 25 bears most likely in this area if we consider bears on both the Montana and the Canada side.
05:37It's not a lot of bears.The yak grizzlies are smaller and more secretive than other grizzly bears,preferring to live in the forest rather than up high out in the open above tree line.The forests in the yak were extensively logged up to the 1990s.Now the area feels remote beyond the reach of civilization.You get up high in a place and you look around and you see no roads, no towns, no lights, no infrastructure, no cell phone towers.and so it's spectacular in that sense.And then with my added lens of looking at things as a wildlife biologist,
06:15what I see is a lot of forest with different speciesand big creek valleys and river valleysthat allow for those animals to move from place to place.So it's a really special part of Montana that way.The things that make it good for bearsare exactly what brings people to.the wilderness in our boots and our backpacks and our fleece, people like Ron Strickland,who thought up the Pacific Northwest Trail in the first place.
06:47That's correct. I thought up the idea in 1970, almost 50 years ago.Strickland, now 75 years old, is tall and lean, young at heart.We went for a walk along a section of the P&T where it meets the Puget Sound, north of Seattle,and he still has some spring left in his knees.I graduated from Georgetown in 65and I skipped my graduationto go with some buddiesa Iranian fellow and a Japanese
07:15classmate to go toGreat Smoky Mountains National Parkto through hike the AT in the parkThe Appalachian Trail.And oh God, I fell in love with that.Right out of college.Yeah. Even in collegeI was a member of the Potomacampalachian Trail Club
07:33and they had a group called the Bushwackersand then go every weekend.You get a badge for Bushwack?No, there were no badges.It was just pleasure, kind of weird pleasure.Strickland kept hiking farther and farther distances.He went to graduate school and wrote his PhD dissertationon how Congress adds new areas to the national wilderness system.
08:01At that time, America had two...famous long-distance trails, the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.And I had the great desire to go east and west instead of north and south.And people basically didn't believe that we could do this,that we could have a long-distance Pacific Northwest Trail.So we had to prove it to people that we could do it.And we felt strongly that people seeing thiswould, oh look, here's some people now.
08:37Here are all those people over there.Look at this nice family, little kids and their dog.This is what America should be, really.Not the news we hear every day about some kind of divisions.I'll tell you, this family doing this, that's my idea of America.And I have provided that for them.Not just me, too.I shouldn't say that.
09:02me and all the volunteers of the Pacific Northwest Trail Association.So I think when I'm out here, it's romantic and something everybody should have an opportunity to share.And I think we need more romance in life.When Strickland said this, I thought maybe he was using the wrong word,because I usually think of romance as falling in love with another person,but Strickland meant it as falling in love with nature.or the beauty of nature.It's an idea that comes from philosophical romanticism,
09:42Rousseau and Kant, William Blake,and here in America, Emerson, and Thoreau.It's the idea that civilization, industrialization,ultimately leads us astray and leaves us feeling lost and alone,and that the way to find meaning and purpose in our livesis to go out and have intense emotional experiences in nature,like maybe coming face to face with a grizzly bear.This philosophy was a large part of the impetus
10:11behind the modern environmental movementthat began in the 1960s.There was also another philosophy involvedin the early environmental movement,one where nature does not existfor the purpose of our enlightenment.It's called the land ethic,first proposed by Aldo Leopold in 1949
10:32in his San County Ammanac.And it says,human beings are but members of a greater biotic community, that the air, the water, the soil,and all the plants and animals have rights of their own. Therefore, we need to extend our system ofethics to include other species and whole ecosystems. That's why it's called the land ethic.Perhaps the best example of the land ethic in action is the Endangered Species Act,which passed nearly unanimously in 1973 and now protects over 1,600,000,species of animals and plants in the U.S., including the grizzly bear.
11:12So there are some environmentalists who don't buy into Strickland's romantic notion of the PNT.They see the land from the perspective of the bear, and that perspective is that humans are dangerous.You could put Natalie Dawson in this camp.And so it's the question of do we use or not use what's called the precautionary principle,which is this idea that why do we have to illustratethat there is harm being doneif we know that the potential for harm exists,wouldn't we want to take the least harmful path in the first place?
11:45You'd think this question would have been askedbefore Congress designated the PNT in 2009,and in fact it was way back in 1978.Ron Strickland officially proposed the idea to Congress in that year,and Congress thought it was a good idea.But according to law, they had to study the environmental effects of the trail.So they did an environmental impact statement, and this took two years to complete,and in the end the conclusion was that the trail was unnecessary, too costly,
12:17and would pose a serious threat to the survivability of the yak grizzlies.Congress said no to Ron Strickland's romantic dream.But Strickland did not stop trying to get the trail approved.He'd learned from hiking how to suffer through hardship and defeat.Ron Strickland was a man who thrived on bushwhacking.So he kept going, working with local groups and lobbying members of Congress year after year,until 2009 when he was able to get a proposal attached to an omnibus land bill,and this time it passed, except it passed without any further environmental review.
12:58Nobody stopped to ask if the trail was still a thrifted.threat to the yak grizzlies, and this, according to Rick Bass, was illegal.You can't make those kinds of decisions without an environmental analysis and an environmentalimpact statement. That's just a code of law. That's the law. And it's legal to havemidnight riders on last-minute pieces of legislation. What's done is done, but that doesn'tmake it right ecologically. It doesn't mean that it's not violating the Endangered Species Act.Rick Bass is a prolific writer and environmental activist who lives in the Yak Mountains.He has a house deep in the woods where he's produced four novels, four novellas,
13:41five collections of short stories, 16 non-fiction books, and maybe a thousand letters to Congressasking for protection of the yak grizzlies.First, protection from logging encroachments in the 80s and 90s,and lately protection from the number of hikers that may be comingthrough the Yak Mountains on the P&T.We are standing knee-deep in the midst of an explosion of industrial recreation.I don't judge industrial recreationalist.I am one.
14:12We all are.You know, we have gear.We have boots.We walk in the woods.But we have to be responsible.We have to be accountable.You can't maximize outdoor recreation potential without costing something else.America is no longer about maxim.
14:29We need to learn humility.We need to learn accountability.We need to learn responsibility.We need to know that there is more to lifethan maximizing outdoor recreation potential.My dog in the fight is grizzly bears.We have maybe 20 left in the valley.Between 19 and 25 is the most accurate estimate.
14:51A very small population.And any conservation biologist will tell youwhen a population gets that low, it's really, really, reallyhard to recover it.Why do you care about grizzly bears?Why are you putting so much on the line for them?They make me feel alive, you know, in a world of increasing detachment and distraction andbenumbedness.
15:14When you go out in the woods where there are grizzly bears, you're humbled, you're respectful,you're engaged, all of which to say you're the best part of being alive.Ron Strickland believes Rick Bass is just being selfish.We're not harming the bears, and I'm very much in favor of grizzly bears and wildlife in general,but the trouble always had to do with Rick Bass, and Rick Bass didn't come into the country until 87.You can see that in his book, Winter.It's in the beginning.He says he had been in Mississippi, in Texas.
15:55He was from Texas, and he came into the country with his girlfriend,and I think the autumn of 87.And I think the feeling of anybody who goes thereis, whoa, I've discovered something really great.And I'd like to keep this the way it always waswhen I first arrived.And he always says that there was this guy back eastwho drew a line on a map,
16:24and he'd never been in the area,and that he's responsible for this.disastrous proposed trail.Meaning you.He always says that.That's always his.Does that hurt your feelings?At first I thought it was funny
16:46because it's so not true.I was therework on this project well before he came.And I think my projectis less nimbie.my pride is not nimbie at allI don't even live thereyou know I think of him
17:03I think of him as a nimbie personyou know I actually likeRick Bass I've known him for youso I actually like himbut the irony of his situationisI doubt if he admits itis that he writes books
17:22articles all the timealways new books and articles aboutthe actthis attractsa lot of people. People who read his books. People who read his books and articles.Yeah, no, I mean, for sure my writing has, I know a handful of individuals who've moved here,having learned about this place because of my writing, and I feel like they're pretty good neighbors.And so I accept that charge, you know, and own responsibility for that handful of people,
17:55and for more than a handful of people who come and visit, you know, get a burger or a beer and then head on.And that was a calculated risk. I was aware of the risk when I started naming this place and writing about it and celebrating it and defending it.Being quiet about this place is what had led to it being so savagely mismanaged in the past decades during the Timber Wars.And being quiet about it sure was not helping.So this is not about me and my backyard or my front.front yard or my side yard, you know, my million acre side yard. This is about a population of anincredibly endangered species. It's second slowest reproductive rate in North America, of which we haveroughly 20 left. I mean, it's like Noah's Ark. It's biblical. Like, I want somebody to tell me,
18:44how many more can we lose. I want to hear somebody say, we can lose one, we can lose two, we canlose three, we can lose four, we can lose five, and the Pacific Northwest Trail is worth it.I want to hear somebody tell me that, and I haven't heard anybody tell me.Rick Bass's solution to the problem is a compromise. Instead of getting rid of the trail altogether,why not make a detour around the Yak Mountains? There's a route first proposed in 1978during the initial environmental study, a route that bypasses the Yak by following the Kootenai Riverto the south. Unfortunately, there's a highwayrunning along the river and a busy railroad track pretty much the whole way.
19:27And National Scenic Trails, by definition, do not follow highways and railroad tracks.Charlie Carpenter is president of the Pacific Northwest Trail Association.In our view, the proposed route doesn't meet the standards for a National Scenic Trail.If it's not on the road, it's close enough to the road that you,are hearing the road.In northern Montana,a wilderness or near wilderness experienceis going to put you in grizzly habitat.
20:02The trail starts in Glacier National Park.It's absolutely grizzly habitat.Grizzlies live in the mountains here.When you go in the mountains, you're going in grizzly habitat.This is true.Grizzly bears live on public land.Anybody in the country can go there anytime.The question is,
20:24How many people are too many people?Last year, 65 people through hike the PNT,which is not that many compared to the thousandthat completed the Appalachian Trail.But then all it takes is one hiker with Oreo cookies or a picnic basket.I'm not saying hikers carry picnic baskets,but let's say patte or a tin of caviar.Seriously, you just never know how a grizzly bear will react.
20:53Perhaps the person who best understands these questionsis the wildlife biologist who works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Libby, Montana.His job is to make sure the grizzly bears in the yakand neighboring cabinet mountains don't become extinct.My name is Wayne Kaysworm.I work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,and I've been here since 1983 working on grizzly bears.As the fishing wildlife expert on this, the job is to recover the bears,
21:26what do you think about the Pacific Northwest Trail going through that area?Well, you know, it's not so much the trail.It is largely the people and the numbers of people associated with the trail.And, you know, I don't have a good way of predicting exactly how many people are going to use the trail.But where we have large numbers of people,We have experienced problems in the past related to conflicts with bears.What do you think is too many people?I can't even put a number on it.
22:03It's not a simple issue here, but that's another part of the puzzle.Unfortunately, the big picture to me is there are no easy choices in this particular case.I mean, there are going to be impacts from the location of this trail wherever it goes.If you get that many people walking through grizzly bear habitat, there are going to be some downsides to it.Do you have an idea that you think might work?Well, actually, I don't.You know, and I suppose if it were up to me and I only had bears to consider in the situation,I might choose not to have the trail at all, but I'm not sure that that's a possibility in this particular case.
22:47Congress has already designated it.Yeah.And so what do I do?I can't, unless Congress changes its mind,I think in a way we're kind of stuck with it.It's up to Congress to decide the fate of the Pacific Northwest Trail.Either keep it as it is or reroute the trail around the Yak Mountainsor just get rid of it altogether.
23:14But I think Congress is busy with other issues these days.So it's likely the argument will end up in federal courtwhere it'll be a fight between the National Trails Act of 1968,which creates long-distance scenic trails like the PNT,versus the Endangered Species Act of 1973,which demands the highest protection for grizzly bears.This is the new face or fate of environmentalism.We create and protect public lands where we can go fall in love
23:47with the beauty of nature and wildness,but then just by being there, we end up killing it.We kill the thing we love.Maybe not everywhere.Maybe not yet.We still have wild and beautiful places.Just maybe sometimes it's better not to go there at all.That was Scott Carrier, and he reported from the Yak Valley of Montana.
24:35That's our show for the week.I hope you enjoyed it.Keep in touch with us on Twitter at New Yorker Radio.I'm David Remnick.See you next time.The New Yorker Radio Hour is a good thing.co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards
24:55with additional music by Alexis Quadrado.This episode was produced by Alex Barron,Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon, Corby, Jill Duboff,Calalia, Karen Fralman, David Krasnow,Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix, and Stephen Valentino,with help from Emily Mann.Scott Carrier's story was produced with help from Anne Milliken.The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.
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