To: Ben Zavora, Owner, Beartooth Powder Guides, LLC, Jesse Logan, Guide, Beartooth Powder Guides, LLC, Beau Fredlund, Guide, Beartooth Powder Guides, LLC, and Ron Hecker, Gallatin National Forest Service, Gardiner District Ranger
SAVE AB WILDERNESS from INHOLDING COMMERCIALIZATON: BOYCOTT WOODY CREEK CABIN
BACKGROUND:
The Greater Yellowstone’s Wildest Region
Near Cooke City, Silver Gate and Red Lodge, Montana
Below Majestic Pilot & Index Peaks
Above Goose Lake
~ Turning into “Pay to Play” Private Development ~
Summer 2012: Beartooth Powder Guides, LLC builds “Woody Creek Cabin,” a permanent log cabin for tourists on an inholding at Woody Creek.
Spring 2013: BPG encroaches upon the alpine with a proposed “hut” near Goose Lake and Grasshopper Glacier in cutthroat & grizzly habitat.
Summer 2013 UPDATE: GOOSE LAKE HUT IS “POSTPONED” but “still on the table.”
Beartooth Powder Guides, LLC is a snowmobile and ski guiding tour company, newly formed.
These developments/potential developments occupy private inholdings on a patents originally intended to encourage mining & settlement in the U.S. West. Since their designation in 1872, the parcels’ recreational value has soared with urbanization. These private Beartooth parcels are landlocked by public land and surrounded by wilderness. Beartooth Powder Guides has secured the patented claims with private leases, opportunistically profiting from wilderness that was intended to be protected and should not be commercial in an era of climate change & urbanization.
INHOLDING COMMERCIALIZATION / WOODY CREEK CABIN HARMS THE ABSAROKA BEARTOOTHS:
1. Pressures the Greater Yellowstone’s wildest ecosystem: contaminating a watershed of the Yellowstone River, stressing grizzlies and other wildlife, causing noise and light pollution.
2. Privatizes public space, degrades public access. This petition urges
OPEN DIALOGUE: Gallatin, Shoshone and Custer National Forest should actively seek community input before permitting inholding development & access to commercial structures through or near public lands.
PROPER NOTIFICATION OF PUBLIC MEETINGS: Gallatin, Shoshone and Custer National Forest should provide one month’s notification of meetings involving decisions about inholding development. Decisions need direct community dialogue at the Cooke City Community Center and need to be publicized in the Cooke City newsletter.
3. Violates the spirit of the Wilderness Act of 1964: “To assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition.”
Why is this important?
This petition was by Silvertip Mountain Center, LLC, co-owned by Dr. Laurie Hinck and Jay Schifferdecker to protect the vulnerable AB Wilderness from inholding development.
Laurie Hinck: I was born in Silver Gate, Montana (within 15 miles of these Beartooth inholdings). I am co-owner of two businesses, Silvertip Mountain Center and the Log Cabin Café Bed and Breakfast. I have a PhD in environmental history and have a strong background in how development has harmed the rural U.S. West.
Jay Schifferdecker: I own two businesses in the area, including a ski shop. I have been skiing and mountaineering in the Beartooths for over twenty years. The AB Wilderness is vulnerable and we need to protect it from encroachment.
Our blog: http://theschiffspeaks.blogspot.com/
INHOLDING COMMERCIALIZATION / WOODY CREEK CABIN HARMS THE ABSAROKA BEARTOOTHS:
1. Pressures the Greater Yellowstone’s wildest ecosystem: contaminating a watershed of the Yellowstone River, stressing grizzlies and other wildlife, causing noise and light pollution
2. Privatizes public space, degrades public access
3. Violates the spirit of the Wilderness Act of 1964: “To assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition.”