My experiences in Wyoming have centered around the incredible wildlife that inhabits the state, and the collaboration between scientists, ranchers, hunters, and the government to preserve and protect the landscape here while adapting it to human needs. As I dig further into the interactions between humans and the land around them here in Wyoming for the purpose of my paper, I have been working to find sources of information on campus here at the University of Wyoming to support my work. I was able to meet with the manager of the Vertebrate Collections to view the specimens alongside my professor. I took interest in the skulls of grizzly bears culled by the Wyoming Game And Fish Department in Yellow Stone National Park.
The complex and morally difficult aspects of managing animal populations here in Wyoming have reminded me that I am in a very different environment and culture than at home in Pennsylvania. The West has very real concerns regarding the impacts of predators on human safety and livestock populations. The skulls of the Yellowstone bears are preserved in the archives for scientific use, but they also provide a powerful reminder of the challenges of interacting with the wild areas of our country in a way that preserves them and provides access at the same time. Holding these specimens and internalizing the history of their procurement was an experience that defined my understanding of the experiences of people here in Wyoming.
New practices in bear management have reduced human-bear contact in Yellowstone recently, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has taken steps to ensure the safety of both humans and wild animals in the park. Providing safe trash disposal, keeping visitors at a safe distance, and practicing safe bear procedures in campsites has dramatically reduced the number of bears killed for human safety. These changes suggest that many conflicts, while never fully eliminated, can be managed through better human behavior.
People I have spoken with here in Laramie wish for the continued presence of grizzly bears on the landscape, but they also acknowledge the dangers they pose to humans and the conflicts that cannot be fully resolved between the human and animal inhabitants of the state. I will be working through the remaining week to develop an understanding of the situation and develop my own work.
The issue of wildlife management here in Wyoming is complicated by the involvement of lobbying groups and NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund and Sierra Club. These groups seek the protection of large carnivores, yet they are not as locally embedded as the people who experience these animals regularly. The grizzly bear skulls from the Yellowstone culling were a powerful symbol of the presence of these animals and of my own inability, from the outside, to fully understand them and their impacts. People and carnivores will continue to coexist in Wyoming and the Greater Yellow Stone region, and the nature of this relationship will be defined by human choices on managment of wildlife and the tradeoffs needed to preserve bears.