Yellowstone to YukonPaperback - 200 pages (June 2000)
National Geographic Society; ISBN: 0792276906 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.47 x 9.93 x 6.89
Reviewed by Charles C. Chester
Ph.D., The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
In the early 1990's, conservationists in the northern Rockies of the US and Canada developed a proposal to ensure that wildlife -- mostly large carnivores like the wolf and grizzly bear -- could survive throughout a region stretching from northwestern Wyoming to near the Arctic Circle. The name of this initiative was the Yellowstone to Yukon Biodiversity Strategy, since changed to the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, or Y2Y for short. Y2Y is now coming into its own, and although it has far greater name recognition in Canada, I find increasingly less of a need to decipher the Y2Y acronym to fellow US conservationists. If Y2Y stays on its public relations trajectory -- which is not a guaranteed outcome at this point in its history -- I imagine that soon Y2Y will be as common a term as Masai Mara or Great Barrier Reef.
Y2Y's increasing name recognition has come about primarily due to extensive media coverage, including a new book from National Geographic entitled, simply, Yellowstone to Yukon. Most National Geographic publications read like a highly abridged James Michener novel, starting with a place's geologic origins and concluding with the current generation's views on religion, food, and societal premonitions. Unless he had gone to another publisher, author Douglas Chadwick could never have escaped from this formula completely. Yet Chadwick adroitly meshes National Geographic standards with the conglomerate that is Y2Y, pointing out that the Y2Y label serves several purposes.
Y2Y is a biogeographic zone, with the potential of quelling the US-Canada war of words over what defines the "Northern Rockies." It is a meta-icon (my term -- with all due apologies to conservation biologists), composed of the spiritual underpinnings of US conservationist philosophy (Yellowstone, the first national park in the world) and the proving ground of Canadian grit, poetry, and national identity (the Yukon). It is a discussion of how to protect a relatively pristine landscape. And, as a network of over 100 conservation organizations, it is a movement to protect the land, its character, and its wildlife. For each of these aspects, Chadwick manages to provide a vivid and engaging identity throughout the book.
Chadwick is a wildlife biologist known for thoughtful works on biodiversity themes. Although clearly of the conservationist camp, Chadwick is careful to portray the concerns of those who are directly affected by conservation-oriented decisions, and to avoid good vs. evil dichotomies. He also has a knack for piquant comparison. In a previous book, The Fate of the Elephant, for example, Chadwick wonders how long North American moose would last if, like the elephant, they were suddenly worth a minimum of $25,000. In Yellowstone to Yukon, he seems more constrained (perhaps by National Geographic's editorial standards), sometimes resorting to platitudes, such as: "It is fascinating to be among people trying to figure out how to save the wildest of wild communities and freest of spaces for the yet unborn."
Yet his incisive eye frequently emerges in Yellowstone to Yukon. "What used to be the boondocks," he writes of the Rocky Mountain borderlands, "have more recently become busy test sites for the priorities of two nations that share strong pioneer heritages and a rapidly shrinking, ever more valuable supply of genuine frontiers." I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more poetic one-line summation of conservation science, policy, law, and economics than an "ever more valuable supply of genuine frontiers."
Any review of this book would be critically incomplete without a mention of its photography. My first reaction was that National Geographic, as usual, has put together a great group of photographers. I still have a hard time believing that only one photographer, Raymond Gehman, had the artistic diversity to approach the Y2Y concept from so many angles -- a word I use literally and figuratively. Probably as best as a 200-page book ever could, the combination of Chadwick's writing and Gehman's photography envelops the reader into the landscape. Having had the opportunity to drive through much of the Y2Y region, I thank both Chadwick and Gehman for the opportunity to go back at leisure.
Ultimately, conservation biologists will be somewhat disappointed at the book's lack of hard data and its necessarily condensed overview of many of the problems besetting the region's biodiversity (once again, both due undoubtedly to National Geographic's editorial standards). However, this tone is exactly the reason why most non-professional conservationists will enjoy and learn from the book. I hope many people buy Yellowstone to Yukon not only to discover the majesty of the spine of the continent, but to encourage National Geographic to continue publishing works on such fundamental topics to the science of conservation biology.
