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Hello, and happy September!

In 2012, I had the great good fortune to join a consulting team working in Namibia.

Our client was the World Wildlife Fund, whom we advised on their ecotourism-based conservation work. As a result, we spent a lot of time visiting off-the-grid ecolodges in remote areas of the country.

One day we drove for hours to the site of a proposed ecolodge. When we finally reached the campsite, the road had long-since disappeared and we were in a stunningly remote place. In fact, when I arose before dawn the next morning, a 360 degree sweep of the horizon revealed no lights or other signs of civilization. (See photo below.)

This was not true of our campsite, though. There, on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere, our hosts had erected lights, a large cooking tent, tables replete with china and high-end place settings, and a comfortable washroom. What really struck me, though, was not just the fully stocked bar, but the fact it was serving ice-cold Dom Perigon in a proper Champagne flute.

My cognitive dissonance was overwhelming. Long ago, a wine connoisseur drilled into me that Champagne is the acme of civilization, and Dom Perigon is the acme of Champagne. Yet there I was, in an incredibly isolated place, enjoying civilization at its most refined.

I share this story because, in a piece of foreshadowing I didn’t appreciate at the time, this “no place is too remote” moment set the stage for the essay below. The essay itself is a fleshing out of two talks I’ve recently given. More than that, though, it’s an exploration of an idea I’ve been mulling over for quite some time, namely how technological advances are rendering geographic isolation increasingly moot.

Introduction
Virtual Suburbanization
The 250 Year Precedent
Growth and Change in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Analysis and Discussion
21st Century Conservation
What To Do?
Chamber of Culture
Final Thought
Final Request

As always, thank you for your interest and support.

Jonathan Schechter
Executive Director

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Thanks so very much.

Introduction

My professional life is shaped around two beliefs:

  • Ultimately, a society can be no stronger than its institutions.
  • Ultimately, a community can be no healthier than the ecosystem in which it lies.

I’m worried on both scores.

I worry about “no stronger than its institutions” because over the last several decades, we humans have demonstrated that institutions are far easier to tear down than they are to build and maintain. Thirty-plus years of Gallup polling drive home this point.

Each year, Gallup asks Americans how much confidence they have in 14 major US institutions. These range from Congress to Organized Religion; from Public Schools to Big Business. In 1993, 37% of Americans said they had “A Great Deal” or “Quite a Lot” of confidence in those 14 institutions. Today the figure is 28%.

Perhaps more disturbingly, at least one-third of Americans have a goodly amount of confidence in only three institutions: the Military (61% in 2024’s survey), Police (51%), and the Medical System (36%). Take out these three, and the overall percentage of Americans with confidence in the remaining 11 institutions drops to just 23%. (Figure 1)

Figure 1

I worry about “no healthier than its ecosystems” because along with tearing down institutions, we humans have also demonstrated we can be poor stewards of the ecosystems in which our communities lie.

In turn, these two beliefs inform the two concepts which frame much of my professional life:

  • Virtual Suburbanization
  • The 250 Year Precedent

Virtual Suburbanization

Virtual Suburbanization is the contemporary version of the Physical Suburbanization that hallmarked the United States following the Second World War.

In search of a better life, in the 1950s Americans began moving from major cities to the suburbs. This phenomenon was made possible by a combination of changes in the Big Five Forces driving suburbanization: technology, the economy, transportation, values, and mores.

In recent years, the same phenomenon has been occurring virtually.

In particular, over the past few decades changes in the same Big Five Forces – technology, the economy, transportation, values, and mores – have increasingly stretched, frayed, and severed the umbilical cord connecting where people live and work. As this process has occurred, the result has been a major and rapid redistribution of not just America’s population, but that of the world.

In short, abetted by the combined effects of the Big Five Forces, increasing numbers of people are cutting the umbilical cord, moving from less desirable places to those they find more attractive. For example, consider how America’s population has grown since the COVID pandemic struck in March, 2020.

In the same way COVID altered many aspects of life, the pandemic affected Virtual Suburbanization by greatly reducing the stigma associated with remote working.

As Figure 2 indicates, since the start of the pandemic the lightly-populated Rocky Mountain region – long known as a place people vacation rather than where they work – has experienced much faster population growth than the rest of the country. In increasing numbers, people seem to be saying “Why not live in the place I love spending time?” and then acting accordingly. Focus just on Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming (i.e., remove the oddly slow-growing New Mexico from the mix), and it wasn’t just the Rocky Mountain states that saw the biggest population gains, but many of the least-populous, most-remote areas of those states.

Figure 2

Of the Five Big Forces driving Virtual Suburbanization, the most significant has been advances in technology.

If we use the number of patents issued by the US Patent Office as a proxy for the pace of technologic change, over half of all the patents ever issued have been issued since 1998; over one-quarter have been issued in just the past 10 years. (Figure 3)

Figure 3

The result of all these patents? Once-unimaginable changes in how we live our lives and conduct our business. (Table 1)

Table 1

The 250 Year Precedent

Stated baldly, the “250 Year Precedent” is my belief that, in the 250+ years since the start of the Industrial Revolution, no place on Earth has developed a successful contemporary economy (i.e., a successful industrial or post-industrial economy) AND maintained a healthy, fully-intact ecosystem.

I say “stated baldly” because I also believe there is one exception to the 250 Year Precedent: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in general, and the greater Tetons area in particular.

If I’m right, then 250+ years of precedent suggest that we in the GYE and Tetons region are at great risk of succumbing to larger economic forces and, however unintentionally, fundamentally compromising the health of the region’s ecosystem. On a global scale, it also suggests that, as the forces driving Virtual Suburbanization allow humans to develop previously inaccessible parts of the planet, Earth’s remaining fully functioning ecosystems face great peril.

In that context, it’s worthwhile to consider an argument advanced by, among others, the late biologist E.O. Wilson. Wilson posited that, to preserve the Earth’s fundamental ecological functions, 50% of the planet’s land and water needs to be protected from development. Yet what my experience in Namibia showed me is, that, thanks to modern technology, increasingly fewer places are immune to humans leaving their mark. In particular, as technology gets better and less expensive, the geographic barriers that once served as unbreachable bulwarks for conserving large ecosystems are being rendered increasingly moot.

To better understand what’s going on, let’s take a closer look at the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).

Growth and Change in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Founded in 1872, Yellowstone is the world’s oldest national park. One factor in its formation was the belief at the time that the proposed park’s 2.2 million acres lacked any economic value.

Over the years, scientists have come to realize that, biologically, Yellowstone’s ecosystem extends far beyond the park’s boundaries. Today, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is defined as an area of around 22 million acres, ten times the size of the actual park. Centered around the park, the GYE includes all or part of 20 counties across three states. (Figure 4)

Figure 4

At the time of its founding, the Yellowstone area may not have had much economic value. Today, however, nearly five million people visit the park each year, producing over $800 million in regional economic activity.

And tourism’s economic value is only growing. In particular, between 1970-2024, Yellowstone’s annual visitation roughly doubled from 2.3 million people in 1970 to a projected 4.8 million in 2024. Over these 54 years, the average annual growth rate has been 1.4%. (Figure 5)

Figure 5

Growing even faster than park visitation has been the region’s population. In 1970, the 20 GYE counties had a combined population of around 231,000. In 2024, the population is estimated to be around 550,000, an average annual growth rate of 1.6% over those 54 years. (Figure 6)

Figure 6

Population growth in the GYE plateaued and dipped a bit in the 1980s, bottoming out in 1988, the year of the great Yellowstone fires. Since then, population has grown steadily, at a slightly faster rate than before the fires.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this period has also been hallmarked by the widespread adoption of cellphones, laptop computers, internet-based commerce, wi-fi, and other staples of current business practices. And again perhaps not coincidentally, during that time the GYE’s “Big Three” socio-economic indicators have all shown growth rates twice as fast as the nation as a whole. (Note: in this essay, I use constant dollar per capita income figures.) (Figure 7)

Figure 7

The GYE is not a monolith, however. Each of its 20 counties has its own distinct qualities and culture, including how much of it lies within the GYE. From this perspective, the counties can be grouped into three categories:

  • Entirely within the GYE
    • Teton ID
    • Gallatin and Park MT
    • Teton WY
  • Mostly within the GYE (over half of the county)
    • Bonneville, Clark, Fremont, and Madison ID
    • Madison MT
    • Lincoln, Park, and Sublette WY
  • Partially within the GYE (less than half of the county)
    • Bear Lake and Caribou ID
    • Beaverhead, Carbon, Stillwater and Sweet Grass MT
    • Fremont and Hot Springs WY (Figure 8)
Figure 8

In the same way that the number of patents issued can serve as a crude proxy for the pace of technologic innovation, the amount of a county entirely within the GYE can serve as a crude proxy for how important the ecosystem is to the county’s economy, character, and attractiveness to residents and visitors. By this standard, the four “Entirely” counties are very closely tied to the ecosystem in which they lie, the eight “Mostlys” a bit less so, and the eight “Partiallys” a little less than that.

Using this filter, let’s revisit the three basic socioeconomic indicators noted above. (Please note that I’ve changed the starting date to 2001 to allow for the use of more granular data.)

As Figure 9 shows, between 2001-2022 the three different categories of GYE counties had very different population, income, and job growth characteristics. In each case, the Entirely counties enjoyed the most robust growth, with the Mostlys and Partiallys experiencing different growth profiles.

Figure 10

Why? What’s driving these difference?

As Figure 10 suggests, the forces of Virtual Suburbanization offer at least a partial answer. From the perspective of cutting the umbilical cord between where one works and lives, Investment Income is the most location-neutral type of income. Similarly, and by definition, Location-Neutral jobs such as those in finance, information, and professional services are the ones most easily done from anywhere.

Viewed through this lens, those people with the most ability to live wherever they want to live seem to favor the GYE’s “Entirely” counties; i.e., the places in the GYE whose characters and economies are most closely linked to the ecosystem in which they lie.

Figure 10

Even more striking is how these trends exploded during the COVID pandemic. Figure 11 looks at the same data as Figure 10, but focuses on the years 2018-2022; i.e., the four years surrounding the 2020 pandemic. While population growth rates during this stretch were about the same as over the previous two decades, the Entirely counties saw huge increases in Investment Income, and all three county types saw huge increases in Location-Neutral Jobs.4

Figure 11

Analysis and Discussion

I first moved to Jackson Hole in 1983. One of the first people I met told me she moved to the Tetons because it was the hardest-to-get-to place in the lower 48. A short while later, I learned that Teton County contained the most remote place in the continental United States: The Thorofare Valley is, as one person put it, around 30 miles away from the nearest lightbulb.

For over a century, this remoteness provided Jackson Hole and other wild places with an extraordinary buffer against outside economic and demographic forces. For most people, Jackson Hole was simply too far away – a magical vacation spot, but not a place where you wanted to live. Why? Because living there year-round required too many sacrifices: the climate was too harsh; the economy too small and narrow; friends and family too far away; and the combination of isolation and small population limited choices in everything from consumer goods to cultural opportunities.

Technology has changed much of that, requiring residents to make increasingly fewer sacrifices. Further, those changes are only accelerating. As a result, places such as Jackson Hole which used to rely on geographic isolation to insulate them from “the real world” are finding that isolation is being rendered increasingly moot. Indeed, in the same way an ebbing tide reveals that which was hidden underwater, technologic improvements are revealing the many positive qualities of living in places once considered the boondocks.

As that happens, people are flocking to places which, not too long ago, were considered too remote. Such is the nature of Virtual Suburbanization.

21st Century Conservation

Until I went there in 2012, I had no clue about Namibia’s astonishing success in restoring and conserving populations of endangered animals. You can find more details HERE (in writing) or HERE (videos).

For this essay, though, the important point is that when Namibia became a nation in 1990, it put wildlife conservation into the hands of its communities. Over the last 30+ years, those communities have developed culturally appropriate ways to combine ecosystem stewardship with economic health.

In contrast, while America’s conservation history also reflects local culture, that history goes back nearly two centuries: our nation’s first efforts to celebrate and conserve wild places can be traced back to New England in the first half of the 19th century (e.g., Thoreau lived at Walden Pond during the mid-1840s).

Like Namibia, America’s conservation efforts are grounded in our distinct values and culture. There, Namibia’s conservation is tightly integrated with the nation’s agricultural economy. Here, America’s conservation is grounded in property rights. America’s approach to land conservation also differs from Namibia’s in that the United States usually draws a clear distinction between the natural and human worlds (e.g., while Namibian land uses often combine agriculture and wildlife conservation, historically America has often removed indigenous peoples and long-time settlers from within the park when national parks have been established).

The fact that our thinking about conservation dates back two hundred years raises a question, though: For all its successes, how well-suited to the nation’s 21st century socio-economics is America’s 19th century approach to conservation?

The GYE hints at the problem. For its first 100 years or so, not much thought was given to the idea of an ecosystem beyond Yellowstone’s boundaries. A generation ago, the creation of the GYE concept was scientists’ way of formally recognizing that nature has no respect for political boundaries. In recent years, other scientists have strengthened the GYE concept in innumerable ways – for example, by identifying the tapestry of public and private lands animals use to migrate in and around the GYE.

As Virtual Suburbanization transforms the GYE, though, the development pressures on the region’s private lands are rapidly growing– particularly on those lands which are part of migration corridors. And if you share my belief that people rarely set out to destroy ecosystems, but instead slowly kill them through 1,000 nicks, the lesson of the 250 Year Precedent is that the great threat to ecosystem health is the slow-but-inexorable development of wildlife habitat, the blocking of migration corridors, and other stressors placed on an ecosystem’s key components. As that occurs and the ecosystem becomes compromised, so too do the economy and sense of community based on the ecosystem’s health.

What To Do?

If the great challenge facing this generation of GYE residents is to develop a 21st century approach to conservation, how should we approach the task? Arguably the necessary first step is to acknowledge the foundational realities affecting the effort, among which are:

  • Powerful socio-economic forces are affecting the GYE and shaping its future.
    • The GYE’s future is being shaped by Virtual Suburbanization, which in turn makes ecosystems increasingly vulnerable to the 250 Year Precedent.
  • Residents and visitors alike share an extraordinary passion for the GYE.
    • This does not, however, mean they share a vision of what the GYE is, can be, or should be.
  • The region’s culture is shaped by a few key components including:
    • A belief in free markets and property rights.
    • A history of independence and self-reliance.
    • A tension between a deep conservation ethic and taking the region’s natural bounty for granted.
  • Government has a role to play, but not a leadership role.
    • The federal government is too gridlocked and, as suggested by the Gallup data, too mistrusted.
    • State governments aren’t necessarily conservation-minded.
    • Local governments have few human, financial, and legal resources.

Added together, these realities suggest the need for a new entity. Since government isn’t the answer, and since the private sector’s incentives can be at odds with ecosystem stewardship, the default solution is a new non-profit organization.

For such an organization to succeed, though, it must have a scope, mandate, and perspective much broader and more integrative than those of a traditional non-profit. It can’t focus on just the well-being of commerce, or the community, or the environment. Instead, it must simultaneously focus on all three. On a community’s culture. A Chamber of Culture, if you will.

Chamber of Culture

“What will happen when California is filled by fifty millions of people, and its valuation is five times what it is now, and the wealth will be so great that you will find it difficult to know what to do with it? The day will, after all, have only twenty-four hours. Each man will have only one mouth, one pair of ears, and one pair of eyes. There will be more people – as many perhaps as the country can support – and the real question will not be about making more wealth or having more people, but whether the people will then be happier.”

Lord James Bryce, from a speech at U.C. Berkeley, 1909 (Bryce was a British diplomat and historian whose American Commonwealth (1888) is considered a classic study of government and politics.)

The term “Chamber of Culture” comes from my incredibly thoughtful friend Mike Geraci. Like a Chamber of Commerce, a Chamber of Culture would consist of entities advocating a shared goal. But in this case, the goal would be the simultaneous ecological, economic, and community health of a particular region.

To succeed, a Chamber of Culture will need to take two initial steps. These will form the foundation of all its future actions.

First, a successful Chamber of Culture will need tools to assess not just the health of each of its three facets – ecosystem, community, and economy – but the relationships between them.

Happily, in the GYE efforts are underway to develop ecosystem health indicators. No such efforts exist around community health, though, and the economic indicators we rely on – things like per capita income, taxable sales, and Gross Domestic Product – don’t really give us the insight we need to assess the interplay between the economy and the broader culture.

Second, a successful Chamber of Culture will need to figure out how to harness and work with, rather than fight against, the socio-economic trends sweeping over the region. Virtual Suburbanization is only going to gain in speed and intensity, and the 250 Year Precedent tells us what happens when we try to fight the forces of Virtual Suburbanization. If we can harness those forces towards a larger vision, though, great things can happen.

Final Thought

No one will ever care as much about the GYE as the people who live here. Yet today, more than twice as many people live in the region than lived here 50 years ago (in a half century, we’ve grown from around 250,000 to around 550,000 residents across the 20 GYE counties).

What’s striking, though, is that it took 31 years for the GYE to grow from 250,000 residents to 400,000; i.e., to add 150,000 people. Adding the next 150,000, though, has taken only 19 years. And there’s no reason to think that pace of growth is going to slow down.

Hence this generation’s great challenge and great opportunity. The great challenge is to harness the powers driving Virtual Suburbanization and use them, jujutsu-like, to counter the 250 Year Precedent. If that can happen, then we can embrace our great opportunity: figuring out how to have a 21st century community and economy that complement, rather than work against, a healthy ecosystem.

More than 21st century conservation, this would be 21st century stewardship. For those of us lucky enough to live in the GYE, it’s an opportunity afforded to no other place on Earth. Let’s embrace it!

Final Request

Among my skills is a knack for self-flagellation. And one thing I self-flagellate about a lot is that writing pieces like this always takes far longer than I think it should.

Turning lemons into lemonade, though, my delay in getting this newsletter out meant that, over the weekend, I could both attend Old Bill’s Fun Run and go biking in Grand Teton National Park.

If you ever despair about Jackson Hole’s future, I defy you to attend Old Bill’s and feel anything but the greatest joy and awe. Feel the joy at the boundless energy and enthusiasm of the participating non-profits’ staff and volunteers; awe at not just what they do, but the grace and excellence they bring to pursuing their missions.

Ditto spending time in the park. The only thing more uplifting than the delight on the faces and in the voices of visitors from around the world is the majesty of the scenery.

This is the spirit that animates this CoThrive newsletter and Charture’s other efforts. If you find value in it, please support us through Old Bill’s Fun Run. CLICK HERE to donate. Donations must be received by 5:00 pm MDT this Friday, September 13.