Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is one of the last remaining large, nearly intact ecosystems in the northern temperate zone of the Earth. It is located within the northern Rocky Mountains, in areas of northwestern Wyoming, southwestern Montana, and eastern Idaho. Yellowstone National Park and the Yellowstone Caldera 'hotspot' are within it.

Conflict over ecological and resource management has been controversial, and the area is a flagship site among conservation groups that promote ecosystem management. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is one of the world's foremost natural laboratories in landscape ecology and Holocene geology, and is a world-renowned recreational destination. It is also home to the diverse native plants and animals of Yellowstone.

Yellowstone National Park boundaries were drawn in 1872 to include all the known geothermal basins in the region. No other landscape ecology considerations were incorporated into boundary decisions. By the 1970s, however, the grizzly bear's (Ursus arctos) range in and near the park became the first informal minimum boundary of a theoretical "Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem" that included at least 16,000 square kilometres (4,000,000 acres). Since then, definitions of the greater ecosystem's size have steadily grown larger. A 1994 study listed the size as 76,890 square kilometres (19,000,000 acres), while a 1994 speech by a Greater Yellowstone Coalition leader enlarged that to 80,000 square kilometres (20,000,000 acres).

In 1985 the United States House of Representatives Subcommittees on Public Lands and National Parks and Recreation held a joint subcommittee hearing on Greater Yellowstone, resulting in a 1986 report by the Congressional Research Service outlining shortcomings in interagency coordination and concluding that the area's essential values were at risk.

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