Welcome - to the Gallatin Wildlife Association's website.
We certainly hope you become more knowledgeable about GWA as you wander through the pages of our website. We are a small, but vocal non-profit organization located in Bozeman, Montana advocating for wildlife, their respective habitat, and migration corridors across southwestern Montana, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and the northern Rocky Mountains. We advocate for wildlife and fisheries by utilizing science and the law. GWA, founded in 1976, has long recognized the intense pressures on our wildlife from habitat loss and climate change, and we advocate for science-based management of public lands for diverse public values, including but not limited to hunting and angling.
To learn more about GWA, who we are, and what we've done: click here
It was on July 9, 1976, when the Gallatin Wildlife Association officially became an entity, an organization that wanted to speak on behalf of wildlife. 50-years later, our organization celebrated that event on September 10, 2026. As the President (me) said during his talk that Thursday evening, an organization only gets to celebrate that type of anniversary once, if they are lucky. Also it must be stated that an organization doesn't get to celebrate that kind of success, unless the Board and its membership perserveres over time against all odds. But in saying that, those odds are nothing compared to the odds that our wildlife had to endure over that same time frame.
I also said on that evening: “A lot of wildlife has most certainly been lost in that time from our failures, but hopefully there’s been many species that are still alive because of our successes.” We would like to think so.
We were fortunate and blessed to have Rich Day, GWA's first President to give the keynote address to friends, family, and members of GWA that evening. To think that GWA was born out of our concern over the future of the Gallatin Range just seems right. It just seems right that we were founded as an organization to protect the wildness and the wildlife on the most northern extension out of Yellowstone National Park, our long unobtained goal.
Our goal of full wilderness protection of the Hyalite Porcupine Buffalo-Horn Wilderness Study Area and additional surrounding landscapes has been a struggle for us, but not just us, for the many others in the same pursuit. Politics and special interest groups have fought our interest in WSA protection all the way. That opposition is even stronger today. Now, there are fellow NGOs who want to carve into that designated WSA even further, beyond the compromises of 1977.
The dream of maintaining wilderness protection for all that is good in the Gallatin Range and of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem must endure. We must not give up. For all of those who care about the future of the Gallatin Range, that is our concern as well. Thank you Rich for telling that history at our 50 Anniversary Celebration.
In regard to that history, we must relay our long membership with the Montana Wildlife Federation (MWF). Being an affiliate member of MWF for as long as we have been an organization, we were fortunate to have been nominated and accepted to be named the "Affiliate of the Year". Picture below.
The Custer Gallatin National Forest (CGNF) is being carved up piece by piece, and bit by bit, inch by inch. Unless stopped, the CGNF will die from a thousand cuts, just like those below. Just within the last several years, we've had to battle against many of these so-called fuel reduction projects.
South Plateau Landscape Area Timber Project
Hyalite/South Cottonwood Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project
North Bridger Fuel Reduction Project
Bozeman Municipal Watershed Project
Cooke City Fuels Reduction Project
Burnt Mountain and Red Lodge Fuel Reduction Project
Bear Creek Palmer Creek Fuel Reduction Project
And now the latest, the newest: Fridley Foothills Hazardous Fuels Reduction Project (currently public scoping).
GWA has been in opposition and in litigation against all these projects above in various forms with various outcomes.
Please participate against the Fridley Foothills Hazardous Fuels Reduction Project.
Needless to say, these actions cost money, help us protect the CGNF - won't you?
The Hyalite/South Cottonwood Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project -
Concern over the future of South Cottonwood Canyon continues as the U.S. Forest Service project lingers on in the hearts and minds of residents of Gallatin County. Many residents have been through this agony once, if not more.
We at GWA have already claimed one victory. We achieved the right to have a public open house on the issue. That has come and gone, but we've learned some valuable information, too much to go into detail in this format.
But we feel the Forest Service is listening, whether they can be responsive to the public's viewpoint is an unknown. A large part of this effort was the collection of 1000 signatures to make a claim to the Custer Gallatin National Forest that the people are watching. We feel that has already made a difference, as to how much, it is to soon to tell as the Environmental Assessment is still be carried out.
To sign on to our petition, click the link below and sign your name to be one of those with a voice to fight for wise management of our forest not based upon fear, demagoguery, or pressures from Washington D.C., but to have our forest be managed as a forest.
It's time to Protect the Hyalite Porcupine Buffalo-Horn Wilderness Study Area!
The Gallatin Wildlife Association has been in service to the community for 49 years, leaving next year as our 50th anniversary. In all that time, one of the most frustrating and incomplete tasks that lie before us is the lack of wilderness designation for the HPBH WSA.
There are many reasons for that frustration, politics has definitely been one, but now we are fighting the attempts of once fellow green NGOs who now want to take the easy way out and carve out pieces of this WSA and make those susceptible to mountain biking interests and other activities that will fragment an already endangered landscape.
This coalition known as the Gallatin Forest Partnership is determined to reduce the size and scope of the HPBH WSA by 40%. That 40% is invaluable for wildlife security and habitat. It will surely affect the ecological quality of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) as we know it.
Sign in the button box below if you would like to see this beautiful and critical wildlife habitat secure for all time. We will continue to gather signatures as necessary.
GWA's Podcast on KGVM -
Wildlife and Wilderness -
http://kgvm.org/program/wilderness-and-wildlife/
After an unfortunate hiatus, Wilderness and Wildlife is back. Narrated by Haley Yarborough and presented by the Gallatin Wildlife Association, this half hour presentation features discussions of issues involving wildlife of southwestern Montana, and the wilderness habitat that makes this area appealing to adventurous people from around the country. You'll hear interviews with wildlife experts and naturalists reporting on species they have studied, which are threatened by the pressures of a rapidly growing populace in the Greater Yellowstone Region.
For other shows presented, simply click the following.
The Gallatin Wildlife Association also produces the short Wildlife Capsules.
Thanks to John Shellenberger for taking the initiative to establish this mechanism of outreach years ago for GWA and for maintaining it for seven years; we are glad to bring it back to the public. Thanks to our former Communication Director for taking over a smooth transition for this operation and for our current Communicaiton Director for willing to continue on the work.
To Contact Us, either contact us directly using this address or using the link button below.
Contact Details:
Gallatin Wildlife Association
P.O. Box 10571,
Bozeman, MT 59719
“To restore stability to our planet, therefore, we must restore its biodiversity, the very thing we have removed. It is the only way out of this crisis that we ourselves have created. We must rewild the world!”―David Attenborough