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 must 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 and many others in the same pursuit. Politics and special interest groups have fought our interest all along the way, even more so today. Now there are even fellow NGOs who want to carve that designated WSA up even further, beyond the compromises of 1977. But one of my favorite quotes from Ted Kennedy's speech at the 1980 Democratic Convention is found in his last line:
"For all those whose cares have been our concern,
the work goes on,
the cause endures,
the hope still lives,
and the dream shall never die".
In trying to keep, politics out of it, this quote applies to so many things in life, and in this regard, it especially applies to our fight to maintain wilderness protection for all that is good in the Gallatin Range and of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We must not give up or cave in. 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.
Stay tuned for future pictures and articles of this event in coming weeks and months. We're not so willing to let go of this life-time event so readily. Pictured above is Chris Marchion (President of MWF) the man on my left and Frank Szollsi on the far right is the Executive Director. Others pictured are board members of GWA.
The work of GWA is an odessey, a quest if you will to work and look for victorys for wildlife whenever and whereever we can find them. We seek the energy and voices of young and old alike to work together for the same cause, the preservation of our planet or our little corner of it.
Stay tuned for future news.
GWA hires a new Communication Director -
GWA would like to introduce Haley Yarborough to our membership.
GWA brought on Haley Yarborough as a contract employee, a position that we so desparately needed. Her term began this month of August, but she won't begin to fully access that role until the first of September. We want to welcome her to GWA and hopefully you will all come to know her through her work and see great changes within our organization.
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.
Montanans for Safe
Wildlife Protection: MSWP
Most of you should know, GWA has been involved with and are supporters of MSWP for several years now. Being as one representative on the MSWP Steering Committee, we try to propagate the energy and resources for wildlife infrastructure across the state of Montana.
Below is their most recent website:
Montanans for Safe Wildlife Passage
There is much to do in this realm of establishing wildlife connectivity across highways and railways, etc. Please help out in any way you are able.
Climate Forest Coalition:
Another alliance that GWA is participating in is that of the Climate Forest Coalition, an organization of likeminded NGOs across the country that are trying to change forest policy. We're trying to promote policies of protecting mature and old-growth forests in order to preserve biodiversity, ecological integrity and to use our forests as a mitigative approach fighting climate change by carbon sequestration. Here is their link:
https://www.climate-forests.org/
There is much material here for references and they have already testified before Congress.
We urge all members to follow this group and follow us as we try to incorporate their strategy into ours as appropriate.
(maintained by Haley Yarborough)
GWA's Podcast on KGVM -
Wildlife and Wilderness -
http://kgvm.org/program/wilderness-and-wildlife/
Wilderness and Wildlife, presented by the Gallatin Wildlife Association, features discussions of issues involving the 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 for GWA and keeping at it for these past seven years. Also thanks to our new Communication Director for taking over a smooth transition for this operation.
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