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    Common ground: finding an American aesthetic in ceramics through the history of wilderness and ceramic art in America
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2021) Botelho Alvarez, Alejandro Manuel; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Josh DeWeese
    My quest to find a unifying principle that constitutes 'American ceramics' has led me to survey the histories of studio ceramics in America and Wilderness and Nature in America. I've discovered resounding similarities between the two: both were responses to a flagging sense of identity and a hope to (nostalgically) confirm and promote certain values and worldviews (over others). Both our relationships with nature and American studio ceramics are monolithic in their founding ideals and have persisted into the 21st century; both have been fundamental in my upbringing and have codified my own worldview. However, I've become sensitive to the fact these particular values are rooted in privilege, are fundamentally exclusionary, and are ripe for a reexamination. In this paper I propose that we revisit the bearing of the values that wilderness and the aesthetic judgements of ceramics in the early 20th century have on society today. It does not mean that these traditions should be totally abandoned. Instead, I am convinced that a more pluralistic and inclusive approach to both is a more holistic way forward. By appraising the histories of wilderness and ceramics in America I hope to uncover some of the unrecognized people and cultures that have been deliberately redacted from the history. In so doing, I expect to find similarities and trends within the existing canon that are commonly celebrated and introduce the forgotten traditions back into the fold, such that it might lead to a new vision for American ceramics. In conclusion, I hope that this rediscovered American aesthetic might be the framework in which I create my own body of work, with a particular appeal towards process rather than form, as a criterion of excellence. With an understanding that American studio pottery has many different traditions to pull from that are still being 'digested', but that these diverse inspirations is not a weakness, but a strength.
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    Phantoms on the land : animals, ghost trails, and wilderness in Yellowstone National Park
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2016) Clement, Kerri Keller; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Tim LeCain; Catherine Dunlop (co-chair)
    Yellowstone National Park is a landscape of ghosts, with a plethora of purposefully unmapped trails in the sea of wilderness. These pathways and the associated maps that silence them unveil the lost stories of the manufacturing of a wild Yellowstone. Early Park administrators constructed a distorted cartographic narrative of a wilderness, one safely devoid of Native Americans and teeming with wildlife and geysers, ready for consumption by Euro-Americans. In comparing the contemporary landscape archive with cartographic sources that span early Euro-American fur trappers to the Army period in the Park, this paper traces the construction of Yellowstone wilderness through the emphasis on trails and wilderness landscapes. Ghost trails, present on the land but not depicted on maps, were an attempt by the mapmakers to create and control a uniform wilderness within the confines of Park boundaries. Maps by William Clark, John Dougherty, and Jim Bridger, along with exploration maps by W.W. de Lacy, administrative maps by P.W. Norris, and road maps by the Army Corps of Engineers, expose trail erasures that solidified a Euro-American wild Park. In revealing these cartographic exorcisms, we gain a better understanding of the formation of the Park and its resulting mythology as a remote wilderness, along with the materialization of power over the region's complex identity. Ghost trails expose traces of human values, notions of territoriality, and power over identity that attests to the complexities of demarcating and constructing Yellowstone National Park as a wilderness area.
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    Baseline survey of furbearing mammals within the South Fork drainage Sun River, Montana
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1984) Tweten, Randall Guy
    The relative abundance, distribution and habitat use of seven species of furbearing mammals and five additional species with fur or sport values were studied in the South Fork drainage of the Sun River, in north central Montana, from June through August of 1982 and January through June of 1983. Species investigated included: bobcat (Lynx rufus), Canadian lynx (Lynx canadensis), fisher (Martes pennanti), pine marten (Martes americana), wolverine (Gulp gulo), river otter (Lutjra canadensis), beaver (Castor canadensis),mountain lion, (Fells concolor), grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), black bear (Ursus americanus), coyote (Canis latrans) and wolf (Canis lupus). Small mammals were trapped at three locations during late summer 1982 to determine their availability and relative numbers during high prey population periods. A total of 94 small mammals were captured during 331 trap-nights resulting in a total efficiency of 28.4%. Approximately 1,207 km of transects within the 1,036 km2 study area were traversed during the 2 field seasons. A total of 4,154 incidences of sign were recorded from 10 landtypes within 6 subunits. Prey species (rodents, lagomorphs and grouse) contributed >80% of all sign encountered. Coyotes contributed 16% of all sign observed. There was was a significant positive correlation between coyotes and lagomorph signs for the different landtypes (r=0.864, p<0.05) and subunits (r=0.991, p<0.001). Signs from carnivorous species were positively correlated (p<0.001) with prey species for both landtypes (r=0.927 ) and subunits (r=0.990). Other species detected, which comprised 2% of all signs, included wolves, grizzly bears, black bears and mountain lions. Furbearer sign encountered consisted of 1 river otter, 5 lynx and 12 bobcats. Bear tracks encountered per transect kilometer traveled were 1/45 km and 1/13.4 km for grizzly and black bear, respectively. This number for grizzly bears is lower than reported in previous studies conducted in the vicinity. Trapping records show 14 bobcats, 4 lynx and 3 river otters have been harvested from the study area during the the 1977-1983 trapping seasons. Data from sign showed an apparent lack of pine marten, wolverine and fisher within the area. Pine marten were trapped in the area as recently as in the 1950’s. Wolverine observations have been reported from sites immediately adjacent to the study area.
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    Does wilderness matter? : an examination of the political causes and economic consequences of wilderness designation
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2013) Regan, Shawn Edward; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Randal R. Rucker.;
    This thesis improves upon previous cross-sectional analyses of the economic effects of wilderness designation in two important ways. First, a political economy analysis of wilderness selection is developed using data from a comprehensive inventory of all potential wilderness areas managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Second, the economic consequences of wilderness designation are examined using a novel county-level panel data set of western U.S. counties from 1969 to 2010. The Forest Service and Congress are found to act as arbitrators of competing interest groups by designating areas with high levels of wilderness attributes but low development potential. Wilderness designations are found to not have a significant effect on levels of per capita income, population, employment, or average wage per job. These finding are robust to a broad range of specifications. The results suggest that the Forest Service and Congress have made wilderness selection decisions that do not impose significant costs on local economies.
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    Campsite impacts and the limits of acceptable change planning process : a case study of the Jedediah Smith Wilderness
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2007) Grossenburg, Chad G.; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Jian-yi Liu
    The Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) planning process is a means by which planners attempt to preserve naturalness while facilitating public use in federally designated wilderness areas. The biophysical condition of campsites is often used as one indicator of naturalness in LAC plans. Despite the emergence of scientific methods to monitor campsites, campsite standards often neglect to reflect the findings of this science. The LAC process was used in Wyoming's Jedediah Smith Wilderness, which is situated east of fast growing Teton County, Idaho and west of popular Grand Teton National Park. Teton County and many other Western counties next to wilderness have outgrown other counties further from wilderness. Grand Teton Park receives tens of thousands of backcountry campers that may access the Wilderness depending on the degree of connectivity between the two protected areas. Many other wildernesses also share borders with popular national parks.
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    The impact on wages of wilderness designation in Montana
    (Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 1992) Kerr, Leslie, 1967-; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Terry Anderson.
    The wilderness debate has largely been polarized into two main factions: the environmentalists, including groups such as the Montana Wilderness Society, which favors land preservation, and industrial groups, such as the Montana Wood Products Association, which favors extractive activities on public land. The debate includes both philosophical and economic considerations. The philosophical debate centers around the ethically correct use of public land, while the economic debate focuses on which type of land use provides the highest level of economic well-being to the citizens in adjacent areas. Historically, both sides have claimed that their particular land-use alternative provides the highest level of economic well-being, while neither side has convincing evidence to support its claim. One of the more important aspects of the economic debate has focused on jobs and which alternative provides more of them. An additional concern is how each alternative affects the wage rate in adjacent areas. The primary goal of this investigation is to estimate the effect, if any, of wilderness designation on the wages in areas adjacent to wilderness.
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