The Walt Disney Company is
coming to Yellowstone National Park, and already the “Mickey Moose”
jokes have started. What’s not funny is the way this venture
by a multinational corporation marks a new frontier for the West.
In a quiet announcement last month, Disney said it
intended to test-launch a “Quest for the West” weeklong vacation
tour of Yellowstone, Grand Teton and the Jackson Hole area. Wyoming
and Hawaii are the first two destinations for “Adventures by
Disney,” a vacation concept marketed to people who already take
Disney vacations such as cruises.
Disney thus enters the
eco-tourism market — one of the West’s latest ways of
selling itself. Eco-tourism, defined as nature-oriented tourism
that seeks to minimize environmental impacts, is a frontier because
it’s a new, unorganized market, much like the Internet a
decade ago. Some pioneers have proved its viability, and now a
large corporation is moving in.
That’s the way
frontiers always work: Adventurers explore a new area, then someone
with more money and organization comes in to control it. The
discovery of California gold led to a rush of ‘49ers, but by
the 1880s, most Western mining activity was run by large
corporations. Early Western farmers built small irrigation schemes,
but after 1900, most dams were huge, complicated projects built by
the federal government.
Frontiers thus always attract two
types of people — romantics and capitalists. Romantics love
the adventure: panning for gold, cowboying on a cattle drive,
landing on the moon. Capitalists love the opportunity to make money
by being the first to figure out how to succeed in this new
venture.
So far, eco-tourism has attracted lots of
romantics, people who love nature, want to preserve it and are
excited about the possibility of eradicating the alleged “jobs vs.
the environment” gap. Local, well-informed outfitters across the
West, from river guides to ranchers who rent horses and llamas,
have shared their passion and knowledge with a select clientele.
Disney, on the other hand, excels at capitalizing
frontiers. Most amusement parks were small and local until
Disneyland and Disneyworld made them global juggernauts. More
recently, Disney capitalized on an architectural trend called the
New Urbanism to create a phenomenally successful real estate
development, Celebration, in Florida. I wouldn’t be surprised
if Disney also succeeds at transforming eco-tourism.
That’s good for Disney. But is it good for the West?
The promise of eco-tourism is that it marshals market
forces behind environmental causes. A Disney-in-Yellowstone
requires a vibrant Yellowstone, and so we could potentially foresee
a day when Disney’s powerful lobbyists call for strengthened
endangered species laws to protect the grizzlies and wolves that
contribute to its bottom line. (What if Disney ran tours in the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, thus adding its voice in
opposition to drilling there?)
On the other hand, the
danger of unfettered capitalism is that private profits often come
at the expense of public resources. Indeed, capitalist activity on
previous frontiers has led to many of our current environmental
problems. Many grasslands still haven’t recovered from
overgrazing by huge corporate cattle ranches in the late 19th
century. Likewise, individual gold-panners and placer miners with
huge hoses could make a mess, but it takes an organized corporate
body to make a Superfund site.
Some previous eco-pioneers
have even soiled their own beds. Once they were organized into
efficient companies, fur trappers nearly exterminated the beaver
they depended on. Timber companies in the late 19th century so
overcut their private lands in the upper Midwest that Gifford
Pinchot organized federal forest preserves to save them from their
own greed.
Could the same sort of fate befall
eco-tourism? I can picture new hotels, roads, and other
infrastructure crowding out the very wildlife habitat that created
the need for them. I can picture each corporation saying the
problem is not its hotel, but everybody else’s. I can picture
this not because corporations are inherently evil, but because
that’s the only way for them to compete.
The lesson
we claim to have learned from the abuses of capitalism 100 years
ago is that when big corporations deal with public goods such as
wildlife habitat, we need a countervailing force. And for all of
its problems, the only available countervailing force is government
action.
Disney coming to Yellowstone doesn’t
necessarily mean that Mickey, Goofy, Donald, and the gang will
crowd out the real animals. But it might mean that
eco-tourism’s adventure-frontier phase has ended. Now,
it’s time to figure out how to make such ventures succeed for
society as a whole.
John Clayton is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He writes in
Red Lodge, Montana.
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