While railroads figure prominently in U. S. history and culture, their environmental impacts are often overlooked. Here, I describe situations where operation and maintenance of a section of transcontinental railroad in Montana, USA, resulted in high mortality of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos), a threatened species under the U. S. Endangered Species Act, and where proposed avalanche control measures conflicted with the preservation mandates of Glacier National Park. A unique public/private partnership was created to work towards effective solutions to environmental problems. The partnership was successful in decreasing high grizzly bear mortality rates, but less so in finding a consensus on how best to reduce avalanche risk. I suggest that collaborative partnerships, such as that developed here, will be essential to solving future environmental problems associated with railroads.
CITATION STYLE
Waller, J. S. (2017). Commerce and conservation in the Crown of the continent. In Railway Ecology (pp. 293–307). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57496-7_18
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