BRETT FRENCH | bfrench@billingsgazette.com
For some conservation-minded, recreation-based businesses, the growth in visitation to Montana over the past five years has caused a unique sense of tension and prompted questions about their role in protecting public lands.
“I think we always need to talk about balance, which is tricky,” Marne Hayes, director of Business for Montana’s Outdoors, said during a panel discussion this fall. “Public lands are an economic tool and driver. They draw millions of people here every year. They’re a foundation for wildlife and ecological creation and conservation values …”
“Stewardship becomes really important.”
Retired Montana State University professor Jerry Johnson, in his 2024 book “Romance Lands and Conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem,” wrote that the theme of his book was simple:
“It is that intact high-quality public and private lands are the economic and cultural armature around which modern western rural economies are assembled.”
Such attraction to wildlands, not only by visitors but also from wealthy buyers of large tracts of private land adjacent to public property, has created a dilemma, Johnson added.
“Will prosperity come as a result of pollution, development and settlement of our wild lands or, will it come in the form of preservation and with it, the conservation of creatures like the grizzly bear?
“Our decision will define who we are as Americans and will help decide the future of our western communities and economies.”
Missouri River Outfitters
For the past nine years, Nicole Fugere has operated an outfitting business that taps into the Missouri River and its surrounding public lands.
Missouri River Outfitters provides guides, boats and shuttle service for canoe trips. The company is based in the historic river town of Fort Benton, where steamships docked in the 1800s to drop off supplies and adventurers that traveled west overland to mining boom towns like Virginia City and Helena.
Now there’s a new boom, one tied to recreation and public lands, another resource the Treasure State is rich in.
In 2024, 13.7 million people visited Montana, spending an estimated $5 billion that support businesses like Fugere’s which utilize public resources to attract recreationists.
Although relying on the beauty of wildlands and waters to attract tourists is nothing new — tourists came by the trainload after the creation of Yellowstone National Park to see its many wonders and wildlife — now there are so many more people.
In 1904, 13,700 people visited Yellowstone, according to park statistics. Last year, 4.74 million entered the national park. By November of this year, the park had counted 4.72 million visitors with December numbers still not added.
Yellowstone and Glacier national parks are top draws for tourists, attracting more than 40% of all visitors to Montana who then may explore other areas of the state.
Resource strain
This influx of visitors can strain the state’s natural resources and has prompted some conservation-minded business owners to question their role in monetizing these wild assets.
Hayes said the dichotomy presents a challenge “between promoting our landscapes and talking about the economic value and not sort of extracting that above all else.”
“I think we always need to talk about balance, which is tricky,” she said. “You know, public lands are an economic tool and driver. They draw millions of people here every year. They’re a foundation for wildlife and ecological creation and conservation values.”
But as the number of tourists to the state have increased — crowding popular campgrounds, trailheads and stretches of river — Hayes, Fugere and other outdoor advocates have struggled with the impacts of more people on the landscape and waters that businesses like outfitting service.
“At what point, we have to ask ourselves, is this overuse too much as an outfitter?” Fugere said.
“Yes, it’s an advantage when I have a lot of people, economically for the community and myself, but it’s a disadvantage for the (Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument), and it will turn people away who then will not come back,” she added.
Educating recreationists
The quandary extends to other areas of the outdoors as well, such as Billings-based concessionaire Kampgrounds of America.
Jenny McCullough said KOA sees its role as educational at its 515 campgrounds in the U.S. and Canada, especially since so many newbies have started camping or glamping.
“So any way that we can educate them on how to feel comfortable and safe and how to use the outdoors in an ethical way, be good stewards of the land early on, is going to help them within their outdoor lifespan … on how they recreate,” she said.
During the pandemic, KOA created a camping etiquette video for first-timers that included “little things” like don’t walk through someone else’s campsite, throw your trash away, pour water on your campfire.
“They really had no idea what they were doing,” she said.
Building political support
The other side of the outdoor business economy is that companies and nonprofits help build support for public lands and waters by putting people in the woods or on a canoe in a river.
“Our bread and butter is getting volunteers out into the backcountry to do trail maintenance, campsite restoration, historic building preservation, weed mitigation, that sort of thing,” said Clifford Kipp, executive director of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation.
These customers and volunteers can be key advocates when lawmakers, state or federal agencies propose bills or suggest management changes that affect public lands or access to them.
McCullough said using data to showcase the value of outdoor recreation, nationally and regionally, can help move the needle when lobbying officials on some outdoor recreation issues.
Supporting federal land management agencies, such as the Forest Service, National Park Service or Bureau of Land Management, has also become more important as the Trump administration has cut or offered buyouts to federal workers, Kipp noted.
The Forest Service initially lost 3,400 workers with many more taking buyouts. The Park Service saw 1,000 positions cut, with many seasoned professionals also choosing to leave. Across the federal government, about 317,000 employees left in 2025.
As the presence of agency people on the ground has dwindled from what were already thin ranks, volunteers, recreationists and businesses are attempting to absorb some of the impact.
Fugere said her outfitting business has partnered with the BLM to help with river maintenance.
“So we have kind of taken that on, volunteered to do bathrooms, restock toilet paper, because when it’s not happening that affects our clientele more than anything else,” she said.
When McCullough had trouble partnering KOA with the Park Service for an Acadia National Park pint night fundraiser in Maine, she turned to the park’s fundraising arm.
“We were running into walls trying to contact the Park Service,” she said.
Fugere could relate. She said trying to partner with the BLM can involve too much red tape, as well as the agency’s goal to avoid favoritism in its dealings with outfitters.
“So there is a fine line there that we walk,” Fugere said.
Since the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation relies heavily on grant dollars, much of which comes from the Forest Service, Kipp has turned to area businesses for help.
“I would say now, as federal funds are more restricted, we in order to deliver the scope of programming that we hope to do in any given year, we need … another kind of stream of revenue,” he said.
One of the companies that stepped up was Sacred Waters Brewing Co. in Kalispell. Ten cents of each pint of its Bob India Pale Ale sold goes to the Bob Marshall foundation.
“That was completely on them, which was a windfall for us and certainly welcome,” Kipp said.
Fugere said her business has also created its own conservation program, planting cottonwood and willows along the Missouri River to restore vanishing riparian habitat. Cottonwoods are a flood-adapted species, seeding new trees during high runoff in spring. But the Missouri is a dam-controlled river, resulting in fewer new cottonwoods taking root.
“So we started creating a volunteer program with our customer base that we do one trip a year where we do cottonwood restoration and then willow restoration,” Fugere said.
“We found it a lot easier working with private property owners doing this because we don’t have to jump through as many hoops” as when when working with the BLM or state, she added.
Photo: nameinfame from Getty Images Pro
