Cattlemen Vs. "Granola Bars"

By JEROME CRAMER/LIVINGSTON

Tahoe and Aspen are overcrowded; Santa Fe is commercialized; when a mogul or a movie star wants to enjoy untainted American spaces, what's left? Try Montana. For members of the names-in-bold-print set, from Ted Turner to Tom Brokaw, from Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan to Mel Gibson and Kiefer Sutherland, from Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen to Oakland A's owner Walter Haas, the Big Sky State has become the hottest of hideaways. Says Russ Francis, a former San Francisco 49er football star who recently joined the rush to Big Sky Country: "This is the last best place in America."

What began as a trickle 15 years ago has turned into a wave of well-to-do outsiders, as business tycoons, movie stars and other pilgrims bring a taste of the Chardonnay-and-chevre life-style to the underpopulated northern rangelands. Rocker Huey Lewis has bought a spread in the western section of the state, joining anchorman Brokaw and stars Michael Keaton and Jeff Bridges. Fashion designer Liz Claiborne and her husband own not one but two ranches. "We went out to stay in a small resort and ended up buying the place," she says. Ted Turner has purchased about 127,000 acres of prime land just north of Paradise Valley and Yellowstone National Park and is building a home there; he is believed to be the largest landowner in the state. Even baritone Pablo Elvira has moved west; he sponsors an opera festival in downtown Bozeman each May.

For every celebrity there are dozens of ordinary travelers who visit, fall in love and buy (or dream of buying) vacation homes. It is easy to see what entices them: breathtaking landscape, boundless fresh air and only 5 people per sq. mi. (vs. 3.3 deer and hundreds of trout). "It's a long way from the trade lanes and booming coasts, but it's a wonderful place to live and work. Trouble is, everybody wants to claim it all at once," says Tom McGuane, the laconic author (Ninety-Two in the Shade, Something to Be Desired) who beat the trend by moving to the state in 1968.

The flood of newcomers has also brought new values and enthusiasms to the high prairie, sometimes outraging longtime residents in the process. Take elk hunting, for example, which is about as popular in Montana as golf is in Palm Springs, Calif. Turner infuriated hunters by barring them from his property. Old-timers retaliated by taking out newspaper ads warning Turner to stay off their land. Then Turner announced he would raise buffalo, not cattle, on his spread. "The buffalo were here first," he insisted. Local cattle ranchers are worried that the strange herds might spread disease. They are even more concerned about a campaign by environmental activists -- known sneeringly as "granola bars" -- to reintroduce gray wolves to Yellowstone Park. Ranchers fear the predators will grow hungry, start roaming and devastate their herds.

For decades Montana ranchers have viewed the privilege of using federal grazing land as an inalienable right. Now hikers and campers object to soiling their boots in high mountain pastures used by cows as summer feeding grounds, and many of them want the cattle banned. A new range war, in fact, is mounting between those in the traditional occupations of mining, logging, ranching and farming and those who want the state's resources protected. "The traditionalists have to realize that we've reached the end of what we have to waste," says naturalist and writer David Quammen. Some environmentalists have raised the slogan "Cattle-Free by '93." Ranchers reply with bumper stickers that read CATTLE GALORE BY '94.

Some of those battles are liable to rage for years to come, but the influx of newcomers has helped spur at least one long-term benefit: an effort by McGuane and others to preserve their land through conservation agreements. A group called Montana Land Reliance arranges tax breaks for landowners who pledge never to subdivide their holdings and to protect their water and streams. So far, the Reliance has placed 77,000 prime acres of ranch property under agreements that protect more than 170 miles of stream and riverbanks. Others, including Turner and Claiborne, have promised their land to the Nature Conservancy and similar groups to protect it from development.

There is a touch of irony to those high-minded efforts. Would they be quite so necessary, some folks wonder, if the glamorous set had simply stayed away in the first place? As one sign of the permanent change that glitz has wrought, a line of 250 people recently snaked down the block leading to the local Moose lodge in the ranching town of Livingston, about 80 miles north of Yellowstone. Farmers, local ranchers and teenagers were answering a casting call for parts in a movie about fly-fishing, soon to be shot by Robert Redford. The film is sure to entice even more visitors to the state's trout streams, leaving locals even more irked than they already are at the vacation styles of the rich and famous.