Leadership Quote by Dave Freudenthal

Freudenthal’s line does a careful piece of Western political alchemy: it turns environmental protection from a moral preference into a definition of self and a balance sheet. “Our lifestyle” signals the lived Wyoming mythos - space, ranching, hunting, small-town autonomy - while “our wildlife, our land and our water” grounds that romance in concrete assets that can be lost, measured, fought over. The repetition of “our” isn’t just possessive; it’s a claim of stewardship and, quietly, a warning about outsiders (federal agencies, extractive companies, coastal investors, even tourists) who might treat those resources as disposable or exportable.

The shrewd move is the hinge phrase: “critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future.” Identity comes first, economy second, but the sentence insists they’re inseparable. That’s a deliberate rebuttal to the old boom-state bargain that you trade landscape for jobs. By tying land and water to “economic future,” Freudenthal is making room for a broader Wyoming economy - recreation, hunting and fishing, amenity migration, agriculture dependent on water - without openly declaring war on oil, gas, or coal. It’s an argument designed to be politically survivable in a resource state: protect the place not because it’s pristine, but because it’s productive in more than one way.

Context matters. In the 2000s, Wyoming politics sat at the crossroads of energy expansion, drought and water rights anxiety, and the growing realization that “quality of life” is itself a competitive advantage. Freudenthal’s intent is coalition-building: keep conservatives, sportsmen, ranchers, and tourism boosters in the same sentence, then call that unity “Wyoming.”