EACH June, at the end of the academic year, I head back to FREE's office in Bozeman, Mont., and spend the summer on a nearby ranch. I cannot imagine a better "commute" than between Seattle and the northern reaches of the Yellowstone ecosystem. On these drives I always recall John Steinbeck's suggestion that Montana would be heaven if it only had an ocean. And I wonder how we can preserve these values.

A hint comes from the recent Forbes magazine featuring Bill Gates. I respect Gates, not for his billions, but for his innovation and entrepreneurship. He has created value through a mix of intelligence, inspiration and force of will.

Our environment needs such an entrepreneur, a person who can discover a new paradigm for recognizing those values, like biodiversity, which are outside today's market. But all too often there is no good link between our environmental values and large, bureaucratic institutions. Multimillion-dollar environmental groups lobby Congress for more laws while corporations lobby to resist.

The losers in this environmental policy arena often end up in court in an effort to win what was lost in Congress. Environmental laws and backup bureaucracies slog along with unsatisfactory results. The options are discouraging.

We need more innovation from small and quick organizations with site-specific information, and local as well as global concern. We need creative institutions whose leaders find ways to reach environmental values economically and economic values environmentally. Responsible liberty is a requisite to such success.

Government can only do so much. It can change the rules of the game to the benefit of this group or that, but as the timber industry has learned, tides can quickly change. Since we can only rent - never buy - politicians, no battle is won, only prolonged. And government seldom creates. It seldom finds ways to make the pie larger, only different ways to cut it - often with a huge kerf in the form of overhead and inefficiency.

From society's perspective, successful entrepreneurs are the

chefs who create new and better dishes from ingredients and combinations not previously seen or realized. They provide the closest thing we have to a free lunch, and they respond quickly to changing tastes and preferences.

A small number of environmental entrepreneurs have long been with us. The Boone and Crockett Club, led by Teddy Roosevelt, was founded in 1887 by America's first conservationists.

On my way to Montana I will pass near the club's recently established Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch. The ranch's mission is to find ways in which wildlife and ranching can peacefully and productively coexist. It is to be a profitable ranch and a wildlife research center.

If it is successful, and so far it seems to be, the ranch will be a model for others. By encouraging species to which many ranchers are hostile, and by succeeding, it can aid ecological balance throughout the West. Wolf reintroduction, for example, is unlikely to succeed if ranchers cannot manage their impact. My wife and I know from experience on our ranch how difficult predators can be. The Roosevelt Ranch may show ranchers how predators may be accommodated with minimal loss of livestock. If so, their presence surely would enhance the West.

Closer to Seattle, The Village Conservancy is seeking new ways to insert environmentally sensitive housing into natural environments without diminishing those environments.

A nonprofit group, the Conservancy seeks to bring landowners together to create low-impact communities in which individuals will have only minimal land for their homes while jointly owning surrounding acreage, which would be managed for aesthetic and conservation values. Such a trial project by The Village Conservancy for the North Fork Valley of Issaquah Creek was authorized recently by the King County Council.

Governmental authorization of innovative land use is unusual and commendable. Such action implies intelligence and political courage.

Environmental entrepreneurs produce social value by identifying new opportunities and motivating action. In this way, voluntary grass-roots cooperation fosters our environmental goals. The small associations envisioned by The Village Conservancy must, if they are to function effectively, be created by mutual consent and mutual interest. They are unlikely to be the solution for everyone.

But with new options, like those envisioned by The Village Conservancy, the more likely we are to harmonize liberty, prosperity, and ecology.

Whether it be integrating an old way of life with more recent environmental concerns, as on the Roosevelt Ranch, or creating new communities and associations centered around environment conservation with The Village Conservancy, environmental entrepreneurship shows its value.