[…] you the Atlantic coastline; Shenandoah National Park in Virginia welcomes you to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachian Trail; gushing geysers can be found in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park; and mossy green tree trunks and a misty shoreline beckon at Washington’s Olympic National Park. The crown jewels of this nation’s park system are […]
A Yellowstone gray wolf. ©Yellowstone National Park The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is broken. Indeed, it was born broken. Enacted in 1973, the act is based on the myth of the balance of nature and, in particular, on a flawed understanding of the biological state of the Americas at the time of Columbus’s […]
[…] Cerros Del Abrigo scanning the grasslands of the Valle Grande spread out below, you might feel as though you’re looking down on the famed Lamar Valley of Yellowstone. Abundant elk herds feed in wide swaths of emerald grasses, and miles of prime trout streams give way to hillsides of ponderosa pine. Park-like forests provide […]
[…] means that decisions about park budgets and how to run them are heavily politic! ized. One result: The fees charged for entrance to such crown jewels as Yellowstone National Park are seriously underpriced to please voters. On a brief trip through Yellowstone a few days ago, my wife and I, as well as a […]
[…] different. Unwilling to pay their share, they ignore the fact that recreation affects federal lands as much as timber harvesting, mining, or grazing. The sewage system at Yellowstone National Park was overwhelmed by park visitors disposing eighteen rolls of toilet paper daily in 1998 and 1999. As Yellowstone dumped raw sewage into nearby pristine […]
[…] value exceeding $150 billion. Despite this wealth of resources, there are serious infrastructure and environmental problems. There are billions of dollars in maintenance backlogs, sewage contamination in Yellowstone, and 90 to 200 million acres of federal land at high risk of catastrophic fire. The root of the problem is not a lack of funds […]
[…] recreation away from home and 30 percent more likely to participate in outdoor recreation close to home (Lee, Scott, and Floyd 2001, 439). The costs of visiting Yellowstone National Park illustrate the importance of travel expenses. If a family of four traveled from Washington, D.C., my calculations show that it would spend between $770 […]
[…] working on to stitch together easements on private land that historically has provided an important corridor for elk, deer, and bear through the Madison River Valley between Yellowstone National Park and the Spanish Peaks in the Gallatin Range. “We’re already starting to see elk moving out of Yellowstone Park,” says Long. It’s a sign […]
[…] a little moisture, a cool cloudy day, and in some cases a change of season are the way she snuffs out a fire. The 1988 fires in Yellowstone National Park only stopped burning when fall’s first snow arrived. Now, in the first week of summer, it is already starkly evident that all that money […]
[…] any other creature. I don’t wear a wolf hat, I don’t collect wolf pictures, and I don’t even own a wolf coffee mug. My passion is with Yellowstone’s natural system as a whole. I’m captivated by the intricate interplay of wolves with elk, aspen, beetles, ravens, fire, weather, and people–the part of the equation […]