News

Three weeks ago reservations at Yellowstone National Park were wide open, as the National Park Service and concessionaire Xanterra were bracing themselves for a slow, slow summer. That was three weeks ago. Today Park officials report a flurry of reservations for the summer, as visitors commit to a summer vacation at America’s oldest national park. More consumer confidence and relatively …

It’s never a good time to speed and drive drunk in Yellowstone National Park, but the stakes will be higher Memorial Day weekend, when Park rangers will be conducting safety and sobriety checkpoints inside Yellowstone.  Rangers will be looking for traffic and safety violations and for impaired drivers. In 2008, Yellowstone law enforcement rangers investigated over 400 vehicle accidents. Newcomers …

A section of Yellowstone’s Grand Loop Road from Canyon Junction to Fishing Bridge will be closed today through Thursday to allow National Park Service staff to repair a broken water main under the road about a mile south of Canyon between the Canyon Corrals and the south end of the North Rim Drive.  The break occurred yesterday at around noon. …

After several attempts to deter a yearling male wolf from his fascination with humans and bikes, Yellowstone National Park officials killed the young rebel along Fountain Flat Drive. The wolf was a member of the Gibbon Meadow Pack, first roaming the Midway Geyser Basin and then lurking around Biscuit Basin and Old Faithful. There were several reports of the wolf …

The U.S. Senate Tuesday passed an amendment allowing the legal holders of loaded guns, rifles and semiautomatic weapons to carry them into Yellowstone National Park as long as state and local law allowed it. The amendment to a bill restricting the rights of credit-card companies passed by a 67-29 margin, attracting 39 Republican votes, 27 Democratic votes and one independent …

That didn’t take long: Xanterra Parks & Resorts has fired two of the six workers caught on Webcam defacing Old Faithful Geyser, while one of them was fined $750 by a federal magistrate for defacement of National Park property. In addition, the 23-year-old man charged with urinating on the national icon was placed on three years of unsupervised probation being …

Advocates and wildlife officials are squaring off over the latest hazing of Yellowstone National Park bison, with Park officials defending the use of helicopters and herders to move a herd back into the Park earlier this month. A herd had wandered into an area of the Gallatin National Forest west of Yellowstone National Park and 800 acres of the nearby …

It’s not a good time to be a wolf in Yellowstone National Park, as several wolves have become too familiar with the humans present in the Park — to the point where the wolves need removal. First, a single wolf in the Old Faithful area has become much too familiar with humans, to the point of chasing bicyclists and bikers. Park …

If it’s summer in Yellowstone National Park, it’s time to plan your routes partially based on the road closures. For 2009, the road closure to worry about is a doozy: the rebuilding and rerouting of a segment of the park’s Grand Loop Road between Madison and Norris through Gibbon Canyon. It is one of the most-travelled sections of the Grand …

Green is certainly in at Yellowstone National Park, and concessionaire Xanterra adds to the movement with the opening of a “green” retail space at Mammoth Hot Springs. The former gift shop in the Mammoth Hot Springs hotel lobby is receiving a makeover, as into an interpretive facility dedicated to informing park visitors about climate change and offering environmentally friendly products. …