Yellowstone is looking for a handful of good spirited people or youths with community service hours that need serving for the upcoming National Public Lands Day. You get free entrance to the park and free camping, and you know you’ll sleep well after dragging rocks, clearing timber and hauling trash at high altitudes for seven hours. Hurry, they’re only taking 20 volunteers! Email the NPS with your info at YELL_Volunteer_Office@nps.gov.

A new study has found that climate change will cause more frequent wildfires like the one that burned Yellowstone in 1988. By 2050 it will be extremely unlikely that a season could pass without a massive wildfire, and by 2075 it will be considered the norm. Some of our National Parks in the West will go from dense forests to more open plains and grasslands with fast-growing firs and shrubs. Basically, climate change means that the 400sq mile burns seen on a regular basis in the American Southwest will work their way into Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, etc.

I guess it’s a little bit easier to walk away from an oil spill when the 24-hour news crews can’t easily setup on the spill. New reports have the Yellowstone pipeline dumping 1,200 barrels or 50,400 gallons of crude into the river, 20% higher estimates than Exxon originally released. Right now 750 people are working on sopping up the oil from the banks of the river or find out contaminated debris and passing it through a woodchipper before trucking it away. The floodwaters at the time of the spill pushed the oil deep into side channels, and now that the water’s gone down there’s crude clinging to every bank. Exxon says they’ll bring in more people and resources to help with the cleanup. What they should do is post a notice at the park entrance that any itinerant backpacker can earn $400 a day sopping up oil.

A film crew in Yellowstone shooting a segment on bear safety in the park was interrupted when a hiker walked past while trying to get away from an approaching black bear. The hiker had seen the bear and been backed up to the shore, when a group of nearby kayakers paddled over and helped her swim away from it. The bear wasn’t threatening in any way, she just said she felt more comfortable swimming away that trying to circle back into the forest and avoid it that way.  The incident likely would have passed without notice, but a film crew was on the scene to pique the interests of onlookers.

Photo by Mila Zinkova

The National Park Service is saying that a man who surprised a grizzly and her cubs was killed by the bear in the first fatal mauling in the park since 1986. The man was hiking with his wife about a mile and a half into the park’s backcountry on the Wapiti Lake trail. Investigators are looking into the incident and searching for other hikers and backcountry campers to warn.