Free Republic

Wednesday, 21 October 2009 15:33 A law loosening gun restrictions in America's National Parks goes beyond what proponents initially argued and would allow anyone with a gun permit to openly carry a weapon in Yellowstone National Park, if legal experts are correct. A legislation, proposed and drafted by U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) was billed as a way to uniformly enforce gun laws across different states and National Parks, which are under federal supervision. The law was said to extend the state's guidelines concerning concealed carry into the federal National Park. If you had a permit for a concealed...

Inter Lake editorial U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy has raised the bar to insufferable heights when it comes to recovering a species under the Endangered Species Act, so much so that, if his ruling were upheld, American jurists should be prepared to slave over ESA litigation for eternity. Molloy's recent ruling that restored ESA protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears must have U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials wondering just what it will take to succeed with recovery. Molloy ruled their conservation strategies and plans for grizzly bears, developed through years of expensive efforts, were inadequate. Guidelines and standards for monitoring...

But amid the breathtaking views, she noticed a glaring omission. Under the pristine blue skies, there were hardly any people of color. "At Yellowstone, it occurred to me -- how come there are no black people around?" Peterman said. Why? she wondered. Why weren't they enjoying the parks they helped create, the public lands that belonged to them as well? Peterman embarked on a crusade to address the problem.

A popular trail in Yellowstone National Park has been closed because of new geothermal hot spots that could endanger hikers. Park officials said Wednesday that geologists will use thermal imaging, temperature readings and a ground survey to examine hot spots on the Clear Lake Trail.

Fifteen wolf packs have denned and produced pups in Wyoming outside Yellowstone National Park this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reported. The federal agency, which announced it is continuing to monitor reproduction, did not say in its assessment how many pups might have been born to each pack. Yellowstone packs are raising litters without any apparent deleterious effects... Trappers are also working the Union Pass area near Dubois, where a calf was killed ... Last week, a yearling steer was killed by wolves

For the second time this year a tourist at Yellowstone National Park has been attacked by a bison. a 55-year-old man from Norco, California, was taking pictures of a bull bison that was wandering in the Bridge Bay Campgrounds. The two were about 10 feet apart when the bison charged. a bull bison can stand six feet tall, weigh up to 2,000 pounds and run up to 30 miles an hour. During the next several weeks they are more dangerous than usual because it's their mating season.

The Wyoming Attorney General said Friday will file a lawsuit next Tuesday to challenge the recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's ruling that rejected the state's wolf management plan. "The Endangered Species Act requires listing and delisting decisions to be based on science," Bruce Salzburg told the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation at a symposium about the law in Casper. But the Fish and Wildlife Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Interior, decided in early March to leave the gray wolf in Wyoming on the endangered species list for political and public relations reasons... The Fish and Wildlife Service,...

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) - A geologist at Yellowstone National Park was in the middle of a lecturing a group of colleagues on the rarity of hydrothermal explosions earlier this month when, all of a sudden, one went off just behind him. Geologist Hank Heasler was giving a lecture in the Biscuit Basin on May 17 when a hot pool behind him exploded. It spewed mud, rocks and hot water about 50 feet in the air. Geologists only know of only a handful of such unpredictable explosions in YellowstoneÂ’s recorded history. Heasler and the others were just out of...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser. Park spokesman Al Nash says a 23-year-old man was fined $750 and placed on three years of unsupervised probation for urinating, being off-trail in a restricted area and taking items from the area. The man also was banned from Yellowstone for two years. The second employee’s case is pending. The park’s dispatch centre was called after someone watching a webcam on the geyser saw six employees leaving the trail and walking on Old Faithful on...

Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser. > The geyser was not erupting at the time. >

BILLINGS, Mont. – Wolves in parts of the northern Rockies and the Great Lakes region come off the endangered species list on Monday, opening them to public hunts in some states for the first time in decades. Federal officials say the population of gray wolves in those areas has recovered and is large enough to survive on its own. The animals were listed as endangered in 1974, after they had been wiped out across the lower 48 states by hunting and government-sponsored poisoning.

CASPER, Wyo. A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction and four-year prison term for a southwest Montana man who pleaded guilty in an elk poaching case. Michael David Belderrain of Whitehall, Mont., pleaded guilty in February 2008 to being a felon in possession of a firearm, transporting illegally possessed wildlife and possessing illegally taken wildlife. Belderrain was charged for standing in Yellowstone National Park, shooting an elk just outside the park and dragging the head to his pickup truck in the park.

A female wolf from the Yellowstone region has roamed about 1,000 miles and is thought to be wandering Colorado's central mountains. State wildlife officials say a GPS collar on the 18-month-old gray wolf indicated her last known position was in Eagle County, about 120 miles west of Denver. This is at least the second time a Yellowstone-area wolf has to make it to Colorado. A female wolf wearing a radio collar was hit and killed by a vehicle on Interstate 70 near Idaho Springs in June 2004.

The gradual uplift of Yellowstone National Park's caldera is pushing the earth's crust southwest along the Snake River Plain, affecting much of the Great Basin. "It adds energy to the whole system that we see," said Bob Smith, a University of Utah geophysicist who works with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. "It adds to the whole deformation and expands the Great Basin to the west."

A Colorado company suing the owner of the exclusive Yellowstone Club to recoup a $13 million debt has asked a federal judge to issue a warrant for her arrest after she failed to appear at a scheduled court hearing. The U.S. District Court in Colorado issued a separate arrest warrant on Feb. 13 for owner Edra Blixseth's son, Matthew Crocker, the principal developer of Bozeman's stalled Story Mill Development. As of late Wednesday night, the judge had not issued a warrant for Blixseth, who had been ordered to appear earlier in the day for a hearing to determine the location...

So Yellowstone, the super volcano, is again rumbling? Mercury has been detected throughout the national park (not a good sign) for quite sometime and along with it the ground under Yellowstone Lake is rising. More than 250 earthquakes reported during a 24-hour period ... Scientists monitoring Yellowstone have stated that it has entered into what they have described as a "red zone." Remember Mount St. Helens? The feds warned folks in the region around the mountain to vacate, and most did. Some (a few) didn't. It's been reported that the feds will issue a vacate order to the inhabitants of...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - Run for your lives ... Yellowstone's going to explode! Hundreds of small earthquakes at Yellowstone National Park in recent weeks have been an unsettling reminder for some people that underneath the park's famous geysers and majestic scenery lurks one of the world's biggest volcanoes. In the ancient past, the volcano has erupted 1,000 times more powerfully than the 1980 blast at Mount St. Helens, hurling ash as far away as Louisiana. No eruption that big has occurred while humans have walked the earth, however, and geologists say even a minor lava flow is extremely unlikely any...

Winter in Yellowstone is a time of year when the pace slows, when tourist travel diminishes to a mere trickle, and only the brave (or foolish) set out with camera and tripod in the hopes of capturing unique images. It is a time of struggle for wildlife, of countless epic battles for survival between predator and prey, the outcome determining who lives another day, and who starves to death in the frozen waste. It is a time of deep snow and mercilessly cold temperatures that wreak havoc on equipment, batteries, and appendages. And above all, it is a whale of...

With the increased seismic activity in the Yellowstone Caldera, it is likely that there is some increased interest in in the geology of the area. Here are some resources that should be of interest. First, we have a fairly recent peer reviewed publication on the "Super Volcano" known as Yellowstone, including some discussion of just what a "Super Volcano" is. The largest scale of volcanic eruptions, the so-called super-eruptions, can destroy all living beings and infrastructure over tens of thousands of square kilometres, can disrupt agriculture over millions of square kilometres and can alter global climate for years or decades....