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Wolves and grizzly bears are mostly to blame for a steep population decline in a signature elk herd in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, government scientists said on Wednesday. The elk population in the northern section of the park is prized by sportsmen who hunt outside Yellowstone boundaries in Montana and by the millions who pour into the park each year to see wildlife. Annual counts of the northern Yellowstone elk population show it has plummeted by more than 70 percent since 1995, falling from 16,791 to fewer than 5,000 today. Biologists said wolves and grizzlies are the...

Apologies! So here's two Geology Pictures of the Week, very different. Ansel Adams-ish picture of Old Faithful (click for 2x): And here's Wadi Hitan in Egypt, where whale fossils are found (this is a National Geographic wallpaper image). Click for 2x. 1600 x 1200 wallpaper NatGeo article, " Valley of the Whales"

"I thought it was a horse and carriage," said Wypyszinski. "That was the kind of noise that I heard." By the time he turned around, the two fuzzy brown images were racing quickly toward him. Wypyszinski pulled out his camera quickly, thinking he was going to catch two moose racing down the highway. He quickly learned he was mistaken. "I thought I was having a hallucination or something," said Wypyszinski. "I couldn't believe what that buffalo looked like."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service filed an appeal earlier this month to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the relisting of the estimated 600 grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem. “The Yellowstone grizzly population is increasing at 4 to 7 percent per year and is recovered and the agencies are committed to spending more than $3 million per year to maintain this healthy, recovered population,” said Chris Servheen, Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator, in a statement. The Fish and Wildlife Service delisted the bears in March 2007, declaring them recovered and no longer in...

Federal authorities say two men who escaped from a private Arizona prison and a woman thought to have helped them are believed to be in the area around Yellowstone National Park. The U.S. Marshals Service told Fox News on Sunday that Tracy Province, John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch may be hiding in portions of the park that span Montana and Wyoming. Authorities say it's now believed that Province has separated from McCluskey and Welch. The manhunt for the three intensified after forensic evidence linked at least one of the inmates to the killings of an Oklahoma couple who was traveling...

Wildlife officials have killed a grizzly bear in Wyoming and a grizzly bear in Montana to head-off potential lawsuits. The Montana grizzly killed and partially consumed Kevin Kammer at a Gallatin National Forest campground near Cooke City, Mont. on July 29. The Wyoming grizzly killed 70 year-old botanist Erwin Evert on June 17 on the Shoshone National Forest near the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The circumstances were quite different, but the decision to kill the bears was undoubtedly influenced by a 1996 court case over the terrible bear mauling of 16 year-old Anna Knochel at a U.S. Forest...

COOKE CITY, Mont. (AP) -- A mother grizzly and two of her three cubs have been captured after killing a Michigan man and injuring two other people during an overnight rampage through a campground near Yellowstone National Park. The sow, estimated to weigh 300 to 400 pounds, was lured into a trap fashioned from culvert pipe covered by the dead victim's tent Wednesday evening.

Wed Jul 28, 2010 7:33pm EDT Idaho (Reuters) - One man was killed and a man and a woman were injured by bear attacks in the middle of the night on Wednesday at a popular campground on the edge of Yellowstone Park, wildlife officials said. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department spokesman Ron Aasheim said it was believed one bear was involved and at least two tents were left in tatters in the attack, which occurred at the height of the tourist season. "I thought I would be dinner," said Deb Freele, 58, of London, Ontario, who recalled awakening from...

On June16, 1970, a hiker stumbled upon a shallow grave off a highway near El Cariso, in southern California. It held the body of Florence Nancy Brown, 29, a schoolteacher from El Toro who worked with handicapped children. Thirteen days earlier, Brown told her husband she was going to a PTA meeting, got into her car and vanished.  About a month later, July 11, 1970, a man fishing on the Yellowstone River in Montana cast his line into the rushing waters and, instead of a trout, snagged a corpse. It was the remains of James Schlosser, 22, a social worker...

A partial lunar eclipse set to occur early Saturday should look particularly stunning to observers in parts of North America thanks to an optical illusion that will make the moon look bigger than normal. The moon will pass through part of Earth's shadow, temporarily becoming dark, starting at 6:17 a.m. EDT (1017 GMT) Saturday morning. That cosmic line-up coincides with the full moon of June and a so-called "moon illusion" that, weather permitting, should offer quite a show, according to a NASA announcement. For observers in the central and western United States, the lunar eclipse will occur while the moon...

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) -- A lightning strike in Yellowstone National Park injured nine people waiting to see Old Faithful geyser erupt. One man hit by the bolt on Tuesday was hospitalized.

Thousands of years before Euro-Americans “discovered” the bubbling mudpots and eruptive geysers of what is now Yellowstone National Park, early Americans were spending part of their summer camping in the Yellowstone Lake area. “It’s always been a destination resort,” said Elaine Hale, park archaeologist. “For at least 10,000 years people have been using the lake area.” Thanks to archaeological digs around Yellowstone Lake last summer by University of Montana assistant archaeology professor Douglas MacDonald and 13 graduate and undergrad students, park officials are now getting a broader picture of early human use of the lake area. “The lake may have...

DENVER — In the last two weeks, more than 100 mostly tiny earthquakes a day, on average, have rattled a remote area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, putting scientists who monitor the park’s strange and volatile geology on alert.

A swarm of mostly imperceptible earthquakes continues to shake Yellowstone National Park in what is now the park’s second-largest on record. From the swarm’s beginnings on Jan. 17 through Monday morning, some 1,620 quakes were recorded by seismologists in the park, which sits atop a gigantic volcanic caldera. The activity is centered around the northwest corner of the Yellowstone caldera, in the back-country between West Yellowstone, Mont., and Old Faithful.

Since January 17, 2010 Yellowstone has had the second largest swarm ever recorded. The swarms have been steady at about 10 miles in depth and they have subsided a few days ago. In the past two days the depth has raised up to around 7 miles and in the past couple hours quakes vastly increased. http://www.quake.utah.edu/helicorder/ymr_webi.htm http://www.seis.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/Maps/111-44.html Remember this doesn’t mean we will see an eruption and it most likely means a normal volcano. It is very unlikely we will see a caldera eruption. But these changes are significant and cannot be over looked Some history: Since the most recent...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- Billionaire Ted Turner is getting 88 Yellowstone National Park bison from a faltering Montana program that was supposed to put the disease-free animals on public or tribal lands. The animals were spared several years ago from a periodic slaughter of bison leaving Yellowstone because of worries about animal disease. They are now in a joint federal-state quarantine compound in southern Montana's Paradise Valley but could be moved to Turner's ranch within weeks, state officials said Tuesday....Turner will care for the animals for five years and in return wants 75 percent of their offspring.... Turner, founder of...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Yellowstone National Park is shaking again, but jitters seem few so far. Over eight days, more than 1,270 mostly tiny earthquakes have struck between Old Faithful and West Yellowstone. The strongest dozen or so have ranged between magnitudes 3.0 and 3.8. That's strong enough to feel - barely. The vast majority have been too weak to be felt even nearby. Likewise, online chatter about an imminent volcanic eruption in Yellowstone hasn't really picked up compared with the attention that a similar quake swarm drew just over a year ago. "Perhaps we have done a better job in...

Yellowstone National Park has been rattled by more than 250 earthquakes in the past two days following a period of 11 months of quiet seismic activity in the park. The quakes have been gaining strength, with a 3.1 tremor recorded at 11:03 a.m. today. A 2.9 quake was recorded at 12:38 p.m. Prof. Robert B. Smith, a geophysicist at the University of Utah and one of the leading experts on earthquake and volcanic activity at Yellowstone, said that the activity is a "notable swarm." "The swarm is located about 10 miles northwest of Old Faithful, Wyo., and nine miles southeast...

Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 22:43:34 UTC Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 03:43:34 PM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones Location 44.565°N, 110.972°W Depth 6.5 km (4.0 miles) Region YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING Distances 15 km (9 miles) SE (136°) from West Yellowstone, MT 30 km (19 miles) ENE (76°) from Island Park, ID 56 km (35 miles) SSW (201°) from Gardiner, MT 430 km (267 miles) N (10°) from Salt Lake City, UT Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 0.3 km (0.2 miles); depth +/- 1.4 km (0.9 miles) Parameters NST= 24, Nph= 24, Dmin=11 km, Rmss=0.14 sec,...

University of Utah scientists say seismic images of the plumbing feeding the Yellowstone supervolcano show a magma plume much larger than previously thought. Scientists say they've imaged a plume of hot and molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like slowly boiling soup. A related University of Utah study used gravity measurements to indicate the banana-shaped magma chamber of hot and molten rock a few miles beneath Yellowstone is 20 percent larger than previously believed, so a future...