Day 1 in Yellowstone

Early this morning, we started our journey by meeting our tour guide Mike.  He introduced himself and gave us some idea of what our day would look like.  Since we started the day at 7 and had to be in Mammoth Hotsprings by 10:00, we drove down into the Lamar Valley to see if we could spot some wolves.  Shortly after we reached the valley, we found a bison carcass and pack of 5 coyotes right across the river from the bison.  We watched the coyotes play for a little while, but eventually decided to move on to see the wolves.  On the way, we saw a herd of about 40 elk that were out on a mountain flat.  They were just standing there and, all of a sudden, they grouped really tight together and started running full speed.  There were 3 pronghorn that were running full speed real close to the elk.  We tried to see if there was anything chasing the elk, but we couldn’t see anything from our position. We kept on driving and eventually arrived at where all of the wolf watchers were set up.  They had their scopes on the Junction Butte Pack.  We originally only saw 7 wolves lounging around and playing, but 2 wolves joined them later. The two that joined them came from the direction from the elk herd that we saw running.  I am curious if we had stayed to watch those elk, would we have seen the two wolves testing them.

After we finished seeing the wolves in the Lamar, we rendezvoused with Travis, the bear biologist, and learned about the bear management in the park.  We learned that the park service was feeding the bears garbage starting in early years of the park. Feeding the bears started to create many problems for the park.  They were causing property damage and hurting people, so the park service decided to remove the garbage tables from the park.  The problem they had found, was that the bears had stopped searching for wild food sources, so the park service gave the bears four years to wean them off of the garbage food.  The bear population fell dramatically.

This population drop led to them being listed on the Endangered species list.  Over the past 15 years the bears have been listed, delisted and relisted again multiple times.  Mike had asked us what we think about the bears, if we think they should be listed or hunted or anything like that.  I believe the grizzly bears don’t need to be listed.  Their population is large enough that they are self sustaining. The question is if their population is self sustaining with hunting.  The answer is, I don’t know.