Ron Joseph: Yellowstone National Park, a naturalist’s dream

Ron Joseph

Mon, 08/25/2014 - 8:45pm

(Photo by Ron Joseph)

Slopes of Hayden Valley. (Photo by Ron Joseph)

On a warm July morning, 600 bison impede my progress on a road in Yellowstone National Park. With sun-up, the herd is descending from high elevation meadows, where it spent the night, to graze in cooler, shadier bottomland meadows bordering a river in Lamar Valley. A few young bulls jostle; a dozen calves sprint, kick, and jump like newborn colts. In the shade of a luxuriant grove of cottonwood trees, large bulls stand knee-deep in the river, which is fed by melting snow atop the Absaroka Mountains surrounding the valley. The bison are unaware that two miles downriver, a grizzly bear is eating the carcass of their brethren.

It’s a scene reminiscent, albeit a much smaller scale, of ones observed by early explorers and French fur trappers. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson instructed explorers Lewis and Clark to record “animals of the country generally, & especially those not known in the U.S.” Their journals described western buffalo herds “so imence” that they “darkened the whole plaines.”

In 1853, O.A. Stearn was a teenage boy in a wagon train of emigrants moving west on the Oregon Trail. His aunt made him keep a diary, and when seeing his first large buffalo herd, the boy wrote, “We beheld a compact black mass, extending beyond farther than we could see and coming in unbroken masses from the rear. The quaking of the earth and the rumble of the rushing torrent continued for a long time, many estimated the herd to be from four to eight miles long and of unknown width.”

Long gone are the large herds of bison and the vast open prairies described in diaries and journals; they’ve been replaced by cattle and large ranches delineated by barbed wire fences. Today, Yellowstone NP retains a small, living link to an era when bison, grizzly bears, wolves, and Native Americans dominated the western landscape. The park encompasses 3,468 square miles of craggy mountain peaks, alpine lakes, several rivers, deep canyons, lush grasslands and vast forests. To put its size in perspective, if Yellowstone were superimposed on Maine, it would cover 10% of the state. On March 1, 1872, Yellowstone became the world's first national park, the culmination of tireless lobbying efforts of Ferdinand V. Hayden (1829 – 1887), a geologist, and many others who foresaw the growing country’s need for solace and spiritual enrichment in wild places.

The Roosevelt Arch, named in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1903 laid down the first cornerstone of the arch, greets millions of visitors annually at the north gate in Gardiner, Montana.

Yellowstone Bison

Bison (also known as buffalo) top my list of favorite Yellowstone sightings.

They are the signature animal of the National Park Service, prominently displayed as the centerpiece of the agency’s arrowhead, the seal that appears on all uniforms and park signs from Maine to Hawaii. Although bison symbolize America’s national parks and our collective conservation ethic, Yellowstone remains the only place in the U.S. where genetically pure (no cattle genes) bison have lived continuously since prehistoric times. With 4,000 bison, Yellowstone is home to the largest wild herd in the world.

Today it’s difficult to imagine that from 1804–1806, when Lewis and Clark explored the Western U.S., an estimated 40 million bison roamed the Great Plains from Texas north to Canada. In the 1700s, bison roamed east to Buffalo, New York, and the Ohio Valley. In West Virginia, George Washington and a party of hunters shot five buffalo in one day. Near the end of Washington's life, visitors to his Mount Vernon estate were treated to the sight of grazing buffalo with nursing calves.

By 1890 though, wholesale slaughter of bison, primarily by commercial buffalo hunters, had reduced the once great herd to a mere 750 animals. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was the best of the commercial hunters. He earned his nickname as an employee of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. From 1867–1868, Cody killed 4,282 bison, an appalling unsurpassed record.

Many hides of buffalo killed by Cody and others were shipped by rail to Maine tanneries for processing into leather. From the mid-1800s until the early-1900s, the former Thirty-Nine Tannery, northeast of Bangor, handled so many buffalo hides the streams running past it still bear the names Buffalo Stream and Little Buffalo Stream. The tannery burned in 1906.

Having risen from the brink of extinction, bison now number 360,000 in North America. As the enduring symbol of the American west, bison paradoxically symbolize humankind’s environmental sins and our growing commitment to restoring wildlife to landscapes we’ve degraded.

Click the link to listen to Yellowstone Bison’s charming grunt, bellow, and pig-like oink sounds.

Lincoln’s Sparrow

Lincoln’s sparrow makes my Yellowstone list, and not because it’s the polar opposite of bison. Most Yellowstone visitors are understandably too captivated with the park’s charismatic bison, elk, wolves, and grizzlies to pay much attention to an inconspicuous bird with a beautiful song. This sparrow makes my list because its name has origins in Maine. During an 1834 trip to Newfoundland, John James Audubon spent several nights at the Lincoln House in Dennysville, a Maine town in eastern Washington County. When Audubon’s trip to Newfoundland was delayed due to high seas from a Nor’easter, he developed a close friendship with Thomas Lincoln and his wife, owners of the Inn. Later, when Audubon shot a sparrow in Newfoundland, a species new to science, he named it in honor of the Lincoln family. (Audubon collected birds for painting by shooting them with a shotgun).

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Lincolns_Sparrow/sounds

Yellow-bellied Marmot

Marmots are included on my list because I unintentionally disrupted a marmot “spa” on a high elevation snowfield. Initially, I thought I had discovered a mammoth marmot die-off since eight animals did not flinch as I approached. The large eight-pound rodents were merely taking snow baths to cool off during an unusually hot Yellowstone day. Each animal was spread eagle on the snow, belly down. But my presence spooked them into scampering to a nearby boulder field. Their yellow furry bellies were encased in tiny snowballs. Feeling badly that I had interrupted their snow baths, I retreated to the trail. The marmots instantly emerged from rocky crevices and returned to their snow slumber party

Cutthroat Trout

This colorful trout is included here for two reasons: One, I saw several of the park’s iconic fish being eaten by white pelicans on the Yellowstone River. Cutthroat trout are July spawners, which is early for most trout and salmon that spawn in the fall. Hundreds of trout were out of my sight below the surface, but not out of sight of pelicans and ospreys. I watched an osprey laboriously lift a 16-inch trout from the rapids only to be forced to drop its catch by a pirating bald eagle in hot pursuit. Eagles are notorious for sitting in trees, intently watching ospreys dive for fish and then stealing their catch.

Secondly, like the eagle, I too was the beneficiary of a trout meal without procuring it. A fly fisherman gave me a cutthroat trout for dinner. He claimed that the fish was caught on a pond in the Beartooth Mountains, outside of the park’s boundary. At first I was skeptical, knowing that catching and keeping the prized fish is illegal in many of Yellowstone’s waters. But since he offered me the trout in Cooke City, outside the park, I accepted the gift. Its orange-reddish flesh made an exceptionally delicious dinner.

Wild Flowers and Geology

I’d be remiss not mentioning the park’s remarkable botany and geology. Yellowstone in July is awash in bright colors of wildflowers. Most park visitors are so intent on photographing bison and elk they’re oblivious to Yellowstone in bloom. The numerous wildflowers are among Yellowstone’s greatest summer treasures.

I’m not a botanist or a geologist but neither is a requirement to be awestruck by the park’s wildflowers, hot springs and geysers. Here are several photos of Yellowstone’s beautiful floral show and geological features.

Ron Joseph is a retired Maine wildlife biologist.