Yellowstone National Park and Bio-Diversity

There are, unfortunately, many influential people who don’t understand the value of keeping the GYE exactly as it is today. Let’s examine exactly what the concept of a Greater Yellowstone really is, and what it means to people in general.

Right now, anyone can drive, walk or bike into Yellowstone, or any National Park, and see the wonders of it, because we all own it. We all own this wonderful, natural treasure, a comparative rarity in the lower 48 states, a large, intact eco-system. When you enter Yellowstone, in fact, for the most part as soon as you enter the Greater Yellowstone Eco-system, you are in a wilderness area. I don’t think most people understand this fact, let alone appreciate it. Yellowstone is a wilderness, people! Yes, you can drive a car into it, stop at Old Faithful, or other places in the park, eat lunch, even stay the night in a comfortable hotel room; you are still within a wilderness. You can go right outside and see wild animals, including bear, cougar, wolf, moose, elk, deer, bison, etc., most times from within your car. This is not a zoo; these are wild, dangerous animals, which can and will kill or injure you if provoked. This is a good thing. Why, you ask?

Because it means you are in a place that isn’t completely controlled and ruined by the hand of man.

Mankind has put his hand to most of this planet, especially in the last 150 years or so, and tamed most of it. The majority of it has been changed substantially by mankind, to the point where it is unrecognizable compared to what it once was. Wilderness is increasingly rare as are places that have intact eco-systems essentially the same as they were before man entered the picture. Yellowstone is one of these rare places. The value of such a thing as a place where we can go to get in touch with the primitive sides of our soul is valuable in and of itself, let alone its value in a biological sense as a control against our uncontrolled development in other places.

The fact is, bio-diversity is a valuable thing, something we are just beginning to recognize and appreciate. The bio-diversity of the thermal areas alone has already proven to be of incredible value, as research done on the bacteria from some of the thermal features led to modern DNA identification

Yellowstone and I; A Love Story

I have had the privilege of visiting Yellowstone National Park now for over half my life. My first visit to Yellowstone wasn’t until 1991, three years after the infamous fires that burned so much of this iconic national playground. My entrance at the time was through the aforementioned Grand Teton entrance, and I saw the aftermath of the fires work. At the time I remember thinking how tragic it was that this beautiful place had burned so prolifically. What I did not know then is that fire is an important part of the nature of Yellowstone, and the park environs would not be what they are today without its historically important role.

My visit to Yellowstone that day was only a few hours in duration. A friend and myself were camping quite a distance away in Northern Utah and decided to make a spur of the moment trek to Yellowstone as part of our camping trip. We vastly underestimated the time it would take us to reach the park from our camp spot and as a result, cheated ourselves out of a longer visit; for by the time we reached the park itself there were only a few hours left of daylight. We rushed through Grand Teton, not taking the time to see any of its wonder and beauty, in a mad rush to get to Old Faithful. Like almost any first time visitors, our vision of the park was intertwined inextricably with the iconic geysers image, and so to us Old Faithful was Yellowstone. Ironically, by the time we reached the geyser, it had just erupted, and we would not be able to see the geysers next eruption properly because by that time darkness would have descended.

Instead, we spent the next hour or so literally running through the geyser and hot pool basins, snapping pictures as we went for later, and more leisurely, perusal. (As an aside, I DO NOT RECOMMEND RUNNING ON THE BOARDWALKS OR WALKWAYS NEAR GEYSERS OR HOT POOLS! In your own adventures to Yellowstone exercise extreme caution in the thermal areas of the park! What I did not know at the time was that the majority of the hot pools are so hot that they can, literally, boil the flesh from your bones in a matter of minutes, and even a short exposure to their intense heat is enough to seriously injure and often kill those exposed.) In another ironic twist, the pictures I snapped did not turn out, as I had not threaded the spool of film correctly in the old Kodachrome camera I was using at the time (this was long before digital came along, and I have since hardily embraced that format), and I was left with nothing but fleeting memories of wondrous hot pools and fleeting colors that were fading in the early twilight. We left off our whirlwind tour of the hot springs areas before we even hit Grand Prismatic spring, that so often photographed hot pool, known around the world for its rainbow hues and impressive size. I had seen enough to intrigue me greatly; enough so that I was plagued with the desire to see more of it. I had already begun to fall under the Yellowstone spell.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone helps me understand the most basic part of myself. The natural side that yearns for the tranquility of the wilderness, the good feel of unspoiled forest and wildlife. It helps me understand my place in the world and what my true priorities are. It gives me a respite from the world I live in day today, the world we all have chosen to make for ourselves, which sometimes seems so sterile in comparison.

Most people believe the struggle to preserve Yellowstone occurred a long time ago and was won. Unfortunately that isn't true. The fight to preserve our sacred wilderness continues and will continue as long as there are people. The demands of society and of population have put pressure on Yellowstone that it has never had to contend with before. Yellowstone is still and always will be at risk. Even now there are people asking the federal government to open surrounding national forest land to development. Yellowstone is not just the boundaries of the national park, it is much greater than that, and it needs the entire surrounding national forest land to survive as an ecosystem. If it is to be preserved then we must all care about it, love it and want to protect it.

If I am right about Yellowstone’s ability to take us out of ourselves, to move us and to inspire passion in us, if Yellowstone can inspire that spiritual side of us that sometimes gets lost in our daily lives so filled with technology and progress, then the fight to preserve Yellowstone takes on a much more important role than just protecting some animals and forestland. It becomes a conflict for the best part of ourselves, a war for our spiritual selves, a battle for our very souls.

We can win it, if we choose to. I fear the consequences should we lose.

Yellowstone National Park - A Place of Wonder

We would all do well if we were to heed that lesson. From the largest animal to the smallest, Yellowstone lives that lesson every day. It is the fundamental nature of the world to embrace itself and live every moment of life to its fullest. An elk does what it does because it must. It eats, it sleeps, it runs and it reproduces the next generation of elk because that is what evolution has bred it to do. Just as the predator, wolves, cougars and others kill to eat, sleep and breed because they must do so also. It is the balance they have been created to maintain. They cannot survive otherwise.

Of all species, only the human animal deliberately goes outside those boundaries. We have built our world to exclude the natural and in doing so we are in danger of losing a part of ourselves. That part is a vital essence and its absence in our lives may destroy us in the end. If we can't see ourselves as a part of this world, then we are doomed. We will break down our world into pieces and systematically kill it until we have eventually killed ourselves. Yellowstone is able to remind us that we are a vital part of nature, and that we cannot survive without the natural world.

Do we reject our world or embrace it? Love our world, preserve it, or kill it and therefore kill ourselves? Does Yellowstone inspire great passion in me because of who I am? Or does it help define me as a human being, bring forward in me those passions, the best of myself, the most spiritual side of my being? I choose to believe the latter.