Theodore Roosevelt was our greatest conservation president. President Roosevelt’s boundless vision and determination resulted in a system of national parks that is the envy of the world, and has been called “America’s Best Idea.” Ironically, his namesake national park, which includes his North Dakota homestead, is currently facing a threat that could permanently degrade a patch of land that was supposed to be protected in perpetuity.

Across the nation, an oil and gas boom is taking place, largely through the utilization of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to extract oil and natural gas from shale formations buried deep beneath the surface. Wells have sprouted up on the outskirts of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and many more are planned there and across the nation, including near other National Park Service-managed lands like Glacier National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. But with this rapid boom, the negative impacts of large scale oil and gas development on national parks has largely been ignored. That is why the National Parks Conservation Association has released a new report on how fracking for oil and gas near national parks is already impacting these treasured places, and how impacts could increase unless we act now.

National Parks and Hydraulic Fracturing: Balancing Energy Needs, Nature, and America’s National Heritage is a comprehensive report on what large-scale oil and gas development adjacent to national parks does and could mean for these parks and the people who love and visit them. It details the known and suspected impacts of fracking on the environment, including harm to air, water, and wildlife—the things that make our national parks so special. It also provides five case studies that analyze national parks that are already in the middle of the oil and gas fracking boom: Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Glacier National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River and Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, and Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area and Obed Wild and Scenic River.

1. Grand Teton National Park hosts its own March Madness competition with wildlife that is found in the park. This year’s Grand Teton March Mania Winner is…
2. Endangered peregrine falcons return to Acadia National Park. These falcons have begun defending their nesting territories, prompting park officials to close areas surrounding Precipice and Valley Cove Cliffs. Be sure to click the photo to see a larger image of these adorable chicks. Did you know: The peregrine falcons were reintroduced to Acadia in the 1980s. Since their reintroduction, more than 100 chicks have fledged on Mount Desert Island.
3. Washington, DC’s cherry blossoms have finally bloomed! Check out this really neat article: Gorgeous “Light Paintings” Show D.C. Cherry Blossoms at Night. Capturing the blossoms at night can be difficult, but this photographer has a very unique approach.
4. Mark Deklin shares with @NPCA his #MyParkStory of how his father’s Parkinson’s temporarily gave way while visiting Badlands National Park. We were touched by this beautiful tweet.
5. The beloved Muppet Kermit the Frog is documented traveling the world. This week we discovered “Kermit on Tour” and his trip to Joshua Tree National Park. If Kermit is having that much fun in the sun, it’s a great reminder for the rest of us to go out and enjoy the warm weather in the parks, too:

Have you seen a fun national park story online? Let me know!

-Megan Cantrell, Senior Coordinator of Member Engagement

Several years ago, I was driving along a snaking bend of State Highway 22 that bisects Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and encountered the body of massive bull elk hanging from a fence that paralleled the road, its back legs hamstrung by four unyielding strands of barbed wire. His antlers were partially buried in a deep, windswept trough of snow and his lifeless eyes fixed on some distant point on the horizon. I wondered how long he had been hanging there.

Since that time, I have become more aware of man’s heavy hand on the landscape, and a deep desire has grown in my heart to change things—really fix the problems, beyond the ebb and flow of politics. Last year, Nature Valley generously granted my wish.

In partnership with Nature Valley, Grand Teton National Park, the Pinto Ranch, and the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation, NPCA embarked on an ambitious fence-modification project to allow pronghorn, bison, and elk safe passage into the park. The eastern boundary of Grand Teton was historically used for cattle grazing since the late 1800s, and many of these fences still stand in various stages of disrepair and pose a serious hazard to migrating animals. Often, the park simply does not have the budget to remove them. That’s why NPCA works so hard to provide support to parks like Grand Teton, whose maintenance backlog is nearing $900 million, and why we also work literally on the ground with partners like Nature Valley to help preserve the large landscapes that sustain so many wildlife species.

Grand Teton still permits some cattle grazing in the park—a grandfathered use from its historic ranching past. The fences in the North Elk Ranch allotment have been kept in good condition, but still block wildlife movement in the northern part of the park, where many species of animals migrate through. In the spring, we met with the manager of the Pinto Ranch to discuss how to make the fences in this area safer for wildlife, while still providing a reliable enclosure for his cows. We collectively agreed upon a modification of a five-mile fence that would raise the bottom wire to allow pronghorn to crawl under it, and then add a top rail to prevent wildlife from becoming ensnared as they jumped the fence.  In the fall, 25 dedicated volunteers headed out to the problem fence, armed with an arsenal of tools. Together we broke the hold of those tenacious hooked strands and restrung the fence, as bison and pronghorn grazed nearby. The bison, being the curious creatures that they are, couldn’t resist a closer look and came to survey the unusual activity on their range.

Our volunteers ranged from 20 to 70 years old, men and women alike, led by our fearless leaders Greg and Gretchen, whose vigilance and efficiency helped keep us moving forward. Volunteers flanked the fence and pulled hard to remove wire and retrieve staples from tenacious old wood posts. As I surveyed our group toiling under the blazing sun, we more closely resembled a chain gang than a bunch of environmental do-gooders. It struck me that these people weren’t policy makers or activists; they were just regular folks out there trying to do something—or, more accurately, fix something. We fixed a lot of fence that day, and as the sun waned, we stood admiring our handiwork: the same sturdy posts, but now, without the harmful bottom wire.

Just as we were ready to hang up our gloves for the day, hauling big unwieldy loops of barbed wire into the back of the pick-up, I noticed a single pronghorn buck approach to within fifteen feet of where I stood. He sauntered over to the fence, contemplating what had changed, and nervously paced back and forth. In one sudden movement, he ducked his graceful horns in the newly cleared space, slipped under the fence, and headed to the nearby irrigation ditch for a drink. It took this intelligent creature less than ten minutes to realize that the obstacle that had been in place for decades was now gone, and to take advantage of our work.

There are some things in life that go beyond words, and I took this as a thank you of the highest order.

Late last month, NPCA helped secure a significant down-to-the-wire victory for Grand Teton National Park. After years of pressure from NPCA, the federal government allotted $8 million toward a total of $16 million to purchase 86 acres along the Snake River from the state of Wyoming and incorporate these lands into the national park. The measure passed just in the nick of time, a few days before the congressional term ended. This land had been particularly attractive to developers; now, instead of becoming a building site for trophy homes or luxury hotels, it will be preserved for wildlife and the public.

The Snake is a major river in the Pacific Northwest, flowing for more than a thousand miles from its headwaters in the wilderness near Yellowstone National Park westward through the Teton Range into Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Native American tribes lived and fished for salmon along its banks more than 11,000 years ago; today, visitors still float, fish, hike, and view wildlife along the river, savoring its stunning scenery. These lands and waters of Grand Teton are critical to preserving important wildlife and fish habitat, and the integrity of the park’s natural resources.

This victory is particularly sweet given the contentious fiscal and political climate in Washington, D.C. Most of the money for the purchase came from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a federal program specifically designed by Congress in 1965 for public land purchases.

A total of $900 million in funding is set aside for LWCF each year from offshore oil and gas drilling revenues—a fraction of the royalties collected—to invest in land and water conservation. Unfortunately, in recent years Congress has frequently diverted LWCF funds for other uses, shortchanging preservation efforts at national parks. In this case, the fund was used exactly as it was intended, to protect threatened land from development. (Another recent example was the purchase of the Doody Ranch, a historic building with a colorful history in Glacier National Park.)

This purchase represents an enduring gift to the American people who cherish Grand Teton’s scenic beauty and wildlife—but there is more to be done. This money will protect the first of three state-owned parcels within the park. The remaining 1,320 acres will require a significant appropriation of money prior to upcoming deadlines in 2014 and 2015.  NPCA and the National Park Service are committed to protecting all the threatened state lands within the park, and are working collaboratively to find creative and innovative funding and legislative solutions that will permanently protect these lands that should rightfully be part of Grand Teton.

NPCA is proud to have played a major role in rallying grassroots support and media attention around this issue and urging lawmakers for three years to allocate the necessary funding to expand protections at this iconic park. This great victory would also not have been possible without the vision and leadership of the Obama Administration, the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, the Wyoming congressional delegation, the Wyoming Governor’s Office and State Land Board, Teton County state legislators, and the Teton County Commission.

She was graceful and photogenic. She was a good mother. She was widely admired for her strength and beauty. But earlier this month, a hunter killed one of Yellowstone’s most famous canines just 15 miles outside the park boundary in Wyoming—the gray wolf that led the Lamar Canyon Pack in the northeast region of the park.

Researchers dubbed the alpha female 832F, though her admirers commonly refer to her as “06” for the year she was born. And she had many admirers—from wildlife photographers to weekend tourists to the researchers who tracked her movements with a sophisticated $4,000 collar.

Gray wolves have had a complicated history in Yellowstone. People eradicated them from the area in the 1920s and they were gone from the landscape for decades until the Park Service successfully reintroduced them in 1995. In the 17 years since, research in Yellowstone has shown the positive impact that wolves have had on the park’s plants and wildlife. But with the success of the wolf reintroduction, these iconic creatures have just recently been removed from the endangered species list and hunting has ensued in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Although hunters cannot shoot the animals within Yellowstone’s boundaries, the wolves themselves do not recognize lines on a map and frequently roam outside the park.

It has been just two years since state officials removed gray wolves from the endangered list in Montana, and only two and a half months since the animals were delisted in Wyoming, but already this year’s hunting season has taken a significant toll on the wolf populations in national parks. To date, hunters have killed five wolves in Yellowstone that were wearing expensive scientific research collars to help researchers study their behavior. Hunters killed at least two other collared wolves at Grand Teton as well.

The loss of these “research wolves” takes a significant toll on ongoing Park Service efforts to monitor and study the wolf population in both Montana and Wyoming. In response, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission voted 4-1 to put certain areas around Yellowstone off-limits to wolf hunts in an effort to protect park wolves. While this is a temporary measure, we believe that the state commission should set in place a permanent area adjacent to Yellowstone and Grand Teton that will protect park wolves that occasionally leave the park’s boundaries.

We applaud the commissioners for this action. Wolves are a well-established part of the economic engine of Yellowstone, a place that draws millions of visitors each year who spend money in our towns and want to see a wide variety of wildlife, including the gray wolf. We also urge Wyoming, which opened up hunting to gray wolves just this past October, to exercise caution in hunting these animals.

Wyoming officials should use Montana’s situation as a lesson and create appropriate space around the park that is off-limits to hunting. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has the ability and duty to establish protected regions around parks in Wyoming and greatly limit the toll on wolves to ensure that both Grand Teton and Yellowstone wolf packs are better protected.

As for the rest of the Lamar Canyon Pack, their future is uncertain. The pack may end up splitting into smaller packs or breaking up altogether—though the animals’ behavior is difficult to predict. What’s certain is that NPCA and other wildlife enthusiasts and park lovers around the country will be watching and advocating for the safety of these iconic creatures.

This month has been a sad one for Wyoming’s wolves. On October 1, the federal government removed wolves from the protection of the Endangered Species Act, allowing the state to permit hunting of these animals, despite glaring deficiencies in Wyoming’s wolf management plan. Even worse, the state included national park lands (namely, the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway and Grand Teton National Park) in a designated hunting area. Although no wolves will be hunted this year in national parks, the inclusion of park lands within a state hunting zone sets the stage for a future challenge to the Park Service’s authority over wildlife.

Wolves have just reached their minimum recovery goals, and an aggressive hunt is no way to manage for a future population of wolves. There are only approximately 250 wolves in the state, not including those living in Yellowstone National Park. Wolves were eradicated from the area in the 1920s and are just recently on the road to recovery thanks to a successful reintroduction effort in 1995. Despite this, Wyoming is aggressively targeting a quota to kill 52 wolves this year in hunt areas outside of Grand Teton and Yellowstone, seeking to ultimately reduce the population to as few as 100 wolves outside of Yellowstone within the next few years.

NPCA feels this is no way to manage a recovering species. These actions will have a direct, negative impact on wolf packs living inside Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, since these animals are wide-ranging and regularly move across park boundaries on to lands where they will be hunted. 

The John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway contains a 24,000-acre tract of land managed by the Park Service that connects Yellowstone to Grand Teton. Although NPCA believes that the Park Service has ultimate authority over all lands within the parkway, the state is challenging this authority by refusing to remove national park lands from the hunting zone. The Park Service will need to act decisively and pass special rules to prohibit the hunting of wolves in Wyoming’s national parks or else they will jeopardize their ability to deny wolf hunting in the future.

Why protect wolves? If you are not moved by the beauty and significance of the animals themselves, consider their relationship with the rest of the region. The loss of predators such as wolves has a ripple effect that throws the entire ecosystem out of balance, affecting not just other wildlife, but plant populations, too. Recent research has shown that the loss of wolves and bears creates an overpopulation of game animals such as deer and elk, which in turn reduces plant life and diminishes biodiversity. Hunting by humans simply does not offer the benefits that natural predators do in the wild.

More than 54,000 NPCA supporters have already voiced concerns to the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking for clear protection of wolves in Wyoming’s national parks–but both agencies have thus far failed to do so. In just 22 days a total of 26 animals have already been killed across the state. NPCA will continue to urge the Park Service to clearly prohibit the hunting of wolves on all of Wyoming’s national park lands.

You can stay up to date on this and other issues concerning national parks by signing up for NPCA’s action alerts at www.npca.org/join.

By Sharon Mader, Senior Program Manager, Grand Teton

Just south of Grand Teton National Park, a Houston-based company had proposed to develop 136 natural gas wells on U.S. Forest Service lands that would surely have destroyed the Hoback Basin, an area cherished by Wyomingites for its spectacular scenery, recreational opportunities, and wildlife. Thanks to the work of Wyoming communities, conservation groups, and concerned citizens, these 58,000 acres will now be protected in perpetuity. 

The Hoback Basin is just 30 miles south of Grand Teton National Park and home to elk, moose, deer, pronghorn antelope, native trout, Canada Lynx, and the headwaters of the wild and scenic Hoback River. The energy development corporation, Plains Exploration and Production Corporation (PXP), could have significantly impacted the park’s blue skies and pristine air quality with its development leases. The people of Wyoming made their voices heard and the mantra was that this area was “too special to drill.” This message resonated loud and clear and resulted in overwhelming support for a buyout of the company’s leases; and the company finally agreed. In October, PXP opted to sell their leases based on a provision in the 2009 Wyoming Range Legacy Act that allows leases to be sold and retired given a willing seller and willing conservation buyer.

Our colleagues at The Trust for Public Land played a significant role negotiating the $8.75 million buyout. To date, $4.5 million has been raised towards the completion of the sale. Kudos to PXP for their decision to sell their leases, preserving this special area. 

Wyomingites understand the need for natural gas and energy production, but they also understand that some places aren’t appropriate for industrial development. This outcome is truly a win-win for both PXP and the people of Wyoming. The efforts and persistence of local citizens, including park advocates, hunters, anglers, river users, and conservationists, were instrumental in making this agreement a reality. Several times over the past year, we asked our members locally and across the country to weigh in to oppose development of this area and thousands responded. NPCA members joined forces with state and local conservation organizations and sportsmen’s groups to ask the Forest Service to consider stricter environmental regulations in this sensitive area and urged PXP to step back from their development plans. These comments made a tremendous difference in protecting the Hoback and Grand Teton National Park.

This Wyoming-based solution demonstrates how people from all walks of life can work together for a common vision to achieve one of the most significant oil and gas lease buyouts in American history. Examples such as this are an inspiration for the future and pave the road for community involvement and responsible corporate decision-making that respects the values and traditions of local communities and preserves irreplaceable natural assets. 

Thank you to NPCA members and activists whose concern and outreach on behalf of the Hoback Range has saved this amazing piece of the Wyoming landscape.

• Encourage your kids to do the Junior Ranger program.
• Go swimming at String Lake after an early morning boat ride across Jenny Lake.
• Take the early morning boat ride across Jenny Lake and hike to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point
• Go swimming in the shallows of String Lake, which is a short distance from Jenny Lake.
• Do a horseback ride out of Colter Bay or Jackson Lake Lodge.
• Take the tram to the top of Rendezvous Mountain at Jackson Hole Ski Resort (when haze from wildfires doesn’t obscure your view).
• Spend at least one evening or early morning on the deck at the Jackson Lake Lodge in search of wildlife.
• Rent bikes to cycle along the park’s new pathway system, which may offer the best view of any bike ride in the country, when haze from wildfires doesn’t obscure it.

I know, that probably sounds like a full itinerary already. But, before you leave, the park has two of the best visitor center experiences we have encountered for kids. First, the Craig Thomas Visitor Center has a wonderful tactile display of animal fur, from wolves to bison, and paw/hoof print impressions into which the kids (and adults!) can place their hands for comparison. Somehow, kids always know exactly what to do. Isabelle and Lucas were then drawn to a small climbing wall, simulating their imagined first ascents of the Grand. Leaving the ropes behind, they soon had managed to climb every boulder inside and outside the visitor center. The fact that the park orientation film in the visitor center was out of order, though disappointing, didn’t matter much.

Second, the Lawrence S Rockefeller Preserve at the south end of the park is an absolute treat. I had been there once before and wanted to see how the kids would react to the experience in the visitor center’s two rooms designed for quiet contemplation (quite appealing after several weeks with our adorable children…). The first room has four video screens with different nature and wildlife scenes, accompanied by the sounds of zephyrs, cascading brooks, bugling elk, and more pieces of nature’s symphonic mosaic. After being quieted in that room, we slid into the adjacent meditation room, closed our eyes, and listened to thunderstorms, birds flitting from one ear to another, wolves’ plaintive howls, tumbling autumn leaves, and other soothing natural sounds. As we ambled down the exit hallway, I thought we would spend just a few minutes in the beautiful library. Instead the kids, still captured by the impact of our auditory meditation, each silently entered, grabbed a book off the shelf, sat in the comfy leather chairs, and began quietly reading. We joined them.

Had we not already decided to leave the Tetons that afternoon in pursuit of breathable air (wildfire smog and haze, again), I’m convinced we could have lingered for hours, sat on the porch, sauntered along the preserve’s less-traveled trails, and been the better for it. As it was, Isabelle had become so engrossed in her book, “Forest Animals,” soaking up every syllable about wolves, that she didn’t hear me for almost a minute as I announced it was time to go. The experience with Lucas was identical.

Whatever magic exists at Grand Teton, it was well at work that afternoon.

More stories in this series:

• Read week one at Sleeping Bear Dunes (August 31, 2012)
• Read week two, On to Pictured Rocks and the Ice Age Trail (September 7, 2012)
• Read week three, Olympic–A Gold Medal National Park for Kids (September 14, 2012)
• Read week four, Glacier–More than Ice and Snow (September 21, 2012)
• Read week five, On to Yellowstone! (September 28, 2012)
• Read week seven, Volcanoes Are Cool (October 12, 2012)
• Read week eight, Adventures on Wizard Island (October 19, 2012)
• Read week nine, The Difference a National Park Makes (October 26, 2012)

There are approximately 9,600 historic buildings in the National Park System and just about as many creative ways to put them back into service or open them up for the public to explore and enjoy. These are buildings with character, style, and often a rich story to tell. They are a part of the landscape and remind you that you are in a unique region or environment. However, before many of these buildings can be used again, they need some form of restoration work.

Historic preservation is about preserving the structures themselves, the craft and skills that produced them, and the history that took place within and around them. Preservation helps to keep a landscape intact and is often environmentally wise as well. Unfortunately, the Park Service has a sizeable maintenance backlog for its historic structures and is not able to fully care for all of them.

Undeterred, national park managers and resource staff have gotten creative in finding ways to preserve these irreplaceable buildings. Perhaps no other park has had more success recently than Grand Teton.

Grand Teton National Park―best known for the incredible mountain views of the Teton Range―is using every trick in the book to stretch its tight preservation budget. For example, in 2010, the park partnered with HistoriCorps, a nonprofit organization that brings skilled craftspeople and volunteers together on historic preservation projects. The benefits to using volunteers are reciprocal: project managers can keep costs down while volunteers learn valuable skills working on some of the most picturesque job sites in the world. Grand Teton has a long history of using volunteers for historic preservation and its work with HistoriCorps on two historic structures is just the latest chapter. For more information on HistoriCorps’ work in Grand Teton check out these two completed projects here and here. 

Grand Teton is also hosting the Western Center for Historic Preservation in an ambitious undertaking to establish a historic preservation training center for the Park Service in the West. To do so they are using one of the park’s oldest dude ranches, White Grass Ranch, as a living classroom for hands-on training. Participants will learn the trade by fixing up the ranch itself, and once the rehabilitation is completed―the ribbon cutting is slated for 2016―it will serve as a base for staff learning historic preservation skills throughout the Alaska, northern Rockies, and Pacific Northwest regions. What the Park Service is doing at White Grass Ranch addresses two potential stumbling blocks with their work to bring new life to old buildings: training the pool of skilled staff to treat and care for the structures, and finding suitable uses for them once they are rehabbed.  

Grand Teton should be a model for other parks. While it would not be efficient to have a large historic preservation center in every park, many parks could benefit from a pool of skilled preservationists among Park Service staff. By using volunteers to augment that pool, the Park Service can make great progress in preserving park historic structures and making them available for use by the park itself and by partners in the community.

Learn more about HistoriCorps, White Grass Ranch, and the Western Center for Historic Preservation and check out NPCA’s new slideshow on a few of the striking buildings in the Park System that have been or could be preserved with enough resources.

The gray wolf has made a stunning comeback in the northern Rockies. In the late 1920s,  wolves had been completely eradicated from western Wyoming as well as the rest of the lower 48 states. Conservationists reintroduced wolves to the region in the 1990s, successfully restoring new populations to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, as well as the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway, a 24,000-acre tract of land managed by the National Park Service that connects the two parks.

Today, the animals are well on their way to recovering. This should be a success story. However, now that the federal government plans to “delist” the wolves in Wyoming–remove them from endangered species protection–officials will view them as predators over the majority of the state, allowing people to shoot them on sight. Although wolves would still be protected within Yellowstone, the animals could be hunted as trophy game animals in the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway, unless the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service specifically exempts national park lands from wolf hunting before wolves are delisted. You can take action to help protect these wolves in these national parks.

Why protect wolves? If you are not moved by the beauty and significance of the animals themselves, consider their relationship with the rest of the region. The loss of predators such as wolves has a ripple effect that throws an entire ecosystem out of balance, affecting not just other wildlife, but plant populations, too. Recent research from Oregon State University (reported in ScienceDaily last month) reinforces the role of predators in wildlife management. The researchers, OSU Professor William Ripple and Professor Emeritus Robert Beschta, examined 42 studies from the past 50 years on how large carnivores affect ecosystems in North America, Northern Europe, and Asia, finding similar results throughout these studies: that loss of wolves and bears creates an overpopulation of game animals such as deer, and in the case of Wyoming, elk, which in turn reduces plant life and harms biodiversity. Since plants naturally sequester carbon, the impact of predator loss to ecosystems may even have an impact on the climate. According to the study, hunting by humans simply does not offer the benefits that natural predators do in the wild.

More than 54,000 NPCA supporters have already voiced concerns about wolf hunting in Wyoming to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, asking him to protect wolves in national parks. To date, however, the Department of the Interior has not made changes to the final wolf delisting rule to exempt wolf hunting in these areas. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now accepting comments on the proposed wolf delisting, giving wolf supporters another chance to weigh in—but only until tomorrow, May 16.

Since the wolves can’t submit their own public comments, it’s vital that more national park supporters take five minutes now to speak out for their protection before tomorrow’s deadline. Visit our website for sample comments, and the link to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife public comment website.