Every year, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil (known as “fracking”) moves closer to national park boundaries, posing threats to park wildlife that science is only beginning to understand.

From the eastern boundary of Glacier National Park in Montana, visitors can throw a stone and hit any of 16 exploratory wells and associated holding tanks, pump jacks, and machinery used to force millions of gallons of pressurized water, sand, and chemicals into shale rock formations thousands of feet beneath the surface. More than one-third of the current 401 U.S. national park units lie either directly above or within 25 surface miles of shale basins, meaning that wildlife in dozens of national parks could be impacted, including Channel Islands, Santa Monica Mountains, Grand Teton, Canyonlands, New River Gorge, Mammoth Cave, and Delaware Water Gap. The profusion of rigs, roads, and machinery so close to national park landscapes is troublesome for these parks and for the diversity of life within them.

The research carried out so far—outlined in the four categories below—shows clear impacts on the land, water, and air that wildlife depend on.

1. Habitat Fragmentation

Animals do not know when they leave national park boundaries. Wells and machinery on nearby land can physically block and break up the habitat that wildlife needs for survival.

Research has found that the impacts from even a single well pad and road can be dramatic, from the reduction of intact forest—by 22 percent in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale region—to changing the balance of species in the region, resulting in the loss of native plants and animals and the rise of invasive weed species.

Western landscapes have been especially hard hit. More than 85% of the once dominant sagebrush steppe habitat, which supports 100 bird and 70 mammal species in Wyoming alone, has been lost. And for the pronghorns that migrate into Grand Teton National Park, energy equipment and roads literally block established migration routes.

2. Water Quality

About 20 to 40 percent of the water injected into a fracked well belches back to the surface during drilling and production. These fluids, known as flow back liquids, contain c

hemicals, lubricants, and naturally occurring pollutants such as salts, radium, and barium. As a result, wastewater generated by hydraulic fracturing can be a dangerous brew with few effective options for disposal or treatment.

In some production areas, companies have trucked wastewater off-site to municipal treatment facilities, but these facilities aren’t equipped to remove some pollutants, and the treated water they discharge can remain high in compounds known to kill fish, corrode metal, and contribute to the excessive growth of certain algae (which in turn can lead to more fish kills). In some places, facilities discharge contaminated wastewater great distances from the original well sites, making fracking’s environmental consequences even more far-reaching.

Fracking may also contaminate groundwater. Duke University researchers believe natural fissures between layers of rock and groundwater could let toxic fluids rise to the surface, where they may pollute water used by people or wildlife. Cattle exposed to fracking fluids suffered serious reproductive problems and, in some cases, death. The implications for wildlife—and people—are ominous.

3. Water Quantity

Fracking operations do not affect water quality alone—they also remove great quantities of water from places that cannot spare it. Fracking a single gas or oil well requires millions of gallons of water. Many thousands of wells have already been drilled, and demand is growing.

NPCA’s Center for Park Research analyzed the impacts of reduced water flows on native fishes and natural river processes in national parks along the Colorado River in a 2011 report. These impacts include declines in native fish populations and changes in plant populations on stream banks.

Aquatic habitats on the Eastern seaboard could be in particular jeopardy. Fracking in Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey would reduce the amount of water flowing through the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River and Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, potentially harming the federally protected dwarf wedgemussel in the river. Development could also have consequences for the Susquehanna, the area’s largest river.

4. Noise and Air Pollution

Air compressors, industrial traffic, and other noises associated with fracking can alter the behavior of wildlife. In northwestern New Mexico, a research team found lower species diversity within bird communities in noisy areas than in quiet control areas nearby—in some cases even affecting the plants those birds help pollinate. A second study in New Mexico revealed that persistent noise from compressors altered mice and bird communities and hampered the dispersal of piñon pine seeds.

Air pollution produced by fracking may also affect animals. A long-term Colorado-based study found that extended exposure to air pollutants from natural gas fracking could cause health problems such as neurological and respiratory ailments and cancer. The researchers collected air samples every six days for nearly three years within 500 feet of active well pads. Their analysis identified two to three dozen kinds of airborne hydrocarbons that are produced during fracking and pumping of natural gas.

In northeastern Utah’s Uintah Basin, near Dinosaur National Monument, 10,000 oil and gas wells, some of them hydraulically fractured, created ozone levels that were worse than those of New York City.

If these impacts on air quality have the potential to harm human visitors to these national parks, what are the effects on wildlife species that live in the parks year-round?

Conclusions

Scientists must conduct additional research to fully understand the many impacts of fracking on wildlife, but we should not wait to take preventative steps to minimize the harm.

Understanding the life cycles and movements of wildlife species before beginning gas and oil exploitation could reduce the negative impacts of energy development on national park wildlife. Companies should directly engage the National Park Service during the planning and implementation processes to put best practices into place and place sensitive areas off-limits, if needed.

The animals in America’s national parks include some of our country’s most iconic and treasured species. We should treat them with respect, plan carefully, and enact widely available pollution controls. From the tiny dwarf wedgemussel to the mighty American bison, we have too much at stake to get it wrong.

What You Can Do

• Take action: Tell President Obama to ensure safeguards for fracking on federal lands.
• Read NPCA’s report with five in-depth case studies on the effects of fracking on national parks.

Last September, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) approved a plan to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species List in Wyoming. This controversial delisting could someday allow state-run wolf hunting within the John D. Rockefeller Parkway, a 24,000-acre national park site that connects Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.

National parks are created in part to serve as sanctuaries for wildlife. It would be very bad policy to allow hunters to kill animals fresh off the Endangered Species List within a national park boundaries. While authorities in the state have not yet permitted wolf hunting in the Rockefeller Parkway, it has claimed authority to do so, and they say they will review the option to permit such hunting annually.

FWS excluded Yellowstone from the allowable wolf hunting area, but the agency chose to keep the Rockefeller Parkway within the state’s “Trophy Game Management Area” (TGMA), which defines where wolves can be hunted. During the plan development, the Park Service formally requested that the Rockefeller Parkway be removed from the TGMA, but FWS ignored the request and the Park Service failed to take further action.

Not only has the state of Wyoming succeeded in keeping the parkway within the TGMA, but state officials have indicated that they will not rule out the possibility of a wolf hunt there—a bold assertion, given the fact that the Park Service is primarily responsible for wildlife on the lands it manages.

In response, this May, NPCA presented a formal petition to the Park Service requesting a rule prohibiting wolf hunting in the Rockefeller Parkway so that the issue can be put to rest before any wolves are ever hunted there. This rule would safeguard and protect wolves in the parkway and ensure that our national parks continue to provide sanctuary for this important animal, whose reintroduction has helped to restore ecological balance to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

According to its enabling legislation, the parkway—established in 1972—was intended to provide a “spiritual and physical connection” between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. It also provides a critical link for park wildlife, including wolves, to safely move between these iconic parks.

While the Rockefeller Parkway’s enabling legislation does permit hunting, it clearly gives the National Park Service, not the state, the primary authority to manage wildlife there. In addition, the Park Service is required to evaluate the hunting of all species within the parkway boundaries and pass formal rules that either approve or reject hunting based on the health and integrity of the natural resources, as well as the safety and enjoyment of park visitors. Park Service officials have already stated that using these criteria, they cannot support wolf hunting in the parkway. NPCA’s petition simply asks that the Park Service move forward and use its authority to assure permanent sanctuary for wolves within this critical park site.

Learn more

• Read NPCA’s recent press release, “National Parks Group Acts to Safeguard Wolves Living Inside Wyoming National Park Unit“
• Get more on the history of the Wyoming wolf delisting in “Wolves under Fire in Wyoming“
• Learn more about NPCA’s work to protect wolves and bears

I get a real sense of accomplishment when the Park Service takes action on an issue we’ve been pushing for years. In early April, the agency renewed temporary regulations to keep hunters from killing black bear cubs and sows with cubs with spotlights at their den sites in Gates of the Arctic and Denali National Preserves.  And new temporary regulations were adopted to disallow using bait to hunt brown bears at Denali, Wrangell-St. Elias, and Yukon-Charley National Preserves in Alaska. This is great news for bears in our northernmost national preserves.

For those less familiar with bear hunting, “spotlighting” is a controversial practice that involves crawling into a bear’s den while it is hibernating, waking it by shining a light in its eyes, and shooting it. That is hardly sportsmanlike, and it’s not “hunting.” That’s killing.

Why, do you ask, does the Park Service have to take this action to renew its bans on these practices each year? Because Alaska allows spotlighting, baiting, and other objectionable hunting methods throughout the state. The Alaska Board of Game makes the rules for managing wildlife, and its main goal is to ensure that there are more than enough animals for human consumption—quite a different approach to managing wildlife populations than the Park Service takes. In order to ensure there is plenty of moose and caribou for hunters to kill, the state has a very active Intensive Management program aimed at reducing populations of wolves and bears. To increase the number of wolves and bears hunters are permitted to kill, the Alaska Board of Game has increasingly liberalized hunting methods to include baiting and spotlighting.

This treatment of bears—which serve an important ecological role at the top of the food chain—is in stark contrast to how Congress directs the Park Service to manage wildlife. The Park Service must specifically maintain natural and healthy populations, in Alaska and throughout the nation, and Park Service management policies make it explicitly clear that manipulating any wildlife population (like wolves and bears) to benefit a hunted species (like moose or caribou) is not allowed. Period. No exceptions.

From the perspective of the state of Alaska, this is simply a state’s rights issue. Officials here have argued long and hard that the Park Service has no authority to reject these hunting rules adopted by the Board of Game. NPCA and the Park Service have a very different opinion. The Park Service has all the authority in the world to reject state hunting rules that conflict with Park Service regulations and management objectives. It has been successfully tested in states all across the country.

As I’ve said before, the issue is not if sport hunting is allowed on national preserve lands—it is. The issue is how you hunt.

Now that the Park Service has again exercised its right to push back on the Board of Game’s hunting regulations, we are highly supportive of taking the all-important next step of making the Park Service position a permanent regulation so the agency doesn’t have to renew these rules every year. We’re hoping that’ll happen this spring—and based on our past advocacy on this issue, we know we have thousands of NPCA supporters around the country behind us as we urge the Park Service to do the right thing to protect these important and iconic animals.

If you liked this story, you might also like

• NPS Should Not Be Forced to Support Alaska’s War on Bears (February 1, 2012)
• Getting Close to Katmai’s Bears in the Hopes of Protecting Them (July 31, 2012)
• Death of Alpha Wolf Sparks Renewed Concern over Hunting near Yellowstone (December 27, 2012)

1. I’d like to say we have all been there—setting the story straight about what it is that we do for work. Here is a fun meme about park interpreters and the various perspectives on what it is they do:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=432122843492538&set=a.430438936994262.90465.210845942286897&type=1&theater

2. The outdoors provides us with amazing experiences, especially in our national parks, but finding opportunities to get outside can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are many organizations and programs that can help. Check out how four youth groups discovered nature and their potential, from Get Inspired Outdoors:
http://www.outdoors.org/getinspiredoutdoors/

3. Sunday March 31’s Google doodle featured César Chávez, the first contemporary Latino American to be honored with a national monument:
http://www.google.com/doodles/cesar-chavezs-86th-birthday

4. Glacier National Park’s Facebook page had some fun on April Fools’ Day–finally capturing a jackalope on camera:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151381855739912&set=a.360427434911.154957.74553624911&type=1&theater

5. Yellowstone National Park Rangers receive all kinds of questions, ranging from “Do you put the animals away at night?” to “How do you turn it [Old Faithful] on?” Here is your dose of Geyser humor:

“Ever wonder why our Old Faithful predictions are so accurate? The whole + or – 10 minutes disclaimer is due to a sticky valve.” – Courtesy of Yellowstone National Park’s Facebook Page.

Have some fun online park stuff to share? Let me know!

-Megan Cantrell, Senior Coordinator of Member Engagement

Today, March 22, we celebrate World Water Day. Officially sanctioned by the United Nations, this year’s theme is water cooperation, which recognizes the need to balance demands and priorities among multiple players involved in water management decisions.

Much of Everglades restoration is about water cooperation and finding appropriate management solutions to meet the many needs of those dependent on the ecosystem while restoring the historic “River of Grass.” 

In the spirit of water cooperation, many partners came together this week to celebrate the completion and ribbon cutting of a one-mile bridge on Tamiami Trail, a major Everglades restoration project and the largest construction project in the history of the National Park Service (NPS). NPCA staff and board members joined with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) Jo-Ellen Darcy, and Everglades National Park Superintendent Dan Kimball on an inaugural crossing of the bridge.

Tamiami Trail (U.S. Highway 41/State Road 90) connects Tampa to Miami and forms a portion of the northern boundary of Everglades National Park. It provides access to one of the most popular areas of the park–Shark Valley Slough. The road is also the only way to access the Big Cypress National Preserve Visitor Center and Headquarters.

Since the road was built in the 1920s, Tamiami Trail has acted as a dam, cutting off the natural north-south water flow through the greater Everglades ecosystem. As a result, Everglades National Park is starved of vital water, deteriorating habitat for wading birds and other wildlife and altering the park’s unique ridge-and-slough landscape.

In 1989, Congress recognized the need for immediate restorative action and authorized a law known as the “Modified Water Deliveries project,” which included bridging this one mile of Tamiami Trail.  Construction started 20 years after it was authorized. Finally, today, cars can drive over the bridge with water flowing underneath as they look south to the vast expanse of Everglades National Park.

We are thrilled that this first phase of bridging is finished and appreciate the many benefits it brings. This project is critical to restoring water flows and distribution that marine wildlife, fisheries, and nesting colonies of birds rely on, including the endangered Everglade Snail Kite and the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow. Additionally, bridging Tamiami Trail will increase the capacity to move more water from Lake Okeechobee through the central Everglades, thus reducing the devastating water flows that are killing coastal estuaries, fueling red tides, and wasting billions of gallons of freshwater. People have benefitted directly from the project, too. The bridge construction already has brought much needed jobs to South Florida—from 2010 to 2012 alone, 1,212 jobs were created.

While park wildlife will feel the real, positive impact of some of these benefits in the near future, the one-mile bridge alone will not achieve the water flows necessary to restore the Everglades and truly reconnect the divided parts of the ecosystem. We must move forward with the additional bridging of Tamiami Trail.

According to the National Research Council’s “Progress Toward Restoring the Everglades: The Third Biennial Review,” additional bridging of Tamiami Trail is required to achieve significant ecological benefits. NPS recognizes this and has already recommended an additional 5.5 miles of bridging, which Congress authorized in 2012. The planning and design phase is underway right now at NPS’ Denver Service Center. The next critical step is securing funding for the project. 

Everglades was the first national park dedicated for its biological diversity as opposed to its scenic vistas. However, as each year passes, its biological integrity is increasingly jeopardized by altered water flows. Each year we are losing critical habitat and endangered species. 

Bridging Tamiami Trail is the highest priority project restoring an ecosystem in a national park. Now that the first mile is complete, we look to continuing this work with our partners, in the spirit of World Water Day’s theme of water cooperation, to build on this momentum and make a real difference for America’s Everglades. 

For more information, see our recent press statement on the Tamiami Trail bridging and learn more about NPCA’s Great Waters program.

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.

Scientists estimate that rats are responsible for half of bird and reptile extinctions worldwide, and island wildlife populations are particularly vulnerable. The Channel Islands provide critical habitat and nesting grounds for a variety of land and shore birds, including the threatened Scripps’s murrelet. In 2001 and 2002, seven governmental and nonprofit organizations collaborated on an innovative invasive species removal program as part of a larger effort to protect and restore biodiversity on the islands.

A new Park Service video describes some of the efforts conservationists made to remove the rats, and some of the hopeful results, including a four-fold increase in Scripps’s murrelet nests, an increase in the Scripps’s murrelets’ hatching rates from 30 to 85 percent, a wider habitat range for Cassin’s auklets, and strong improvements for other animal populations, including native lizards and mice. The researchers also recorded ashy storm-petrels nesting on the island—for the first time ever.

Park officials and their partners will release a report on their findings later this year, but in the meantime, the video summarizes the good news while capturing some of the scenic vistas that make this part of the world so special.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

Learn more

• See more photos of park wildlife and learn more about these stunning islands by watching NPCA’s recent slideshow on this park.
• Read about the recent recovery of the island night lizard at Channel Islands National Park.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, most of the credit for the species’ successful recovery goes to a decision by the U.S. Navy and the Park Service to remove non-native pigs and goats from Santa Barbara, San Clemente, and San Nicholas Islands where the lizard lives (Santa Barbara Island is officially part of Channel Islands National Park; the other two islands are managed by the Navy). The invasive animals had degraded the lizards’ habitat, leading to the decline in their populations. After their removal, the lizards slowly but surely regained their footing. Now, more than 21 million of the reptiles live on San Clemente alone! (NPCA also fought successfully to remove non-native grazing animals from Channel Islands, though in a different region of the park. On Santa Rosa Island, a private hunting and cattle-grazing operation was also degrading habitat; the invasive species were finally completely removed by 2011.)

The island night lizard is one of 145 plant and animal species that live only on the Channel Islands and nowhere else on Earth. The lizard is also not the only threatened species to make a dramatic recovery at this park—the brown pelican and the island fox are two others that went from near-extinction to a healthy recovery. See photos of park wildlife and learn more about these stunning islands by checking out NPCA’s recent slideshow on this park.

A few interesting facts about the island night lizard, from the Park Service website:

• Studies on Santa Barbara Island have shown that island night lizards are not nocturnal as their name suggests, and are actually most active at midday.
• The island night lizard gives birth to live young (as opposed to laying eggs), which is not common among reptiles.
• Island night lizards are slow growing and long-lived, some reaching 25 years of age.
• During the course of their long lives, they accumulate many injuries, including regenerated tails, miscellaneous cuts, missing toes, eye injuries, infections, and the presence of cactus spines.
• With their unusually low metabolic rate, the lizards do not have high energy demands and can live on about half the food that other similar-sized lizards require.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

The disease is caused by a fungus that generally spreads from bat to bat, although people can also carry the spores on shoes and clothing. (Humans can’t contract the disease.) In caves where the animals were exposed to the disease for a year or longer, some types of bats suffered mortality rates of 90 percent or higher, raising the real risk of extinction for some species. Park officials at Mammoth Cave began taking precautions two years ago to reduce the possible spread of white-nose syndrome, including the use of decontamination mats to prevent the spores from clinging to visitors’ shoes. Now, the Park Service is launching a wider public information campaign.

This week, the Park Service released a series of three videos, Bats in Crisis, to help spread public awareness about the importance of bats in pollination and pest control, the deadliness of white-nose syndrome to bat populations, and ways that park visitors can prevent the spread of infection. Bat lovers and tourists to the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Southern states, take note.

Watch the other two videos in the series on the Park Service website.

The national parks that have reported bats with white-nose syndrome are: Acadia National Park (Maine), Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park (Washington, D.C, Maryland, and West Virginia), Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park (Georgia and Tennessee), Cumberland Gap National Historical Park (Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia), Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (New Jersey and Pennsylvania), Great Smoky Mountains National Park (North Carolina and Tennessee), Mammoth Cave National Park (Kentucky), New River Gorge National River (West Virginia), Ozark National Scenic Riverways (Missouri), and Russell Cave National Monument (Alabama).

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications

Learn more

• Bat populations are in decline around the world. Learn more about the problem at Bat Conservation International.
• Learn how to build a bat house to help protect bats near you on NPCA’s website.

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.