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

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.

In conservation, it is easy to get wrapped up in wonky policy debates or overcome by process. Fortunately, my Nature Valley-sponsored “Path of the Pronghorn” hikes each fall are a poignant reminder of the beauty and natural order that exist in Yellowstone National Park and why we work so hard to protect it.

This season, I led five trips with a total of 35 individuals across Mount Everts, a prominent peak in the park’s northern range. Starting at the pronghorns’ high-altitude summer habitat of the Blacktail Deer Plateau, following ancient migration paths across a forgotten landscape for more than ten miles, we drop several thousand feet in elevation to arrive at the animals’ wintering grounds near Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance of Yellowstone.

During the course of this cross-country jaunt, I explain the biological and natural history of the Yellowstone pronghorn while observing them in the backcountry, unaffected by roads or other development. The importance of our Nature Valley habitat improvement project becomes all the more obvious after seeing pronghorn unfettered by fences. Much of the time when I’m working with volunteers to improve pronghorn habitat, we are removing or adapting fences to help the animals migrate safely and find adequate snow-free winter habitat. These hikes, however, are about enjoying the many surprises the backcountry has to offer.

Hiking during the fall rutting season, we often get to witness the famous elk bugle, so close you can almost feel their breath. It’s also not uncommon to wander up on a lone bison bull standing motionless under a scratching pine—more than once we had to alter our route to avoid these iconic and stately sentinels of Yellowstone. Last year, a large group of us were even fortunate enough to witness the entire Blacktail wolf pack—16 animals—trot right in front of us, and we were able to follow and observe them hunting elk.

Over the past three seasons guiding more than 100 people, I’ve yet to take the same path twice. Every trip has had its own special sightings and experiences.

On September 30, our hike started out as so many have in the frosty first hours of dawn near the still and reflective Blacktail Ponds. After a few hours we arrived at the first of the many unnamed kettle ponds that dot the plateau of Mt. Everts. Normally, this is right in the middle of the elk activity, but despite hearing them bugle in Gardiner and Mammoth on the drive up, we were not hearing nor seeing anything. When a skittish bison took off running at the sight of us almost a half mile away, I realized wolves had been back since my last hike. With all the prey animals chased out of the area, we were not expecting to see much the rest of the day. I decided to take a detour to a slight saddle to the west, figuring if there were elk anywhere they would be there, so we should at least take a look. Plus, I knew of a rare moose horn to show folks along the way.

Just as we arrived on a hill before the pass, I stopped to spot the horn with my binoculars. What I saw instead was a large collared wolf appearing over the horizon. Black as a new moon and totally uninterested in us, we watched this magnificent animal continue into the draw below us. Excited and stunned, we all stood there basking in our good fortune.

Should we continue toward where the wolf had just been? As we considered what to do next, I looked up and saw we had more company.

We froze as a second wolf, this one large and gray-colored, came over the same hill, snorting and sniffing the ground as it went, only interested in the black wolf’s scent. It headed toward a small kettle pond and was bounding through the tall reeds around it when we saw the black wolf’s head pop up. The gray wolf disappeared while the black wolf jumped toward it. This hide-and-seek went back and forth for a number of minutes until the black wolf moved south and we lost sight of it.

The gray wolf then sat on the hill above the pond for more than 15 minutes while we sat eating our lunch. Just looking around cool and calm as can be, it could have been mistaken for a pet dog on a porch. Finally, it howled mournfully for a full fifteen minutes across the hillsides with only the five of us and the rest of the wildlife there to enjoy the moving sound. When visitors see wolves along the roads of Yellowstone, they typically share the experience with dozens of others. To experience wildlife like this, alone in the backcountry, is as unparalleled as it is unforgettable. Finally, the gray wolf got a response (the black wolf?) and disappeared over the hill.

Sharing this seemingly inaccessible corner of the park and experiencing the landscape and wildlife as they are meant to be goes far beyond any typical sense of workplace satisfaction. Mount Everts is a profound source of pleasure and renewal, and a reminder of the responsibility we have when we live in the shadow of Yellowstone to protect its endless wonders and surprises.

With the recent release of Skyfall, the new James Bond adventure, I’m reminded of how my love of the secret agent’s adventures and my passion for national parks led to writing a Bond-style thriller, set in Yellowstone National Park. Unleashing Colter’s Hell tells the story of a single park ranger’s race to prevent an attack that could destroy the United States.

Let me back up a few years.

In 1997, I served as a seasonal ranger at Yellowstone’s West Thumb geyser basin. While at the park, I lived in a remote single-wide trailer without many modern conveniences like television. As such, I had countless hours for “bubblegum reading.” Some of my favorite novels were the James Bond spy thrillers. You could say thrillers are in my DNA, as my father named me after Sean Connery, the first actor to play the British spy. But the appeal of these stories runs deeper than my name; it’s their exotic locations, along with a compelling hero battling bad guys for the future of the world that captured my imagination. 

Perhaps it was the isolation of the Wyoming wilderness or the lack of distractions, but as I read these books, a question occurred to me: Why wasn’t there an American equivalent to these master spy novels? America doesn’t lack exotic locations. I grew up traveling to nearly every state in the Union and visiting hundreds of the national park sites. I’d boated through the saw grass wetlands of the Everglades, tramped under the otherworldly stone arcs of Arches, and ridden horses through the wilds of Glacier. The United States in general and our national parks in particular have enough interesting locations for thousands of stories.

I wondered, who could serve in the place of James Bond? James Bond was a “jack of all trades.” His job required him to fly planes, rappel off of steep mountain slopes, drive high-performance vehicles, and even know exactly how a martini should be made: shaken, not stirred, naturally. In addition, Bond works for the well-known MI-6, Great Britain’s counterpart to the CIA. Bond was equally comfortable in the field and in the halls of power. 

Who in the federal government could hold a candle to the super spy? It couldn’t be someone in the FBI or CIA. Those archetypes have been explored before and even show up in several James Bond novels. No, it occurred to me I was looking for a park ranger. On any given day, park visitors could want to know the name of countless plants and animals, the thinking behind the park service’s wildfire management, or even a recommendation for the best nearby restaurant. A ranger has to know it all. But rangers also have to do it all. Rangers can be found tracking down dangerous fugitives on one day, while the next, they are helping to save endangered species such as grizzly bears or gray wolves. Like Bond, rangers fly planes, rappel off of mountains, and drive high-performance cars all in a day’s work. Some can even make an excellent martini. 

Yes, a park ranger could make an excellent American version of the British agent. Now all that was needed was a story. James Bond battles international conspiracies and attempts at world domination. Obviously, national park rangers don’t face these types of dangers … or do they? Yellowstone is home to the world’s largest super volcano. Past eruptions have buried much of the eastern two-thirds of the country in dozens of feet of ash. If the volcano blew today, it could well be curtains for the country and world.  What if someone or some organization could trigger a volcanic eruption? Voila! I had my location, hero, and a compelling threat, a great story idea.

In 2009, with the gentle prodding of my writing coach, I began working on the novel. Over the next three years, I wrote more than 70,000 words, produced several drafts and rewrites, and finally published the thriller in August of this year: Unleashing Colter’s Hell. (Shameless plug: You can find it here on Paperback or Kindle.)

Thankfully, the Yellowstone attack in my novel is pure fiction. But if it weren’t, I know America’s park rangers would be up to the challenge.

In July 2011, I received an unexpected email from someone named Lisong Ni. I’m glad I did.

Lisong is part of a small group of people working to create a new national park in China’s Qinghai Province. He contacted me because of my experience in Wyoming and Montana, including Yellowstone National Park, an area similar geographically and geologically to China’s Qinghai Province. After a year of corresponding and a site visit to Montana and Yellowstone from the working group in 2011, I was invited to China in September to help assess the area’s natural, historic, and cultural resources, and to discuss management options for the soon-to-be-created Kunlun National Park.

When I stepped off the plane in Xining, China, it was clear I was in a different world.

The Qinghai Province is China’s most diverse–Tibetan, Mongolian, and Muslim people all call the region home. The area is similar to Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, except that 19,000-foot mountain peaks, high plains, sheep herders, wild yaks, camels, temples, monks, and small farms dot the landscape. 

The Qinghai Province is the least-populated of all Chinese provinces. The region contains vast reserves of oil and gas, rare minerals, and tremendous energy potential. China sees Kunlun National Park as a way to make great contributions to the global economy, protect natural resources, provide environmental education, and increase the living standards for people in the region.

The park would also protect wildlife and wildlife habitat. Similar to Yellowstone’s northern pronghorn, Tibetan antelope experienced a population decline in the early 1900s. Millions of these animals once roamed the high Tibetan plateau; now herd numbers are in the thousands.

One reason for the population decline is illegal poaching. Another is fencing. When Tibetan sheep herders corral their animals, the fencing keeps sheep in, but does not allow wildlife to move easily across the landscape.

For the past eight years, I’ve worked with landowners, ranchers, land management agencies, and volunteers throughout southwestern Montana, altering and removing fences like this. As China changes and evolves, I am hopeful their fencing practices will too.

My experiences in the Kunlun Mountains and in the valleys of the Qinghai province were life-changing. I met people on their land, listened, and communicated without speaking a word of Mandarin. I learned that despite our so-called differences, most people want the same things: to share the natural world with curious souls and protect wildlife’s place on the landscape.

The people working to create Kunlun National Park believe in honoring the culture, history, and natural wonders of the Qinghai Province, improving lives for people who call this region home, and setting aside big areas of wild country for wildlife to thrive in and for people to enjoy. I believe in the Kunlun National Park project and look forward to seeing how this project unfolds.

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.

The world’s first national park is, not surprisingly, a fascinating, magical wonderland. Take your kids! There’s nothing quite like watching your children thrill at their first Old Faithful eruption, or feeling your souls jump in unison at the primordial howls of wolves in the Lamar Valley. Yellowstone offers so many surprises. It is a place for sharing time and for solitude. And, believe it or not, it’s possible to find your own small corner in paradise even when the “buffalo jams” on Yellowstone’s roads are in peak season.

We entered through the famous Roosevelt Arch by Gardiner, Montana, and Mammoth Hot Springs provided quick evidence that we had entered a different realm. The Norris Geyser basin confirmed the difference, with its mess of color, mineralized trees, frothy cauldrons of super-heated water and steam, and a nose-curdling aroma like cracked, old Easter eggs. Steamboat Geyser quickly became Lucas’s benchmark for geyser comparisons. Steamboat is the world’s tallest active geyser and it demands your attention by continually threatening to erupt (though it seldom does).

If we had only experienced the Upper Geyser Basin, the kids would have been satisfied. Both loved every minute there. Their glee at seeing Old Faithful for the first time is indelibly etched in my memory. Beehive Geyser, a turn of the head away from Old Faithful, became Lucas’s favorite. We had the good fortune to see Beehive’s jet-stream twice—first, shortly after our arrival at Old Faithful and once again when we were joined the next morning by the kids’ friends, Matthew and Samantha.

Our two families spent the entire morning traveling the Upper Geyser Basin from Old Faithful to Morning Glory Pool with a Young Scientist backpack supplied by the Park Service at the visitor education center desk during one of our multiple visits there. Its contents included an infrared thermometer for determining water, steam, and ground temperatures from a distance; a stopwatch for timing geyser eruptions; and a microbe wheel that was easy enough for the youngest of the kids to use to guess the temperature. We missed those fun tools when we visited the colorful Grand Prismatic, the Fountain Paint Pots, and the Artist Paint Pots, all of which were a hit.

The only disappointment at Old Faithful was unavailability of age-appropriate “Young Scientist” booklets for the kids to earn a Yellowstone Young Scientist patch along with their Junior Ranger patches.  At peak season, we were told none would be available for another two weeks!

The wildlife, however, did not disappoint. The kids wanted to get up early enough our first morning in the park for a chance to see wolves. That meant reaching the Lamar Valley by sunrise. Our early morning was rewarded with coyote and pronghorn sightings and rambunctious bison of all ages, running, jousting, and, in Isabelle’s words, just standing there looking fat. About 75 minutes after sunrise, shortly after turning the car around, doubting wolves were on the program, we suddenly found our giddy selves standing with other lucky wolf-seekers, gazing at four howling, yipping wolves, winners of Yellowstone’s early-bird lottery. Isabelle, who had recently purchased her own wolf puppet, Logan Lightning Bolt, could not find the words to describe how thrilled she was to see the real thing.

A short time later, having returned to Canyon for breakfast and a trip down and back up the 328 steps to the view of Lower Yellowstone Falls from Uncle Tom’s Trail, we were ready for much more of the world’s first national park.

Tips

• Encourage your kids to do the Junior Ranger program and check out a free Young Scientist Kit at the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center.
• Allot plenty of time for the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center. It is fantastic and the exhibits are designed with kids in mind. The visitor center at Canyon also had fascinating and engaging exhibits. We spent at least an hour in each.
• Hike the geyser basins early to avoid the heat of the day. Bring an infrared thermometer from the Young Scientist Kit, or bring your own if you want it available at other places in the park. It can keep your kids occupied for hours as they test the temperature of hot springs and geysers.
• If you’re serious about trying to see wolves, stay at Roosevelt or Canyon the night before and be at the road through the Lamar Valley at sunrise. There are no guarantees, but the payoff is high.
• Make dinner reservations at the Old Faithful Inn well in advance, lest you be denied or offered a less-than-ideal dinner time.
• Whether you stay there or not, explore the Old Faithful Inn. If you have the time, watch Old Faithful erupt from the front deck. We read, journaled, and wrote postcards during a relaxed wait for our final show.  
• Although you can drive the Grand Loop in a day if you’re pressed for time, try and break it up and spend time in each area.
• At Mammoth Hot Springs, you can maximize your chances of a good experience with younger children by bypassing the lower parking lot by the terrace in favor of the lot at the top, which is further down the road as you leave Mammoth.
• If you have an RV, be prepared for parking challenges at peak times.

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 six, Inspiration, Perspiration, and Contemplation at Grand Teton (October 5, 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)

As her cousins raced down a path in Yellowstone National Park a couple of weeks ago, Mia lagged behind.

She was upset. I don’t even remember exactly what she was upset about, just that it was the kind of meltdown that is an age-old staple of family trips.

Anyone who has ever gone on a Griswold-like cross-country trip, either as a child or parent, knows about such inevitable drama. I’m still not sure how my parents had the will and patience to pile three kids in the back of a station wagon (one without air-conditioning or a radio) and drive a few thousand miles, hitting national parks, Wall Drug, and countless rest stops. But they did. And now I appreciate that and much more.

We, the baby boomers who went on these trips as kids, like to say that kids today don’t want to get outside. But often the problem is that we don’t take them outside. I’m as guilty as anyone. Which is why last year when my family asked what I wanted to do for my 50th birthday, I said: “Go camping in the Redwoods—like we did when we were kids.”

We didn’t quite turn the clock back. We flew to California. We had a rental car with air-conditioning and satellite radio. But once we got to the Redwoods, just the smell of the place took me back a few decades. So did seeing Mom reading to her four grandkids.

She found “Everybody Needs a Rock” by Byrd Baylor in the gift shop and read about how to pick out a rock. Not just any rock. A special rock that fits just right in your hand, not too small and not too big. A rock that you find yourself and keep as long as you can, maybe forever.

“Everybody needs a rock,” the book begins. “I’m sorry for kids who don’t have a rock for a friend. I’m sorry for kids who only have tricycles, bicycles, horses, elephants, goldfish, three-room playhouses, fire engines, wind-up dragons, and things like that—if they don’t have a rock for a friend.”

In the months since that trip last summer, the last one we made with Mom, I had forgotten about this book. But Mia hadn’t.

When we were in Yellowstone and Mia got upset, I caught up with her on the path and prepared to say something that I hoped would help. Before I got a chance, she opened her hand and showed me something. A rock.

“Remember that book Nana read to us?” she said.

I suppose this is where I was supposed to tell her that we don’t remove anything from national parks, that if everyone took a souvenir—even a little one—the place would be altered. I didn’t say this. I just told her that it was a very nice rock. And that Nana would be very happy that she remembered the story. And then I explained that I was fine, that clearly there was something in the dry air that was making my eyes water a little.

A few days later, Mia and her cousins went to some Junior Ranger programs. And the ranger told them how we don’t leave our garbage in the park. And we don’t take things from it.

Mia decided she should leave her rock at Yellowstone.

I know Mom would have liked that Mia remembered the story she read and found a rock. I think she would have liked even more that she left it there.

This is what Yellowstone means. It isn’t just the world’s first national park. It’s a place full of millions of individual memories, some involving a single stone. It’s a place I went to as a kid and took my daughter to as an adult. And it’s where I was when I got a call from my sister saying that, instead of going home, I better come straight to Tucson.

My mom, the same woman who not too long ago was climbing mountains in her backyard, was confined to a hospital bed in her home. We ended up putting the bed by a big window, so she could at least see those mountains. But after a few days, she wasn’t opening her eyes.

She always loved to read. So my sisters read to her, everything from the Bible to “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.” Eventually I took a turn, picking something I found on her bookshelf.

“Everybody needs a rock,” I began.

When my dad died in 1996, it was sudden. I sometimes wondered which was harder, losing a loved one so quickly, or watching their body gradually shut down. I’m still not sure.

I just know that when Mom took her last breath, shortly before a spectacular sunrise in the desert on June 30, it made me think everybody needs a rock. Even adults. And maybe not just a metaphorical rock, like faith or friends. Those certainly are useful. But there’s something to be said for a real rock. Maybe even a bunch of them.

And thanks to my mom and dad, I know where to find some. And where to leave them.

This story originally appeared in the Florida Times-Union and is reprinted with permission. Columnist Mark Woods is on a year-long sabbatical, studying the future of the national parks. His latest story, “Camping in New York City” describes an unusual trip he took to Gateway National Recreation Area on the recommendation of NPCA staff. To read more about his year, visit www.markwoods.us.

If you liked this story, you might also like:

• The Other Side of the Clouds: Behind the Scenes of NPCA’s Latest Video
• The Next Stewards of Our National Parks
• On the Edge: Fracking and the Fate of Theodore Roosevelt National Park

As the season rushes into high summer, I’m left thinking fondly of the past month in Yellowstone National Park and Paradise Valley near my home in Livingston, Montana. The fickle transition from spring to summer is often associated with the astrological sign of Gemini, or twins, and this is especially fitting for me, because every June, the pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) I work to protect almost always give birth to twins.

Perhaps my own June birthday makes me biased, but for me, the twin fawning is the most memorable facet in the life of the pronghorn. Pronghorn fawns prancing behind their mothers makes all seem right in the world. Graced with what looks like a permanent smile, perky ears, and long eyelashes accentuated by a highly evolved skull and circulatory system, baby pronghorn are fragile and resilient.

Pronghorn are the world’s fastest land animal over distance (second only to the African Cheetah in raw speed). Able to outrun any predator within weeks of birth, pronghorn’s most vulnerable time is during the first weeks of life as they get their legs under them. I consider myself lucky that I caught a glimpse of baby pronghorn this June, because fawns spend most of their day lying still, alone, amongst the rock, sage, and grasses. Remaining motionless up to a half-mile from their mothers for hours at a time is their primary defense against common predators like coyotes and eagles, until they can simply outrun everything.

Although many pronghorn are born in Yellowstone National Park, no pronghorn live exclusively in the park. Driven by ancient instincts to migrate, the Yellowstone pronghorn move north to Montana’s Gardiner Basin and Paradise Valley. Here the odds are stacked against them and have been for more than 100 years. Development, degraded habitat, and fences blocked the pronghorn migration corridor as early as 1920. Faced with a mere 19 square miles of poor winter habitat and isolated from other animals, the last remaining Yellowstone herd has been squeaking by for decades at around 200 animals.

Summer 2012 marks my third season as the Yellowstone Wildlife Fellow for National Parks Conservation Association. For the past three years, NPCA has been removing and modifying fences in the pronghorn migration corridor, increasing and improving access to quality snow-free winter and fawning habitat.

Ironically enough, thanks to the unique physiology that allows them to run up to 30 mph indefinitely, the pronghorn’s one fatal flaw is difficulty jumping fences. Unlike deer and elk which gracefully bound over virtually any fence, pronghorn awkwardly need to crawl under them. So, when faced with the absolute barrier presented by woven sheep fence, barbed wire close to the ground, or a decorative wooden fence, the pronghorn are stuck.

As I watch the forage going to seed and dried to a crisp weeks before it should in the drought and record temperatures we are having this summer, the pronghorn’s search for additional habitat is as relentless as the inevitable winter. The twins are reluctantly being weaned, the bucks are beefing up for a heady fall season where they won’t eat for over a month during the rut, and the does simply need to recover from giving birth to two fawns that weighed up to 17 percent of their own body weight.

With the support of Nature Valley’s Preserve the Parks program, NPCA staff and volunteers have removed several miles of fence north of the park on private and public lands. Our multi-year, on-the-ground, solution-based approach to wildlife issues has started to pay dividends. In March 2011, after one of the coldest and snowiest winters on record, pronghorn were seen in areas of the valley they hadn’t occupied in generations.

During the June 2012 fawning season, a number of mothers made the Yankee Jim Canyon the place to start a family and have their litters. Local landowners are noticing pronghorn staying in this area much longer than they’ve seen here as far back as anyone can remember. The native grasses and flowering plants, along with good cover, provide ideal fawning habitat while the young grow and learn quickly to withstand the rigors and threats of life in Yellowstone.

By removing numerous fences along the areas where Forest Service and private land meet, combined with another rancher replacing his old-school barbed wire and wooden jack fences with wildlife-friendly alternatives, the pronghorn of Yankee Jim have been able to live, fawn, and grow relatively unencumbered as they did over 100 years ago.

Watching the Yankee Jim twins develop into bounding balls of ears, eyes, and legs, and survive into a hopeful extension of the herd, inspires me to continue our work this summer and fall in time for a future generation of pronghorn next June.

Will you join me?

Joe Josephson is a 4th generation Montanan born and raised along the Yellowstone River. He can be reached at jjosephson@npca.org.

If you liked this story, you might also like:

• Getting Close to Katmai’s Bears in the Hopes of Protecting Them (July 31, 2012)
• Friday Photo: Hi-Def Yosemite Webcam the Latest Online Glimpse into the National Parks (May 18, 2012)
• Friday Photo: A Cool Swim at Katmai (June 1, 2012)

There are many webcams throughout the park system that give live glimpses into of some of America’s most spectacular places. Check out some of these neat views around the country:

• Sled Dog Puppies at Denali National Park and Preserve’s sled dog kennel (temporarily down, but set to relaunch this month)
• Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park’s famous geyser
• The Blue Ridge Mountains, as viewed from the Pinnacles Overlook at Shenandoah National Park
• Halema’uma’u Crater at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park
• Longs Peak, the tallest mountain at Rocky Mountain National Park
• Removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams at Olympic National Park
• Ellis Island, as viewed from the Statue of Liberty’s torch
• Turtle nests at Canaveral National Seashore (from dusk to dawn, June through November–one to bookmark for later)
• Mount Rushmore National Monument

These are just a few, with many more available for those who want to browse (though the image quality varies from park to park). It’s hard to beat getting free glimpses into beautiful places.

-Jennifer Errick, Editor, Online Communications