In the midst of yet another shitty news cycle, it's nice to hear that great things can still happen.

Earlier this year, the state of Wyoming said "yeah" to allowing a maximum of 22 grizzly bears, once sheltered as a protected species, to be hunted. Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen said "nah" to hunters gearing up to shoot at grizzly bears that call the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem home.

From Earther:

In his order, Christensen made clear that the case “is not about the ethics of hunting, and it is not about solving human- or livestock-grizzly conflicts as a practical philosophical manner.”

Instead, the case was about whether the decision to de-list this segment of the Lower 48 grizzly population was scientifically sound. (Grizzly bears as a whole still enjoy endangered species protections across the Lower 48.) Christensen felt that it wasn’t, writing that FWS “failed to consider how reduced protections in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem would impact the other grizzly populations.”

The ruling drew heavily on a case the federal agency lost last year, when its decision to de-list Western Great Lakes region gray wolves was vacated in court for failing to consider species-wide impacts.

In the United States, there's only around 1,800 grizzly bears roaming Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho and Montana. That's far from what I or any ecologist (of which I am not) would call a recovered species. Earther points out that while the Yellowstone grizzly population has rebounded in recent years, it's still isolated from other populations. Read the rest

Via a Freedom of Information Act request, Yellowstone National Park recently reported the tragic details of an accident last summer, where a 23 year old man dissolved after an illegal attempt to bathe in Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. He had gone 200 yards past the legal tourism area with his sister, who was recording on her cell phone when the incident happened. Luckily, that video has not been released.

Though search and rescue was attempted, Deputy Chief Ranger Lorant Veress remarked, "in a very short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving" due to the churning, acidic water. The man was reaching down to test the temperature, with the intent to "hot pot," aka bathe in the steaming water, when he slipped and fell in.

Reports Wyoming's KURL news:

Search and rescue rangers who arrived later did find the victim's body in the pool, along with his wallet, and flip flops.  But, a lightning storm stopped the recovery efforts.  The next day, workers could not find any remains.  Veress says the water was churning, and acidic.

He remarked, "In a very short order, there  was a significant amount of dissolving"

Veress said the park posts warning signs for important reasons,  "… because it is wild and it hasn't been overly altered by people to make things a whole lot safer,  it's got dangers.  And a place like Yellowstone which is set aside because of the incredible geothermal resources that are here, all the more so."

Yellowstone is meant to be wild and preserved as such, so the park posts warning signs for this very reason. Read the rest

This is why we can't have nice things.

Some really stupid visitors to Yellowstone National Park decided that a baby bison they'd seen was "too cold," so they put it in their rental car trunk to warm it up, and drove it around for a while.

After the herd rejected the calf, the National Park Service decided to kill (or if you prefer, “euthanize”) the calf, and warned tourists not to interact with animals. For, like, the billionth time.

National Park Service officials want everyone who visits Yellowstone to know that adult animals, like this calf's mom and dad, can become aggressive when they're trying to protect their young. Mothers sometimes reject offspring that have interacted with humans.

As Mark wrote here, the father and son tourists visiting the park in Wyoming received a ticket from Park Rangers for putting the bison calf in their rental car.

As dumb as these tourists were, they're not alone. There have been several similar incidents this year in the park, shared on social media in which visitors ignore the rules, get too close to animals, and pose for selfies.

In 2015, Bison seriously injured five park visitors, which makes them more dangerous by the statistics than any other animal, including predators like bear, wolves, or big cats.

From the Denver Post:

The newborn bison calf that visitors to Yellowstone National Park last week inadvisedly tried to rescue from the cold has been euthanized after efforts to reunite it with the herd were rejected, according to the National Park Service.

It's kind of a "That's no moon" moment in real life — a series of discoveries in the 1960s and 1970s led geologists to realize that most of Yellowstone National Park was one giant volcanic caldera. If you've seen the cable TV specials, you've probably come to the conclusion that an eruption of this supervolcano could doom humanity and that said eruption is bound to happen at any time. But the reality is more nuanced than that, write Annalee Newitz at iO9.com. Not only is a Yellowstone eruption not imminent, but there's also more than one way it could erupt — and the most likely scenarios don't equate to worldwide horror. Read the rest

Freelance journalist Jessica Grose has a fascinating "long read" in Slate this week (and I'm not kidding about the long part, 8,000 words!) about Bear True Crimes: wild bears in and around Yellowstone National Park who, for one reason or another, attack humans.

Why does this happen? What's it like for the humans who survive? Who investigates the attacks, all CSI-style with DNA analysis and whatnot, and figures out what to do with the problem bears? Is it right to kill them?

Grose's report begins with the story of a mother bear who attacked campers in late 2011. Snip:

The euthanization of the bear known as “the Wapiti sow” was the culmination of a series of horrifying events that had gripped Yellowstone for months, and alarmed rangers, visitors, and the conservation biologists tasked with keeping grizzly bears safe. In separate incidents in July and August, grizzlies had killed hikers in Yellowstone, prompting a months-long investigation replete with crime scene reconstructions and DNA analysis, and a furious race to capture the prime suspect. The execution of the Wapiti sow opens a window on a special criminal justice system designed to protect endangered bears and the humans who share their land. It also demonstrates the difficulty of judging animals for crimes against us. The government bear biologists who enforce grizzly law and order grapple with the impossibility of the task every day. In the most painful cases, the people who protect these sublime, endangered animals must also put them to death.

Read Grose's "A Death in Yellowstone: On the trail of a killer grizzly bear," then read her interview with a woman who was attacked by a grizzly and lived to tell the tale. Read the rest