Day 6 and 7: Yellowstone speakers and Tour - Montana / Wyoming

Day 6 of our trip we spent traveling around Montana until we were scheduled to meet up with our speakers to discuss ranching, wolves, and livestock management in the area. We spent the first half of the day driving towards Yellowstone, stopping in the small town of Paradise for lunch and bathroom breaks. While we were stopped here Hossay gave us a lecture on the reintroduction of wolves to the area and how it affected ranchers. Our discussion attracted a few interested individuals including a resident rancher who more than obliged to give his side of the story from a ranchers perspective. He explained that the wolves have not caused much of an issue for him at all and says that the ranchers simply learned to live with them and some have made a business with outfitters welcoming wolf hunting on the ranch property. We thanked the local rancher for his time and input and then we headed out to meet our scheduled presenters. The first presenter was Matt Skogland, director of the Northern Rockies department of the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC). Matt discussed with us non-lethal methods for dealing with predators that are interacting with livestock. He supported electric fencing, guard dogs, human presence, carcass removal, and the most interesting which was teaching cows defensive instincts similar to buffalo which group up in the presence of a predator. He expressed how his group works on environmental policy and regulations and that they are not directly involved in habitat restoration, but they help play an integral part in paving the way for those processes. His advice for those of us going into future careers was to have good writing skills and quantitative reasoning skills.

Our second speaker was Matt Barnes who spoke to use about developing a coexistence with large carnivores, healthy land, and productive ranches. In this case, the speakers group does indeed work directly with the locals and does a lot of on the ground work, leave advocacy to other agencies. He discusses ways to maximize herding while keeping minimal impact on the environment and supported the teaching of anti-predator behavior in livestock animals to help assist with carnivore mortality due to risk to livestock. Barnes stressed efficient grazing management systems were key to maintaining a productive pasture and thus productive livestock, that many of these ranchers need to be educated in these systems before any significant results can be seen. 

We had some spare time after our presentation that we were able to spend a couple hours in Bozeman, a nice town that seems to sprout up form nowhere that was very quaint. Everybody split up into different group in search of food or souvenirs. My group and I stopped at a small restaurant in town called the Garage that used old license plates to make their menu, since we were in the state just about everyone got a bison burger and they definitely hit the spot. After dinner we left Bozeman and headed just outside of Yellowstone to meet at our campsite for the night. It was another very nice site, a lot of flat ground with no rocks and having the river be so close to us was very relaxing. With everyone having already eaten, some of the group opted to go to bed right away, while a few of us stayed up with the fire and cooked s'mores until the firewood burned out and we went to be ourselves. It was tough for me to fall asleep as I found myself too excited about actually getting to go into Yellowstone the next day, it felt like I was waiting for Christmas morning.

Our campsite just outside Yellowstone

Day 7 came with us getting a tour of Yellowstone, visiting some of the popular site, seeing some animals, and getting a few discussions in as well. During our drive, we saw various animals from the park, the most popular being the black bear, the moose, and the coyote we saw. It was very cool to see these animals up close, many of us had only ever seen them in magazines, its a very spiritual experience to be so close to them. We drove into a small town area inside the park where we got to grab lunch and shop for souvenirs, I think everyone bought something to remember the occasion by. After our little bit of free time we met up with Tait and Hossay for a discussion about the Mammoth Hot Springs. We learned that Yellowstone was the nations first National Park and before the National Park service was created the area was guarded by the army. At the Mammoth Hot Spring site, fumerols release gas through vents which we saw coming from the pools and in different parts of the park. The reason for all the geothermal activity in the park is due to the proximity of a magma chamber to the surface, where groundwater in the soil gets super heated and causes the fumerols or creates geysers. The white mineral seen covering the spring is in fact deposits of Calcium Carbonate that gets brought up from underground and deposited as the water flows down the surface.

Tait discussed bioprospecting at the site where scientists discovered the organism thermus aquaticus  which lead to the subsequent development of the PCR test. After this discovery, the park began to be targetted by other groups seeking to find the same fortune that resulted from the PCR development. To prevent companies from taking advantage of the park, policies were enacted that lead to the CRADA agreement which allows natinal parks to be financially compensated for discoveries made within the park.

Nearby trees slowly being overtaken by calcium carbonate

Mammoth Hot Springs

Sticks and leaves being calcified in the pools

With our last few hours in the park, we stopped at the Yellowstone river where Hossay discussed cutthroat trout to us. He talked to us about the issues with the trout in the area and that invasive lake trout are competing for against the cut-throat trout and causing the population to decline.

Black bear who had cubs in nearby tree

Buffalo!

We left the park after that and drove along the massive Yellowstone Lake as we made our way to the campsite at Flogg Ranch. When we got there though boy did things go crazy, we were viciously assaulted by mosquitos, they were so thick you would smack your leg and kill 30 of them. We got a fire going as quick as we could to smoke them out and luckily as the sun went down they disappeared. Still when we all went to bed we constantly heard the incessant buzzing of mosqitos flying around the tents.