Yellowstone officials: Plan ahead, recreate responsibly
Yellowstone National Park West Entrance line Memorial Day weekend 2017 (Photo by Jacob W. Frank via the National Parks Service)
Officials with the National Park Service are sharing information and encouraging visitors to the park to plan ahead and enjoy the park responsibly, with the summer tourist season fast approaching.
“Summer is Yellowstone’s most popular season,” park officials said in an online statement, posted May 24, 2021. “Expect long lines at entrance stations, extremely busy facilities and destinations, as well as delayed travel times due to heavy traffic and wildlife jams.”
Park officials say that people wanting a less-crowded experience should arrive early, plan to stay late, or avoid the park’s main attractions like Old Faithful Geyser and Grand Prismatic Spring during peak hours.
Grand Teton National Parkâs new superintendent felt the inflection point come the last week of April.
Visitors to the 310,000-acre park that Palmer âChipâ Jenkins oversees seemed to start showing up, drawn to see the dramatic spine of mountains topped by the 13,775-foot-high Grand Teton and the wild things living beneath them. Suddenly it felt more summer-like, and less like the sleepy âshoulder seasonsâ of old in Jackson Hole.
âYou get to a point in time in the spring where you feel the momentum shift, and on Monday it was very distinct,â Jenkins said during a April 28 walkabout down Teton Park Road.
Rewilding isn’t just about the animals
It’s vital to consider the landscape, or “geodiversity”, scientists say.
Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: David Mencin via Imaggeo
As this year kicks off the “Decade on Ecosystem Restoration” to try and repair some of the damage caused by humans, scientists shine the spotlight on rewilding, a process of rebuilding ecosystems.
Previous research has made it clear that rewilding is a complex process with many interlocking considerations. Now, a team from The Netherlands adds a new one to the mix: geodiversity.
It is important to consider a region’s geography and geology when choosing where to rewild, says Kenneth Rijskijk from the University of Amsterdam. His team argues that these factors could ultimately determine how successful rewilding is.
The line between alive and dead is often murky, argues New York Times science columnist Carl Zimmer
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Posted: Apr 16, 2021 4:28 PM ET | Last Updated: April 16
Carl Zimmer s new book explores the nature of life, including questions like whether a cut rose is still alive.(Lisa Mariee Williams/Getty Images) comments
Quirks and Quarks17:03Contemplating what it means to be alive in the new book ‘Life’s Edge’
About 4 billion years ago, give or take a couple of hundred million years, the whole trouble started.
In a warm puddle, or perhaps around a geothermal vent in the deep ocean, or perhaps somewhere we haven t identified yet, a mixture of chemicals started to do something new something more complicated than they d done before. It was the dawn of life.