Video Snapshot: Bison on the road

Bison are a regular occurrence along the wintry roads of Yellowstone.  If you had a choice of pushing through chest deep snow or walking along a packed path that conveniently leads from one meadow to the next, what would you do?  The bison aren't stupid, they'll take the road.

Maybe.

Do the bison follow our roads or do our roads follow the natural migration corridors of the bison?  Roads are easier to build in areas that are already flat (river flood plains).  Early park engineers were also concerned with build scenic roads.  This put the roads through valleys, connecting one meadow to the next by following the rivers.  These same routes were and are probably used by bison today.

Groomed roads and bison are what kicked off the big debate on winter use in Yellowstone National Park.  By grooming the roads, are we making surviving the winter easier for bison?  Winter is the number one killer of bison and they are on a tight energy budget.  They can conserve energy by walking on the road and not trudging through the deep pow-pow (oh man, is pow-pow an obnoxious word!).  The National Parks operate under "natural regulation."  The idea is that nature can take care of itself a lot better than we can, as long as all of the main players are in place (predators, prey, flora, climate).  Would the advantages afforded to bison by grooming the roads be a violation of natural regulation?

General Philip Sheridan: Yellowstone Villain or Hero?

This is a quick hit kinda posting.  A smattering of facts that by no means paints a complete picture of this man; just a few things and how they pertain to Yellowstone National Park.

Our story begins during the Civil War, in which Philip Sheridan was a general for the Union army.  He was one of the first people to use “scorched earth” tactics, where he destroyed the economic infrastructure along with military targets in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.  He is not looked upon favorably in that part of the country.

In 1867, Sheridan is appointed head of the Department of the Missouri.  This puts him in control of all land between the Mississippi River and the Rockies, an area over one million square miles.  Not long after this appointment, he brings his scorched earth tactics to bear on the West.  During the Winter Campaign of 1868-1869, he attacks the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche peoples, burning their supplies and forcing them back onto the reservations. 

As part of his campaign against the Indians, Sheridan promoted in Congress the wholesale hunting and slaughter of bison to deprive the Indians of their primary food source.  He is quoted as saying, “Let them kill, skin, and sell until the bison is exterminated.”  Professional hunters begin to trespass on tribal lands, and, by 1874, four million bison have been poached.   The Texas legislature tries to outlaw bison poaching on tribal lands.  Sheridan reacts by personally testifying the heroism of these poachers saying that each man deserves a medal “engraved with a dead buffalo on one side and a discouraged-looking Indian on the other.”  These actions deliberately led to the massive destruction of bison across the country and making Yellowstone an island refuge for wild bison, where around 1900 less than 25 bison were found throughout the entire park.  Yellowstone Villain.

Philip Sheridan did feel very strongly about Yellowstone National Park.  He authorized Lt. Gustavus Cheney Doane to escort the Washburn/Langford/Doane expedition in 1870.  He authorized Capt. John Barlow to escort the Hayden Survey in 1871.  Barlow names Mount Sheridan in the southern part of Yellowstone for the General on this trip.  As early as 1875, Sheridan was promoting military protection of the park.

The Department of the Interior granted the Yellowstone Park Improvement Company four thousand acres of Yellowstone land in 1882.  The plan was to build a railroad into the park and sell the land to developers.  General Philip Sheridan teamed up with Forest and Stream editor George Bird Grinnell to put a stop to the plan.  They lobbied Congress for park expansion, military control of the park, only ten acres of development, and no leases near attractions.  Congress granted them most of their demands.  Sheridan then arranged and led the first Presidential Visit to Yellowstone.  Chester Arthur “led” an expedition to the park in 1883.  The purpose of the trip was to raise awareness of the park Back East; a press junket perhaps.  Sheridan was given his wish of military protection of the park in 1886 when he ordered the First Cavalry into Yellowstone at the request of Secretary of the Interior Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (the namesake for Lamar Valley).  Yellowstone Hero.

hmm so Sheridan was both a hero and a villain to the park.  Was he conscious of his conflicting role?  Probably not.  Even though he advocated the destruction of the bison, his ally in protecting the park from development George Bird Grinnell would go on to play a pivotal role in the passage of the Lacey Act protecting the bison from the wanton destruction created by Sheridan’s views. 

Video Snapshots: February 1, 2011

This is my first foray into digital video editing.  I just got a Flip digital camcorder and have been taking it to work with me.  Some explanations and tidbits about what's featured.

The Lower Falls and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
These falls are 308ft tall.  The Yellowstone River flows from a layer of volcanic tuff into hydrothermally altered rhyolite.  A geyser basin about the size of the Upper Geyser Basin (Old Faithful) once sat on this location.  The Yellowstone River changed course around the end of the last Ice Age and came through the basin very quickly eroding it out.  The ice dome in front of the falls is created solely by the freezing of mist coming off the falls.  If the temperature stays low enough for long enough, the ice dome can reach heights up to half the height of the falls (approximately 150ft.).  On this day, the temperature was so low I could see the mist from the Grand Loop Road near Canyon Corrals.

Washburn Hot Springs Overlook.
The thermal area on the left side of the frame are the Washburn Hot Springs.  Mount Washburn is an old volcano and during the last caldera explosion, two-thirds of the mountain were blown away.    The cliff behind the hot springs is the south rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  The mountains in the background are the Absarokas and make up the eastern boundary of the park.  I was standing on the flanks of Mount Washburn, which is at the northern end of the caldera.  The Red Mountains shown at the end of that shot are on the far south end of the caldera, so we're looking across the caldera here.

The Upper Falls.
These are found about a half mile upstream from the Lower Falls.  While these are only about a third of the height of the Lower Falls, they are still impressive, especially in the winter.  Earlier in the season, people were consistently seeing otters at the base.

Fountain Paint Pots.
These are probably the most famous paint pots on the planet.  The bubbling sounds like spaghetti sauce left on the stove too long.  Mud features are consistently the most acidic in the park, usually between 2 and 3 on the pH scale.  Mud features would be hot springs, except the water has a high hydrogen sulfide content.  Microorganisms in the water love to eat that hydrogen sulfide; their waste product is sulfuric acid.  That acid eats away at the nice lava rock turning it into soft clay minerals like kaolinite.  This clay mixes with the water to create the mud.  The bubbles are gases escaping.

I hope you like the video and hopefully I'll be getting some more of these video snapshots up!