Seeing Recovery at Yellowstone

It’s one of the snowiest winters we’ve seen in Montana in many years. It snowed almost every day in January and February, and the snow is sticking around because it’s also been cold. The sun reflects off the white snow and brightens the long winter days, bringing much appreciated light to these northern climes.

For folks who have lived in Montana long enough, a cold winter is deeply comforting. Everything around here depends on having enough snow in the mountains to feed our rivers and streams. The Yellowstone River flows from the heart of Yellowstone National Park through the Paradise Valley and across Montana, doing its part to fuel a $5.45 billion tourist economy in the state. If we don’t have clean, cold water in the rivers, we don’t have enough water for trout and other wildlife. We also don’t have enough water to irrigate fields and farms — and that can have ripple effects for agriculture, Montana’s second largest economy.

Yellowstone bison, or buffalo, take cues from the winter weather to start their migration to lower elevations looking for grass in the river bottoms of the Gardiner Basin and Cutler Meadows. The buffalo need to migrate out of the park to access more food and habitat, and also to initiate the Tribal hunt. Without snow, the people and the wildlife of Yellowstone lose their ways.

It’s been a good winter.

As of early March, it looks like we’ll have plenty of moisture in the mountains this winter. So much snow, in fact, that a new concern is whether it might melt too fast and too soon.

During the summer of 2022, a rain-on-snow event caused the Yellowstone River and its tributaries to reach record highs, flooding banks and sending a wall of water into roads and bridges in Yellowstone and leaving a wake of destruction. Water poured off the Beartooth Plateau and down the main street of Red Lodge, Montana. Roads into Yellowstone’s north entrance at Gardiner and the northeast entrance at Cooke City were impassable, bridges were swept away, and even one housing unit for National Park Service employees washed into the river. Flood waters reached many different towns around Yellowstone for hundreds of miles.

One thing became very clear that summer — climate change will impact Yellowstone, and what happens to Yellowstone directly impacts gateway communities in and around Yellowstone. Sadly, the people who so effectively responded to our catastrophe three years ago — our staff — are the very people under threat at Yellowstone.

In 2022, National Parks Conservation Association staff and members supported local efforts to clean up ranches and residences, and helped raise $50,000 to contribute to local flood response efforts led by partners on the ground in Montana. These funds were matched by NPCA’s partner Yellowstone Bourbon to raise a total of nearly $100,000.

Nearly three years later, we checked in to see how the community is doing and what’s next.

• The Park County Community Foundation raised $3.1 million and distributed funds to help locals rebuild and repair.

• In response to the floods, the Park County Environmental Council created a neighbor-to-neighbor network and deployed hundreds of volunteers to help clean out mud, take loads of trash and debris to the transfer station, and clear brush and barbed wire fence. The effort led to a new full-time staff position — Sarah Stands serves as the community resilience director working to develop resilience for future climate related events. In February, PCEC launched a community conversation series exploring the critical role of snowpack in water supply and its connection to drought and floods in Park County, Montana. Watch the first video installment with U.S. Geological Survey scientist Eric Larson.

• Montana Freshwater Partners worked with the city of Livingston, Park County and local landowners to update the channel migration mapping for the Yellowstone River to help landowners and planners understand potential future changes, allowing communities to avoid development in flood-prone areas.

Additionally, Yellowstone’s staff under the leadership of Superintendent Cam Sholly worked to repair roads and reopen Yellowstone’s entrances in Gardiner and Silver Gate. Yellowstone’s original entrance from the Roosevelt Arch in Gardiner once led through the Gardner River Canyon, a scenic canyon with steep rocky walls in one section and a natural hot spring from one of Yellowstone’s thermal features, the Boiling River. For many visitors and locals, this drive through the canyon was iconic and emblematic of Yellowstone.

Yellowstone staff faced a difficult decision — rebuild the road in an area that would be vulnerable to future floods or rebuild the road out of the canyon on a steep section of hillside. These are the types of decisions many park managers may be facing as we see more and more climate events impacting our national parks, such as the damage caused to the Blue Ridge Parkway by Hurricane Helene in 2024 or to Mount Rainier National Park by a 2006 flood.

It wasn’t an easy choice, and Yellowstone was under intense pressure from local and state elected officials and businesses to reopen. Ultimately, based on its analysis, the park decided to move the road out of the vulnerable river canyon for now. Yellowstone National Park opened its gates within days, but rebuilding roads takes time. The northern gates were opened to the public in October 2022, welcoming visitors once again into our nation’s first national park. Yellowstone spent millions of dollars to repair and rebuild. NPCA will continue to advocate for a final decision about the road’s location that considers all future climate vulnerabilities. In the meantime, the new road isn’t perfect, but it will be more resilient to climate impacts. View the photos and timeline of the park’s heroic efforts.

What’s next for Yellowstone? Our national parks across the nation are facing a new threat — chaos and uncertainty from a barrage of directives under the new Trump administration. In recent weeks, thousands of Park Service employees have either been fired or forced to resign. Job offers were rescinded. A hiring freeze thwarted hiring both seasonal and permanent employees, and although the hiring freeze for seasonal employees has been partially lifted, it’s unclear whether there will be staff or budget to hire, onboard and manage seasonals. NPCA is fighting to get those jobs back.

Most Park Service employees are already doing multiple jobs at once. Since 2010, staffing in our national parks has declined by 20% and during the same time there’s been a 16% increase in visitation. Yellowstone visitation could soon reach 5 million annual visitors. Meanwhile, staff that manage Yellowstone’s facilities, IT and other critical services have been unlawfully terminated, causing confusion and uncertainty. Yellowstone may not be ready for the millions of visitors, let alone another climate event.

I have lived in Yellowstone’s gateway for 20 years, and I’ve witnessed countless examples over the years of the tremendous ripple effects that Yellowstone and its staff have across Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. When Yellowstone shut down following the floods, communities were economically devastated. Thanks to the tireless and committed staff at Yellowstone, roads were rebuilt, wastewater treatment plants were repaired, and the gates to Yellowstone were reopened. Results like these are thanks to the committed and hard-working individuals that Yellowstone employs. Now these same individuals are at risk of losing their jobs and they need our help.

Our job at NPCA to serve as the voice for the parks feels more important than ever.

We are facing challenges of almost unfathomable magnitude as we watch our own government dismantle our parks. Meanwhile, the slow but certain impacts from climate change also present enormous challenges for the future of our parks and our communities. At NPCA, we face these challenges head on, like the buffalo face a storm.

Now is the time for us to tell the stories and celebrate all the critical people working tirelessly for our parks. The snowplow drivers, the maintenance staff that repair the snowplows, the facilities staff that ensure visitors have clean water, the friendly faces at the entrance gate, and so many more. Our elected officials need to hear these stories from all of us.

We must also continue to voice the need for projects and staff working to build resiliency in the face of new climate threats.

My oldest son turned 7 on a backpacking trip in Yellowstone’s backcountry, in the Bechler. It was the end of August, and the skies were still hazy from wildfires. On our seventh day, a winter storm unexpectedly rolled in, the temps dropped, and near-freezing rain soaked our multigenerational crew of backpackers. We were dangerously cold before we realized we wouldn’t be able to make it to our next backcountry site at Mr. Bubbles. We narrowly avoided an extremely cold night, and perhaps worse, thanks to a Park Service trail crew that happened to be working on that section of the trail. The crew leader, Tamara, used a rope to help the members of our crew who had unwisely crossed the rising waters of the Bechler River make it safely back and then welcomed us into their wall tent to warm up and dry out. What could have been a tragedy turned into a birthday party. The crew made us hot cocoa, shared food and even baked Luca a backcountry birthday cake. The storm passed and cleared the lingering wildfire haze. We spent our last few days enjoying clear blue skies, dry clothes and trout fishing.

I’ve lived in or around national parks almost my entire life, and I have deep respect for wild places and the people that spend their time working to serve them, like Tamara’s trail crew. They understand that the snow will melt, the rivers will rise, the smoke will clear, and the bison will migrate. They also make sure the bathrooms are clean, the roads are plowed, and the trails are clear. It takes a special person to dedicate their life to wild places and wildlife. They may even save your life one day and then bake you a cake.

Here in Yellowstone country, we are watching the snow melt and feeling grateful for a little reprieve before the next storm comes, apparently next week. With all the uncertainty and chaos in the news, the snow is like a comfort blanket. I can’t say what’s next for our parks, but one thing I do know for certain is that I’m going to fight for Yellowstone. And I am not alone. Our national parks not only fuel our economies, but they also feed our imaginations, fill our hearts and create memories that form the stories of our lives. That’s the kind of love that people go to the mat for.