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Two women, Tara Davoli, 31 years old, and Sarah A. Piotrowski, 30, both of Philadelphia, were sentenced this week for being off-trail in a thermal area of Yellowstone National Park. The charges are the result of an incident on June 11, 2020, where both women were seen off the boardwalk walking in a thermal area, which resulted in damage to orange bacterial mats at Opal Pool in the Midway Geyser Basin. Numerous witnesses saw the two walking on the feature and confronted them in an effort to get them to stop.

Beneath Yellowstone National Park is a giant volcano. The heat from this volcano powers all of the park's famous geysers and hot springs, so most tourists probably don't worry about having tons of hot magma under their feet. But perhaps they should: The Yellowstone supervolcano is a disaster waiting to happen. The supervolcano erupts about every 600,000 years, and it's been about that long since the last eruption. That means the volcano could erupt any day now, and if it does it'll send enough dust and ash into the sky to blot out the sun for years, along with blowing...

Visitors to Yellowstone Park seem to be having trouble taking in the message that it's not a good idea to get too close to the wild bison that roam the wilderness. The latest person to find out the hard way is a 43-year-old Mississippi woman who tried to take a selfie with one of the hairy beasts near a trail on Tuesday. She and her daughter turned their backs to the bison, which was about 6 yards away, to take a photo with it, according to the National Park Service. "They heard the bison's footsteps moving toward them and started...

Recently, rumors have been swelling of a danger at Yellowstone National Park. That danger? A brewing supervolcano eruption. The fear of a Yellowstone supereruption, which ultimately went viral, may have begun back in February when a seismometer called B944 began sending senseless data to a public viewer at the University of Utah's seismographic station, as George Black reports in The New Yorker. Luckily for most of the U.S., the likelihood this eruption would happen is pretty low: about one in 100,000 any given year. If it did happen, it would be pretty devastating, though.

Wed Jul 28, 2010 7:33pm EDT Idaho (Reuters) - One man was killed and a man and a woman were injured by bear attacks in the middle of the night on Wednesday at a popular campground on the edge of Yellowstone Park, wildlife officials said. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department spokesman Ron Aasheim said it was believed one bear was involved and at least two tents were left in tatters in the attack, which occurred at the height of the tourist season. "I thought I would be dinner," said Deb Freele, 58, of London, Ontario, who recalled awakening from...

Officials say a law signed by President Obama in May will allow gun owners to openly carry firearms in Grand Teton and the Wyoming portions of Yellowstone when the law goes into effect in February. Several National Park Service employees and legal experts who interpreted the legislation say it extends to all, not just those with concealed weapons permits. When U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., attached a rider to a credit card reform bill earlier this year, almost all reports indicated it applied to concealed weapons only. While federal officials are trying to figure out the nuances of the law...

Motorized over-snow access to Yellowstone Park via Sylvan Pass will continue under terms of a Park Service decision signed Tuesday. The decision reversed an earlier Park Service preferred alternative that would have totally closed Yellowstone's East Entrance in wintertime after the 2007-08 season. A Record of Decision (ROD) concerning Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks and the Rockefeller Parkway was signed by Mike Snyder of Denver, director of the Intermountain Region of the Park Service. The ROD calls for changes in winter use in the two parks beginning with the 2008-09 winter season. “Unless they still commit to wanting to have...

After nearly disappearing three decades ago, grizzly bears are thriving in the Yellowstone ecosystem and no longer need the protection of the Endangered Species Act, Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett recently announced...

Facts from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about wolves in Park County and northwest Wyoming include: There are at least 75 wolves in at least nine packs in Park County. Two additional packs are suspected but they haven't yet been confirmed. Final cattle depredation numbers won't be available until the end of the year. Wolf numbers this year have increased in Wyoming... There are about 143 wolves in Yellowstone Park in 14 packs. There's about 166 wolves in Wyoming outside Yellowstone Park in 17-20 packs. Idaho has about 650 wolves in 70 packs. Numbers from Montana this year are...

Wolves, wolf-hybrids suspected culprits in bloody predations... his herd of 700 sheep. But something had gotten there before him. Everywhere he looked, it seemed, there was a sheep that had been attacked and bloodied. "It was terrible," he said. "Some of them just had a chunk of flesh tore out, in some cases clear to the bone, the size of an orange. A few were bit in the neck." A few of the sheep could be doctored, but many of them died... of the 60 that were attacked, 21 died and 39 were injured. On top of that, the percentage...