Yellowstone National Park is a special place, and winter is a wonderful time to experience just how special it is. When winter snows descend on the park, many of the normal recreational opportunities are no longer available. Visitors have unparalleled opportunities to observe wildlife in an intact ecosystem, explore geothermal areas that contain about half the world’s active geysers, and view geologic wonders like the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. The seasonal change in winter provides new recreational opportunities to emerge: skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling and riding a snowcoach. Not all roads are open to cars. However, you can drive into the park through the North Entrance at Mammoth year-round. The winter season of services, tours, activities, and ranger programs typically spans from mid-December to mid-March. At Mammoth, you can take self-guiding tours of Fort Yellowstone and the Mammoth Terraces, join a guided walk or tour, cross-country ski, snowshoe, skate, rent a...

As remarkable as Yellowstone National Park and Greater Yellowstone are during the rest of the year, in winter the park is a magical place. Steam and boiling water erupt from natural cauldrons in the park’s ice-covered surface, snow-dusted bison exhale vaporous breaths as they lumber through drifts of white, foxes and coyotes paw and pounce in their search for prey in the deep snow, and gray wolves bay beneath the frozen moon. Yellowstone in winter also is a place of vulnerability. Wildlife endure extremes of cold, wind and the absence of ready food. Their tracks through deep snow tell of tenacious struggles through the long winter. Park conditions in this most severe of seasons become critical to the mortality of wildlife and even to survival of park species. No wonder the park is so popular in this magical, vulnerable season with those who have enjoyed its charms. It is often said among park staff who live in Yellowstone that winter is their favorite season. Many park visitors who...

Bison reintroduced to Wanuskewin Heritage Park on the outskirts of Saskatoon in 2019 have uncovered—with their hooves—four 1,000-year-old rock carvings, evidence of their own history in the area, according to Diane Selkirk writing recently in the Smithsonian Magazine. (Nov 24, 2021) The rocks were discovered by Chief Archaeologist Ernest Walker, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He remembers the exact date the discovery happened—Aug 16, 2020. Walker immediately told Wanuskewin CEO Darlene Brander about the discovery. “(Walker) knocked on the door and he knocked in a way that I knew something was up,” Brander recalls. “He came in and said that, ‘We found it, we found rock art.’ “My eyes got kind of big,” Brander said. Months before, they had been talking about what Wanuskewin really needed or would like to have. And that conversation led to one thing, she said. “Wouldn’t it be great if we had rock art?” Walker himself was stunned by the discovery. He listed the other...

We know that thousands of buffalo roamed across the face of the Great Plains in ancient times.

Where we live, in the northern plains of western North Dakota, they’ve been hunted for at least the past 7000 years—and likely grazed here for many more thousands before humans arrived.