Have you ever wondered about National Park Service jobs?
From studying wildlife, operating wastewater treatment plants, and timing the next Old Faithful geyser eruption, there are many different types of positions that help preserve resources in Yellowstone for current and future generations.
Join us each week as we talk with Yellowstone employees about their experiences working for the world’s first national park and offer tips for you to get involved with the NPS.
If you would like to get in touch with our team or share your ideas for the podcast, please email us.
Introducing: Yellowstone National Park's What We Do Podcast
What do park rangers actually do? And how can you get involved? Tune in as we – Yellowstone park rangers Jake, Brett, Miles, and Ashton – introduce the park's brand-new podcast, "What We Do."
Jake: From Yellowstone National Park. This is what we do. Hey, everyone, and welcome to the What We Do podcast. I'm Jake Frank. Our team of four will be interviewing ten people over the next ten weeks to take you behind the scenes to share stories from people who work for the National Park Service in the world's first national Park. So, first things first. Hi, team. How's everybody doing?
Ashton and Brett: Hey Jake!
Miles: Awesome.
Jake: Why don't we do some quick team intros? So, if we do, let's say your name, your title, or maybe your division. How long you've been in Yellowstone, what your favorite hobbies, ha no. And maybe if there's any other parks you've worked at. Miles?
Miles: All right. I'm Miles Barger. I'm the publications program manager here at Yellowstone in the Division of Resource Education and Youth Programs. I've been in Yellowstone for about three years this time around. I worked here earlier in my career as well. And I've also worked at Denali National Park and Black Kane of the Gunnison National Park and at Harpers Ferry Center. You can look that up if you want to know what it is.
Jake: Brett, what about you?
Brett: Yeah. So, I'm the newbie here. I've only been in Yellowstone for about two years so far. Before that, I was at Shenandoah National Park for 12 years, and I'm the digital media specialist here, which basically deals with the website social media, the NPS app and digital exhibits in the visitor centers. Ashton how long have you been here?
Ashton: Well, Yellowstone's actually my first park, and I've been here for about four years now as digital communications specialist for the superintendent's office. So, working on similar types of things, as Brett said, social media and the like. So, what about you, Jake?
Jake: I'm the I'm the old guy here, apparently. I've been here a little less than eight years, got here in 2016. I've worked at a handful of parks. I started in the Tetons and then went to Glacier, then Carlsbad Caverns, then up to Denali. Miles woot woot!
Miles: Yeah.
Jake: And then worked for Rocky. Also, Miles! Woot woot!
Brett: So, Miles has been following Jake.
Miles: Yeah, I’ve been following Jake.
Jake: And then Yellowstone. And then I got my first permanent job in Glacier doing media and then came here permanently. I also am a digital communication specialist like Ashton. I also work in the superintendent's office with Ashton, but it seems like everybody here on the team are all involved in media, web, social photography, videography, kind of everything podcasting. Now our resume is getting longer the longer we're here. So that's good stuff. Yeah. So now they know who we are. Let's give you some of the highlights of the park. So as far as the employees and the money. Yellowstone has about 750 employees each year and 350 of those are year-round permanent employees. And in addition to our paid staff, we also have about 450 volunteers that help with various things throughout the park. We have a federal appropriation, so the money that we get from Congress, you know, when a budget's passed is around $40 million, but it takes at least double that to operate the park each year. So, I think last year it was around $81 or $82 million. And, you know, if you're a budget person, you're like, how does it work, you know, to run a park on 80 million if you only get 40 million? And basically, we make up the difference through other revenue streams, like, you know, when you come to the park and pay an entrance fee or if you're a commercial, the if you are a commercial tour operator in the park. And then we also have philanthropic donations. So, people who donate to the park or our nonprofit Yellowstone Forever and all that money is not even including the major infrastructure project dollars, because some years with projects included, we spend upwards of like $125 million each year.
Miles: Yeah, and let's talk about Yellowstone's resources. Yellowstone itself is a pretty big park for 2.2 million acres, not the largest park in the lower 48. I think we're Second Death Valley is 3 million or something, but we are pretty big. 2.2 million acres. And even more than that, Yellowstone is at the heart of the surrounding area, which is known as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is, you know, if we didn't have these made-up, straight-line boundaries of the park, it's where our wildlife migrate and where we share a lot of our processes and things like that. So, it's a huge area geologically speaking. Yellowstone is an active volcano, and it sits atop a cooling magma chamber and when water's heated by the cooling magma chamber, we get hydrothermal features like geysers and hot springs. So that's it's a wildlife and those are what we're most famous for in the geysers. And hot springs are what Yellowstone stone was originally set aside to protect. And Yellowstone is actually home to 10,000 hydrothermal features and over half the world's active geysers.
Brett: Yeah. So, if the volcano goes off, will be the first to let you all know.
Miles: I don't think we'll be able to let them know.
Brett: We'll broadcast live as soon as that happens, to let you guys know. So, make sure you subscribe so you can find that out. Yeah. So, Miles talked about wildlife. Obviously, if you want to see wildlife and those predator prey relationships, Yellowstone is one of the best places in the world to see some of those interactions play out. So, you know, we got wolves, we got grizzly bears, we got cougars, we got bison, elk, bighorn sheep, even wolverines, which I haven't seen. But hopefully fingers crossed I will soon all sorts of wildlife. But it's also this is super, a super special place because of the history. So wherever 10,000 years before Yellowstone became the first National Park, which happened in 1872, it was a place where American Indians lived and hunted and fished and gathered plants and quarried obsidian and use the thermal waters. And even today, there are 27 Tribes with historic and modern connections to the land and resources within the area that we now know as Yellowstone.
Ashton: Yeah, and in addition to Tribal history, Yellowstone is also home to a combined 25 historic sites, landmarks, and districts on the National Register of Historic Places. There are a lot of really neat, historic buildings and landmarks and things like that all throughout the park. So, we have a lot of cool, natural and cultural resources, and that's what brings a lot of people to visit the park. On average, we receive about four and a half million visits every year, and about 95% of that is in a six-month period between May and October. So, a lot of visitation in the summer, not so much in the winter, but I think that's the best time to visit. In my personal opinion.
Jake: I concur. Yeah, winter is pretty awesome.
Ashton: A report showed that tourism, the Yellowstone contributes about 6,000 jobs in our gateway communities. So those are the communities that exist just outside the park at all our entrances and about $600 million to the local economy in 2022. That's a lot.
Jake: That is a lot of money.
Miles: A lot of money and a lot of people. And so, we, of course, have to have all the infrastructure that you need for all that huge amount of people. And because of that, we have tons of stuff in the park. Of course, we have well over 400 miles of roads. We have lots of lodging, buildings, places to eat, bathrooms of horse trails, all sorts of stuff. And our portfolio of all that stuff totals over $4 billion worth of infrastructure.
Jake: Billion with a B?
Miles: Billion. With a B.
Jake: Wow, that's a lot.
Miles: Roads, bridges. Then there's the things you don't even think about, like water and wastewater systems, of course, campgrounds, hotels. Then there's all the employee housing and all the facilities needed for the employees. So, we're basically our own little mini state up here. Since 2020, we have invested over $1.5 billion with a B into improving Yellowstone's infrastructure. For you and also for future generations of visitors. And there's even more projects in the pipeline.
Brett: Yeah, so that's a lot going on. And obviously we can't manage all that alone. So, you know, we rely a lot on tribes, elected officials, nonprofit groups, local communities, states, other federal agencies. They all help us to take care of Yellowstone. And, you know, when you think of Yellowstone National Park, you think of the natural features, the cultural features. But there's also really important things like hotels, restaurants, gas stations, general stores, and our concession partners are all of those. And our nonprofit partner, Yellowstone Forever, offers educational programs and runs the park stores as well, the bookstores that you see at the visitor centers. So, they also support the park through philanthropic dollars that are really important to us.
Ashton: Yeah. So, as you can see, there's no shortage of things to talk about when it comes to Yellowstone. We could go on and on probably all day. There's a lot to talk about and there's a lot of content about all this stuff and more on natural and cultural resources in the park. And you can find a lot of that information on our park’s website, which is nps.gov/YELL.
Jake: Yeah, and, and then, you know, with all of that great information about the natural and cultural resources, we realized that there wasn't really any content around the non-historical human resources of the park. Obviously, we have a ton of history of the people who were here in the past, but not a lot about the people that are here right now who do the work to keep the lights on in the park year-round. And that's when we came up with our idea for our What We Do Wednesdays social media campaign in 2019. And since then, we've been highlighting our employees and what they do through photos and stories on our social media platforms. You know, it's been really well received both internally and externally. Ah you know, we have coworkers all the time, they're like, “Wow, that was cool. I didn't know that so-and-so did that.” And so, we thought, hey, why don't we, you know, try to develop some long-form content and boom, now we've got a podcast. What We Do Podcast is our is our new brainchild.
Miles: Yes. And it's a pretty awesome brainchild, I think. So, with this podcast, we're operating under the assumption that if something is interesting to us, that it will also be interesting to you, our listeners. And that being said, one of our intended audiences is current and future NPS employees too, so we intend to cover some information that may get a bit jargony, like how to get jobs in Yellowstone and, you know, all the things that make Yellowstone work. And if you know anything about government agencies, you know, we love acronyms and special terms.
Jake: TLAs.
Miles: Exactly. TLAs
Jake: “Three Letter Acronyms”
Miles: So, to help you out with all those TLAs and other terms, we've created a web page with a glossary of terms and definitions, and you can find that at: go.nps.gov/WhatWeDoPodcast.
Brett: Yeah, I'm probably going to be referencing that sometimes I have. I literally had a meeting yesterday that was a BMA IDT. That was the calendar invite. So, you know, but generally speaking, here are three things that we think that you should know about jobs in the federal government. So, this is kind of the insider's look into getting jobs in the federal government from those of us who have who have done that a few times. And the first thing that you really need to know about is USAJobs.gov. This is the website where all government jobs are posted. So, if you're interested in applying for jobs at Yellowstone or in the National Park Service or in any federal agency, really, you need to get familiar with that website. So, after you listen to this episode, after you hit subscribe, go to USAjobs.gov. Create a profile and check out what jobs are on there because there's there is a lot going on there, especially across not just the National Park Service but the federal government in general. So, I highly recommend that you use the resume builder if you've never applied for government positions before. Resumes are a little bit different than they are in the private sector. They're not the one pager that you often use in the private sector. They're a little bit longer because you have to prove your position and all the skills required for the position. So that's why I recommend that resume builder. It kind of helps get you started when you're having applied for a government job before. And I'd also recommend that you set alerts for saved searches for positions that you find that you're interested in. So, if you listen to an episode and we interviewed someone that is doing a job that you think is really cool, go on USAjobs.gov and maybe set an alert so they'll email you any time that job comes up. We could go a lot more in-depth about writing resumes for government jobs, but that would take way too long here.
Jake: Boring!
Brett: Yeah, we're not we're not going to do that but just know about USAjobs.gov. That's a huge first step.
Ashton: Yeah. And the second thing that we think we should know about jobs in the federal government is there are three main types of positions. So, you'll see seasonal positions, long term positions and permanent positions. So first the seasonal positions, those usually last for a specific amount of time during the year. So, for example, in Yellowstone, we hire seasonal workers for the summer and winter seasons and those can last about five or six months or so.
Jake: I think it's 1039 hours is the max. So, one hour short of six months.
Ashton: And then the second type, those are term positions and those are usually project based. So maybe a park needs some need needs to hire someone to help with a specific type of project going on in that park. They'll hire this person and that and that term position usually lasts for like one year, but it usually will not exceed four years. And then lastly, permanent positions. And those are your typical year-round permanent jobs, which is what all four of us who are on this podcast today have here in Yellowstone.
Brett: We’re very lucky.
Jake: Very lucky, yeah. And the last thing, our pay scales. So, there's four types of pay scales in the government. We have the way the federal wage schedule, the law enforcement officer general schedule, the general schedule, and the executive and senior level. So, wage grade or WG, these are like our trades in our craft and labor employees. And the idea is that, you know, those wages are connected to the wages that are in the same you know, where the park is located. So, if you're getting paid the same amount for the people that are doing the same kind of work in your area. And that's like the people who are in our facility maintenance and operations division. Law enforcement officers obviously, those are our park rangers, the ones that carry the sidearms that are in and they're out there, you know, protecting the visitors and the resources. And then the GS is basically everyone else in Yellowstone, minus one person. And that one person is our superintendent. You know, once you've risen to a certain level in government, you can apply it to the senior executive series. And there's only a handful of parks that even have SES positions. I think it's like Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Everglades and a few other parks. They have SES superintendents, otherwise most of those positions are at regional or national levels, But within the first three each pay scale. So, whether you're wage grade, GS, or LEO, there's 15 grades, so 1-15 and then each grade has ten steps, 1-10. So, for example, you might hear someone say like, I'm a GS 11 for 11, step four, and that means they're on the general schedule, grade 11, step four. And the reason we explain all of this is because all of this information is public knowledge. So, when you apply for a job, you can actually see what you know, what you'll start at and what you can max out to. It's all public information on the office of Personnel Management site or OPM. I don't want to get out of this without using an acronym.
Miles: All right. So, Yellowstone is a big park. It's got a lot of employees and a lot of important issues going on all the time. That's part of the fun of this podcast. Even the people who work here, we don't know everything that's going on. That is definitely true. I feel like I learn about new projects or jobs or things on a regular basis.
Jake: Absolutely
Brett: Yeah. And with 750 employees, I've already met a few coworkers that I didn't even know I had doing this podcast. So, it's been a lot of fun. We hope you enjoy those conversations as much as we have and kind of develop an appreciation for what it takes to keep Yellowstone this huge national park up and running.
Ashton: And, you know, maybe some of our listeners will be our future coworkers. Who knows?
Brett: That would be awesome.
Jake: That would be cool. Anything else, team?
Brett: I don’t think so.
Ashton and Miles: No.
Brett: I think that does it.
Jake: Well, thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy the show!
Terms and definitions:
Job series: Consists of a job title and number used to associate similar types of positions in the federal government. For example, you might see open positions on USAjobs.gov titled “0025 Park Ranger (Interpretation).”
Pay scale and grade: This sets the salary and qualifications for a position. For example, you might see an open Park Ranger position on USAjobs.gov classified as a “GS 7-9.” The higher the grade level (GS-1 to GS-15) means the position requires more qualifications, responsibility, and a higher salary.
How would you pronounce “Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi?” See if you got it right by listening to today’s guest, Pat Bigelow. Years ago, Pat intended to spend one summer in Montana—until she landed a seasonal job working on Yellowstone Lake. Now, she’s a fisheries biologist with decades of experience studying and restoring native fish to the park’s waters.
Brett Raeburn: From Yellowstone National Park. This is what we do. I'm Brett Raeburn.
Jake Frank: And I'm Jake Frank.
Brett Raeburn: So I have a question for you to kick this off. What's the, What's the biggest fish that you've ever caught?
Jake Frank: The biggest fish I've ever. I was. I used to live in Alaska, and I went halibut fishing, and I caught, like, a 40 pound halibut. That's the. That's the biggest I've ever caught.
Brett Raeburn: It's a way bigger than you're gonna say I was expecting.
Jake Frank: And that's like, a.
Brett Raeburn: Much less impressive size.
Jake Frank: Well, that is a, that's a fairly unimpressive halibut. So for that species anyway.
Brett Raeburn: Well you've got me beat.
Jake Frank: Are you, are you, are you big into fishing.
Brett Raeburn: No, about the only fishing I do is when I'm fishing through the freezer for frozen cod that I get from the store. So that's about. That's about as much as I do.
Jake Frank: Before you cook it. Do you, like, hold it out in front of you and have someone take a picture so it looks better.
Brett Raeburn: I have been known to do that. Follow my Instagram for all that content. Yeah. I also I also want to I want to start off with a trivia question, too, just to see. So you've caught you've got some pretty impressive fish, it sounds like.
Jake Frank: Not really.
Brett Raeburn: If you turn, you turn over that paper in front of you. There's something on there that I would like you to try to pronounce. You have not seen this before. So this is.
Jake Frank: Alright? Let's see. Can I. Can I sound it out? So, Encore, Hankis, Clarki Lewisi?
Pat Bigelow: Was that.
Brett Raeburn: I was. I was. Well, I actually don't know. This is like one of those trivia questions I don't even know the right answer to. So. Sure you did. Well, all right, That's better than what I would’ve done.
Jake Frank: But my guess is that this is the is this the binomial name for the Yellowstone cutthroat trout?
Brett Raeburn: Yes, that is the scientific name for the West Slope. Cutthroat trout.
Jake Frank: The West Slope. Not that. Not the Yellowstone. Okay.
Brett Raeburn: All right. And so today we're going to talk to somebody who probably can pronounce it better than you just did, although I still think that was a pretty good pretty good guess. Our guest today is Pat Bigelow, fisheries biologist who spends a lot of her time on the waters of Yellowstone National Park. So welcome, Pat. How's it going?
Pat Bigelow: Hey, Brett and hey Jake. Great. Beautiful day today.
Jake Frank: Yeah, it is.
Pat Bigelow: And You did pretty good: Oncorhynchus.
Jake Frank: Oncorhynchus.
Jake Frank: All right. So I was in the wheelhouse.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: I love the Lewisi Clarki.
Jake Frank: Is that how you see it? Or is it a line that that works?
Pat Bigelow: Yeah that works, Lewisi Clarkii.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: All right. I wonder where that came from.
Jake Frank: I don't. I don't speak a lot of Latin.
Jake Frank: So.
Brett Raeburn: So I guess we'll just jump right into it. How long have you been working as a fisheries biologist? Well, as any job. How long have you been at Yellowstone National Park?
Pat Bigelow: I've been here in this job for 23 years.
Brett Raeburn: Wow.
Pat Bigelow: I've been working in fisheries for 36 years.
Jake Frank: Probably so. Fresh out of middle school.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah.
Pat Bigelow: Exactly.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah.
Pat Bigelow: I was really fortunate that I got some great opportunities early in life.
Brett Raeburn: Very cool. And so how did you get your start here? 20, 23 years ago.
Pat Bigelow: Actually, my first job was here in 1979. I was in Bozeman working a summer job, and I went down to the unemployment office to see if I could just give something better. And there was a poster up on the wall for a young Adult Conservation Corps in Yellowstone National Park, and I jumped at it. It sounded interesting.
Pat Bigelow: I came down here. We had a I don't know if you guys are familiar with the YCC camp, but when we were actual Corps members, we had a girls dorm, boys dorm and a dining hall and six Corps members to a room you each had a bunk bed, a foot locker and half of the clothes locker and no dividers or anything like that.
Pat Bigelow: You know, you definitely felt like you had just been recruited into some kind of institution. [laughing]
Brett Raeburn: In some ways that is that maybe.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah.
Pat Bigelow: But it was great because we had 100 Corps members who all worked for different offices in the park, and I was very fortunate. A friend of mine and I that started at the same time to work with Fish and Wildlife Service and back then Fish and Wildlife Service did the fisheries work in Yellowstone.
Jake Frank: Well, when did that change? That went from Fisheries.
Pat Bigelow: To Park Service?
Jake Frank: Yeah, to Park Service.
Pat Bigelow: I think it was in 96.
Jake Frank: Okay.
Pat Bigelow: So the Fish and Wildlife Service started here even before the Park Service because of the unique fisheries opportunity and the Yellowstone cutthroat in particular. And then they established a research station in the fifties. They had a hatchery here early on, early twenties, thirties into the fifties. And then after that, they kind of went more to a research station, and then they had a management office, which is who I worked for that advises the Park Service, kind of like a fish and game agency.
Pat Bigelow: You know, advises the state on how to set their regulations. Fish and Wildlife Service. And kinda kept the Park Service up to date on there.
Jake Frank: And my my history is not great, but I if I remember reading, it's even before the National Park Service, there was, like, the predecessor to the Fish and Wildlife Services who stocked the lakes and did a lot of the fisheries stuff in Yellowstone.
Pat Bigelow: Correct US Fish Commission back then as early as 1889. Yeah, we're doing some stocking in Yellowstone National Park.
Jake Frank: Wow. Yeah. A lot of history.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah, yeah.
Pat Bigelow: Fisheries history in the in the park is really kind of a reflection of fisheries management history for the country, really.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. Yeah, That's awesome. So when you started, did you know it sounds like you kind of just saw a poster and. And got a little lucky in that way? Did you know that there were jobs where people worked with fish in national parks?
Pat Bigelow: I hate to say I probably shouldn't even tell you this, but when.
Brett Raeburn: We can edit it out if we need to. [laughing]
Pat Bigelow: When I first moved to Bozeman, one of my coworkers said, Well, have you been to Yellowstone Park yet? As I was trying to figure out what to do for the weekend. And I said, What do you mean, a park? Is it, you know, like ferris wheels?
Jake Frank: Yeah, does it have slides? [laughing]
Brett Raeburn: I've had visitors ask me where the zip lines are. So, yeah, I think I think that's a well.
Jake Frank: To be fair, they’re in West Yellowstone. So.
Pat Bigelow: And I want to say I was very young then.
Brett Raeburn: Sure. Lots to learn. Yeah. So. So you hadn't you, you were pleasantly surprised that there were actually jobs where you could do that, then?
Pat Bigelow: That was awesome. And one of my first full weeks working for the Fish and Wildlife Service, they were doing their annual survey on Yellowstone Lake of the cutthroat trout. And so it meant spending a week on a boat gillnetting on the lake. And we spent a night in in the Park Service cabin on Peel Island because we were doing work in that area and we wanted to stay close to it.
Pat Bigelow: And unlike typical weather on Yellowstone Lake, it was Bluebird days and flat, calm water the whole week and then the cutthroat that we were catching. If you haven't ever seen cutthroat trout, they are beautiful fish.
Brett Raeburn: Can you describe them for those of us who haven't seen one.
Pat Bigelow: So, so. So they're called cutthroat because they have a red slash under there on either side, under their jaw. And they, you know, a kind of a typical trout. They have the same, you know, body form and then black spots more on the tail and you get less as you move forward toward the head. But, they can get really brightly colored and they tend to be olive yellow, brown.
Pat Bigelow: And they can, especially during spawning season, they can get this brilliant red sides and a circular plates and stuff. They can they're just beautiful.
Brett Raeburn: That's cool. That's cool.
Jake Frank: Well, yeah. When we came out on the boat this summer, when you guys were doing your research, you were pulling out some hogs that were huge.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. Yeah. So you've got a fish bigger than Jake's 40 pounder?
Pat Bigelow: Not a cutthroat. [laughing]
Brett Raeburn: It's all about competition here. So. So describe to us like a typical day. So obviously, there's going to be a lot of variance. But if you if someone asked you what your typical day like is as a fisheries biologist, what was it like? What would you tell them?
Pat Bigelow: Well, so it really it does really vary a lot. You know, obviously in the winter we're not doing a lot of fieldwork. We are in the office kind of processing everything that happened last year and trying to plan ahead for next year, which includes hiring, which can be a lot of work, doing a lot of presentations to let people know what we know and where we think we need to go next and all that kind of thing.
Pat Bigelow: But the field work in the summer, all my work is on Yellowstone Lake and it's a beautiful lake. I have, I oversee some contract work on the lake, which is 3 to 4 crews, sometimes five of netters, to try to depress the lake trout population. Lake trout are an invasive species on Yellowstone Lake, and they'll eat the cutthroat trout.
Pat Bigelow: And so we're trying to eliminate them. We're not likely going to eliminate them, but hopefully we're going to suppress them to the point where they're no longer having an impact on the cutthroat trout population. And so we have these gillnet crews that will put out miles of gillnet and lift it every day to remove the lake trout. We also have a telemetry operation where we purposely put acoustic tags in male lake trout and let them go and then kind of relocate them so we can give that information to the netters to help zero in on their day on, you know, where to put their nets and stuff.
Jake Frank: So that that term I've heard that I heard it with something else. So it's like invasive species. You can like you put a tracker on them and they go to where they, like, you know, betray their friends. This whole idea of like a Judas species, like can you talk a little bit about that? That's like, that always made me laugh.
Pat Bigelow: The idea of of a Judas fish is you would put a tag in them that you can follow and they take you to where their friends are.
Pat Bigelow: [laughing]
Pat Bigelow: Betray their friends. And it's not you know, we kind of know we pretty much know where all the habitat is, but they move around a lot. And depending on the time of year and the water temperatures, they’ll be at different depths. So a lot of times the that Judas fish helps you really zero in on the depths to be fishing at, which also helps you avoid the cutthroat trout if you know exactly what depths the lake trout are at.
Pat Bigelow: And so like so if I'm on a boat where we're doing the tagging, we'll collect lake trout from the netters that are still in really lively condition and do surgery and the implant first, make sure they're males. We don't want to tag the females because they're the ones with the reproductive potential. so we want to make sure we kill all the females and then implant tags, make sure the fish recover so that they'll behave normally when we release them and let them go.
Pat Bigelow: Or if it's actually tracking the fish, we’ll we have to hydrophones in the water on either side of the boat, which helps us give a direction to find the fish, so we can zero in on their location. And so then you're basically on the lake driving predetermined transects all day until you pick up a fish and then you zero in on that fish and then you continue on your way.
Brett Raeburn: And for like the listeners who haven't seen Yellowstone Lake or been to it, it's it's a huge it's a huge lake. So that's not an easy task.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. So it takes us about four days to cover the whole lake. Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: Wow.
Pat Bigelow: And we don't actually even cover the whole lake because we avoid the really deep habitat, because we aren't expecting to see any lake trout out there. And we're not going to set nets there anyway.
Jake Frank: And then and then I think a good back story is like we talk about lake trout being invasive versus the Yellowstone cutthroat. I mean, I guess is is there a reason why we as managers prefer one over the other? Like, why like, why are we trying to get rid of lake trout?
Pat Bigelow: So the cutthroat trout, Yellowstone cutthroat trout, like I’ve said already couple of times they're just beautiful. But they are the native species in Yellowstone, Lake, Yellowstone Lake is the most important population of Yellowstone cutthroat trout for that species. And just sheer numbers. And they evolved with only one other native species, which is the longnose dace that is, you know, gets to maybe six inches and is very much along just the shorelines.
Brett Raeburn: That's the fish I would catch. [laughing]
Pat Bigelow: So they're just the cutthroat trout are naive when it comes to larger fish, predator spore and the lake trout are native to the Great Lakes area and they're also beautiful fish, but they are a voracious predator. And so you take a really naive fish and then I really excellent predator and put them together. And it's just not good for the for the cutthroat trout and the lake trout,
Pat Bigelow: I think the oldest one on record was 62 years old.
Jake Frank: The lake trout?
Pat Bigelow: Not from Yellowstone. But yeah, species wise. So if we weren't out there taking out the lake trout, nobody else would be either. There they reside deeper in the lake. They live longer, they get bigger. They have a lot higher reproductive potential than the cutthroat trout. And if left unchecked, they would decimate the cutthroat trout population.
Jake Frank: And when you say, like no one else would get them, you mean like other predators, like bears and fish or bears and birds and otters and all that kind of stuff, right?
Pat Bigelow: Like birds and they tend most predators tend to target the fish when they're shallow and the lake trout don't spend much time being shallow. And then when the lake trout get big, they're too big. Like an osprey might try to grab a big fish. And then we've...I haven't seen this personally, but one of my coworkers has seen an Osprey grab, even a cutthroat that was too big for it and then it wouldn't fly off and it actually drowned.
Brett Raeburn: wow.
Pat Bigelow: Because they have they can have a hard time letting go of a fish once they get their talons through it.
Brett Raeburn: It's like like the monkey with the banana in the barrel situation.
Pat Bigelow: But yeah, lake trout. Well, they're impressive in their ability to eat other fish and can eat a fish, the only thing that stops them is how wide they can get their mouth open and they can eat a fish two thirds their own size.
Jake Frank: Holy moly.
Jake Frank: Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: Can you do that, Jake?
Pat Bigelow: [laughing]
Jake Frank: No. That's like a it's like a 150 pound fish.
Brett Raeburn: That's a big burrito.
Jake Frank: Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: So you obviously know a lot about fish, and so that's an important skill to have as a fisheries biologist. What aside from that, what are or maybe not even aside from that, what do you think is the most important skill for someone who thinks that that's a really cool job and might be interested in applying for jobs like that?
Pat Bigelow: You know, it's probably similar to most jobs. I think the most important thing is to have a passion for what you're doing and positive attitude and be flexible in what you're doing day to day. If you want to actually go into fisheries. Bachelor science is an important aspect of your education. typically you're going to want to end up going back to school to specialize and get a master's degree.
Pat Bigelow: I would highly recommend for anybody thinking that way to get a lot of, get a lot of experience or as much as you can between your master's before your master's and after your bachelor's. It helps you get a better idea of what's available, what kind of work you can be working in, and gives you really good skills.
Pat Bigelow: So and when you do go back or get your master's degree, you are a better candidate because you're not learning everything all at once.
Brett Raeburn: That's great advice and you probably want to like, go out on a boat and make sure you don't get seasick, right? Because, I mean, do people get seasick on on the lake?
Pat Bigelow: They have.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, I'd imagine it gets choppy.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. And it's.
Brett Raeburn: That’d be tough.
Pat Bigelow: It's we we have had a few volunteers come out from different places, even other fisheries biologists that come out and you know, they're really excited to give you a hand and be helpful. And then they’re not. [laughing]
Brett Raeburn: Then they’re looking for the horizon.
Jake Frank: Then they’re a liability.
Brett Raeburn: I've been there.
Jake Frank: And a quick follow up with the Masters. If does it matter if you're specializing like, say, if somebody's like, my goal is to work in Yellowstone, do they need to get a masters related to the species that are here? Or can you like if you happen to be, say, getting your masters in some other fish species, does that you know, does that qualify you like can you learn what you need to on the job or does it really help to focus in on the like the actual species that you'll be studying in the park that you want to end up in?
Pat Bigelow: I think the broader the education you have, the better. And you can focus in when you get the particular job. The other thing is e you know, even though you also might be your goal, that might not be your next step.
Jake Frank: Gotcha.
Pat Bigelow: So yeah.
Jake Frank: That's good advice.
Pat Bigelow: And then also, it's good to think outside of the box sometimes too. And if you have more familiarity with other habitats, other species and stuff, you know, you can bring in maybe a new perspective that somehow is different than what people have thought of before.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. Well, and it sounds like your typical day is is pretty cool, especially in the summer when you're out on a boat. What is your favorite part about your job?
Pat Bigelow: I you can probably tell I love Yellowstone Lake. Being on the lake is awesome, but I think the most rewarding. Well, two things are most rewarding, but one is I work with amazing people and being able to sit down with a coworker and talk about strategies and you know, how things are going, what happened over here, how we can pull that together, how we can best use our crews and to just keep making things move forward is super rewarding.
Pat Bigelow: But then also taking somebody like we typically have student volunteers every summer and, and they typically don't have much experience. So taking somebody who really knows nothing about what we're doing and seeing, bringing them through a season and seeing them increase their skills and increase their confidence and get more sure about what they want to do and be excited about protecting a resource, that's pretty awesome.
Pat Bigelow: But then the other part is actually seeing the work that we're doing make a definite impact on protecting Yellowstone Park resources. That's really rewarding as well.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, well, and we'll let you slide. Even though you gave us three favorites.
Jake Frank: Yeah, we said one, but we got three.
Brett Raeburn: It's okay. That's your one Mulligan for this podcast. Okay, So with that, what would this is the hard question. What is, is the toughest part about your job?
Pat Bigelow: That's a really good question, too. You know you can get frustrated with the inability to do things as quick as you want because you have to go through proper procedures to make sure, you know, just because I think something's really good to do doesn't mean it is. So there's a lot of checks and balances.
Jake Frank: In the government?
Pat Bigelow: [laughing]
Brett Raeburn: Red tape?
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. And then so that can be really frustrating. And then also supervision can be really challenging, but it's important to be able to work well with people and not just work well with them. But communication is such an important aspect of all parts of life. And even though everybody communicates every day, it just amazes me that we all have so much more to learn on how to communicate better.
Pat Bigelow: So if I have an employee, for instance, how to get the best, how to help them be their best and get the best out of them can be really challenging, especially if for some reason they shouldn't have taken the job and don't really want to be there.
Jake Frank: And and you mentioned earlier that you're doing hiring right now. How many people are a part of your operation?
Pat Bigelow: So in the fisheries program, we have Todd Koel is our leader. Brian Ertel and I are both the fish biologists that have been here quite a long time. Andy Pochany is a new streams biologist, is doing great work. And then right now we have two student biologists, they're in the Pathways program, Cody Vender and Drew McDonald And each of us hires with the exception of Todd.
Pat Bigelow: But each of us that are in the biology series hire two technicians and one intern during the summer.
Jake Frank: So you guys are a big operation.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. And then on top of that, we have the contract crew that does a lot of the suppression netting, not all of it, but most of it. And they will have up to 20 people.
Jake Frank: Yeah. And that there's so there's a lot of time effort and money that go into the fisheries program. Yeah.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. And Cody and I work, and Andrew, work on the lake mostly Brian, Brian Ertel and Andy cover streams outside of Yellowstone Lake.
Jake Frank: Is that kind of how you like, you divide it up, it's like the lake and.
Brett Raeburn: They’re the ones that get seasick.
Jake Frank: Then everything else is at the how you like divide your guys work as the lake and then everything that's not Yellowstone Lake, that's kind of the dividing line.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. And Brian focuses more on Yellowstone cutthroat or and he focuses a little bit more on the West Slope cutthroat. But since they're both doing river stream work, they work together a lot.
Brett Raeburn: So you talked a little bit about kind of the tougher parts of the job. So what is it about the Park Service that that keeps you here and brought you here and keeps you here, I guess.
Pat Bigelow: Well, it the just the protection of the natural resources, you know, keeping the environment in it as intact as possible and just the ecosystem function and all that. It those are all great buzzwords, but it's the beauty of everything working together that really draws you in and makes you really enjoy it.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, and some of our listeners might not be super familiar with the National Park Service mission. We all had to get it tattooed on us when we took the jobs and Jake's is on his lower back, I think. Right. It's still there.
Jake Frank: I can neither confirm nor deny.
Brett Raeburn: But but essentially, essentially the mission is preserving the natural and cultural resources, like you said, for the enjoyment education and inspiration of this and future generations. So and you've touched on this, but how does your job contribute to this mission? It seems like a pretty direct and easy to see thing.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. yeah. We're we're spending a lot of time and effort suppressing the lake trout population so that the cutthroat trout population in Yellowstone Lake can thrive. And because that's the major population for that species of fish, it helps that whole species thrive. And it's a beautiful fish. Did I say that, already?
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, yeah, you can say that one twice. That's okay.
Jake Frank: And then what I've learned here, like not being a big fisherman or person who fishes, I don't know what the non gendered version of that is, but people love to fish. It's like crazy how many people are here in the summer. So it's like, you know, and the whole idea of being the like the, the homeland of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout, I mean, it's like this is like the world's largest population of that fish, right?
Jake Frank: So, yeah, people come here to catch that. And it's it seems like, you know, you know, protecting it. And then people have that directly, that direct enjoyment. I mean, it seems like everybody appreciates being able to get out there and catch that big fish and put it on the gram.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. And not only we think about going out on Yellowstone like this is a huge lake and there's, you know what, three buildings on that entire lake. I mean, maybe a couple more, depending on how far away from the water you want to measure. But it's spectacular.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, You're out there. You're out there. All right, well, before we wrap up, we're going to get into what we call the nitty gritty here. So I don't want to scare listeners away. There's this is a fair warning. There's going to be some government jargon, but fear not. We've got your back. So we have an introductory episode along with some links that we're going to put in the show notes that will explain all this in detail.
Brett Raeburn: So that said, for people interested in this type of career, career and you've kind of already talked about the education aspect of it. So if I want to be a fisheries biologist, what's your what's your job series in USA Jobs? Series and GS level and all that nitty gritty?
Pat Bigelow: So my GS level is GS-11 and my job series is fisheries biologist 0482 and then like a lot of the seasonals that were hiring the summer, they are fishery biological technicians, parentheses, fisheries and there because there are a lot of different biological technicians and they're all in the GS 0404 series.
Brett Raeburn: Awesome. And aside from the education aspect, is there any other formal training that someone needs to have to apply for this position or.
Pat Bigelow: Not formal You know, a bachelor's is great, but like I said, the more experience you can get, I with different agencies, different areas, the better off are going to be.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
Brett Raeburn: Do you have any other advice for people interested in that career path, aside from what you've said already?
Pat Bigelow: it's a great career. It's really fun. I've worked, you know, when I left here in from my first four years that I was here with the Fish and Wildlife Service, I, I did some work with the State Wyoming Game and Fish. I worked with the Fish and Wildlife Service in California, northern Idaho, Washington, every job I've ever had has been really fun.
Brett Raeburn: Come work with Pat is what she's saying. All right. Well, before we let you go, we like to ask everyone that comes on the podcast. One final question. This one's my favorite. So what is your favorite story or memory in a national park? It doesn't have to be in Yellowstone, although you've been here a while, so there's a good chance it will be.
Brett Raeburn: But it doesn't have to be. It can be, you know, a trip you took in during annual leave or something. But do you have any defining story or memory from a national park?
Pat Bigelow: There's so many to choose from. This one is really fish related, though, so I'll share it. We were doing a snorkel survey on the Olympic Peninsula and we were snorkeling. Chinook salmon which get quite big, spring Chinook salmon in particular. They they like to hide their head. Their kind of like a little kid in that their eyes are covered, they think you can’t see them.
Pat Bigelow: And so when you're snorkeling for them, you got to really look at the root wads and things because they they kind of stick their head in the root wad, and and and then you might miss them if you're not really looking closely. So I was coming down the stretch of stream that was actually pretty wide and flat and no cover.
Pat Bigelow: And this spring Chinook, I could see him. He was just in the mid-water column in front of me over this gravel bar, and he saw me and he just sunk down and sat on the bottom. And I was getting closer because I was coming downstream. And as I got closer, he like got as close to the bottom as he could.
Pat Bigelow: And then he actually rolled over and laid on his side.
Brett Raeburn: Played dead?
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. Until he went by. And then he took off.
Jake Frank: If he was wearing a turtleneck shirt, he would’ve slumped into it.
Pat Bigelow: It was just so funny.
Pat Bigelow: To see him actually, like trying to hide where he had nothing to hide.
Brett Raeburn: That's amazing. And you'd never heard of that type of behavior before, or is that just something you hadn't seen before?
Pat Bigelow: I had not heard or seen it, so it was it just made me laugh.
Brett Raeburn: That's awesome. So you're making scientific observations on your on your vacations, even.
Pat Bigelow: Actually, that was work.
Brett Raeburn: That was work? Well, work, vacation, sometimes the line gets blurred.
Pat Bigelow: [laughing]
Pat Bigelow: Can I tell you my favorite question?
Brett Raeburn: Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: That you've ever been asked? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pat Bigelow: Somebody at once asked me why all the Civil War battles were fought in National Parks.
Jake Frank: That that. That is a great question. What does that is that's a causation. What's the what's the whole thing. Correlation, not causation.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. What was your, what was your answer?
Pat Bigelow: I honestly thought they were kidding. So I started laughing and I said, well, you know, people were very civil back then. And then I could see by the look, you know, he wasn't kidding. And I got real apologetic real fast.
Pat Bigelow: [laughing]
Jake Frank: I think that happens to all of us. You get caught off guard with the question because people joke with us all the time. They ask us silly questions.
Brett Raeburn: But especially like the people with dry humor that's like really hard to tell. You know, It's like, I don't know what to do with that.
Jake Frank: Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: Awesome. Well, Pat, thank you so much for joining us. It was it was really cool hearing about your job and learning a little bit a little bit more about fish, too. So I'm I'm excited to go fishing. I think when the season all starts.
Jake Frank: I think, I think I am also excited to fish. But I have this weird I like the touching of fish. I don't know how hard to grab them or not. I feel like I'm like strangling them. Yeah. And I don't want to like, mess their slime up, but then they know when I'm not holding them tight enough and then they flop around and then I drop them.
Brett Raeburn: So what’s the the safe? Can we get a an extra credit question here? What's the safe handling for someone who's fishing? Do you wear gloves? Do you not wear gloves?
Pat Bigelow: We wear gloves. The water is really cold. Yeah. No other reason, but yeah, yeah, it helps protect the fish and it helps give you a little bit milder grip, but. But you don't want to grip them tight.
Jake Frank: That's. Yeah. I feel like I'm going to squeeze the life out of.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah. And if you're angling.
Brett Raeburn: Don’t grip it like a burrito, do it like a baby.
Pat Bigelow: Your angling if you maybe keep them in the water while you're handling them, that keeps them calmer, too.
Jake Frank: I've seen this hashtag. Keep them wet. Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. Okay. And grip it like a burrito, not a baby. Yeah, right. Which. Yeah. Anyways, we'll leave it there. Anyways, thanks for joining us.
Pat Bigelow: Yeah, it's been awesome.
Jake Frank: Yeah, it's great talking to you, Pat. Thanks for joining us.
Brett Raeburn: That's it for this week's episode of What We Do. Thanks again to our guest, Pat Bigelow. And if you like what we do, rate and review the show wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new people find the show. So we really appreciate it. If you have questions or you want to learn more about a particular job, contact us using the form at go.nps.gov/WhatWeDoPodcast. Thanks for listening.
Fish ecology: Learn about the 12 native fish species found in Yellowstone.
Gilnetting: The operation of setting and retrieving large nets in Yellowstone Lake to catch and remove invasive lake trout.
Native Fish Conservation Program: To reverse the decline in native fish populations in the park and restore ecosystem integrity, Yellowstone implements targeted actions to promote native fish recovery.
Pathways Programs: Programs that offer internship and employment opportunities with the federal government for students, recent graduates, and those with an advanced degree.
Peale Island: A small island located in the south arm of Yellowstone Lake, which has a historic backcountry ranger cabin.
YACC Camp: The Young Adult Conservation Camp located in Mammoth Hot Springs, which includes housing, kitchen, and common areas for Yellowstone Youth Conservation Corps members and employees.
Addy Falgoust, Park Guide
Among park rangers, there’s a running joke that we do a lot of pointing at things. From pointing out wildlife to pointing out the nearest bathroom, we’ve arguably mastered the art of pointing. But being a park ranger or park guide entails SO much more! Today’s guest, Park Guide Addy Falgoust, talks about her experiences teaching people about Yellowstone’s marvels and what it’s like to live and work in the park during winter.
Ashton: From Yellowstone National Park. This is what we do. I'm Ashton Hooker.
Brett: And I'm Brett Raeburn.
Ashton: Hey, Brett.
Brett: Hey, Ashton. How's it going?
Ashton: I'm good. How are you doing today?
Brett: I'm doing awesome. It's getting close to lunch, so my stomach might rumble a little bit here.
Ashton: Um, mine is seriously rumbling as well. I hope you can't hear it through the microphone.
Brett: Yeah, I have this big lunch box behind me. I'll try not to rummage in it too much. So, we'll see.
Ashton: Well, today we have Addy Falgoust who is a park guide here in Yellowstone. We're going to talk to her a little bit more about her job and what it's like. And so as a part guide, you know, if you're a visitor to Yellowstone, you might see them out and about either in the visitor center, roaming park trails, park-guided walks and talks, things like that. So along those same lines, we have the Junior Ranger program and it's pretty popular.
Brett: Yes, I've heard of it.
Ashton: It's in a bunch of different parks, Yellowstone as well. So my question for you, do you happen to know how many Junior Ranger badges are awarded here in Yellowstone?
Brett: Every year?
Ashton: Every year.
Brett: Number of Junior Ranger badges... so not just people who, like, get the books and don't go through to graduate?
Ashton: Correct.
Brett: I'm going to say... I'm trying to see if Miles would give me any hints here because he orders the badges. I think it's like I'm going to say 160,000.
Ashton: Oooh. Wow, That's more than I thought you're going to guess. But really, you're not too far off. So in the past couple of years, you know, we've had a few weird years with COVID and the flood and stuff, so it's been a little lower the past few years, but it's been about 50,000.
Brett: Okay. I'm like, So come on, Junior Rangers, step up.
Ashton: Yeah, Yeah.
Brett: But this year is going to be the year know 160,000.
Ashton: But in a normal year, it's about 50,000 to 100,000. So, you're not too far off.
Brett: That's that is a lot of Junior Rangers being sworn in.
Ashton: It's a lot more than I thought.
Brett: It's a lot of oath-takers.
Ashton: Yeah.
Brett: We're in good hands.
Ashton: Yes, we are. All the Junior Rangers out there. So, anyway, we're going to talk with Addy more about she does in the park. So, Addy, thanks for joining us.
Addy: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Ashton: How are you doing?
Addy: I'm doing well.
Ashton: Good, good. So, ready to dive in?
Addy: Absolutely.
Ashton: Okay. So how did you get your start with the National Park Service?
Addy: So I got my start in 2017 as an intern in Glacier Bay National Park.
Ashton: And that's in Alaska?
Addy: That's correct. Yeah. It often gets mistaken for a glacier in Montana. So often I do specify Glacier BAY in Alaska.
Brett: I heard that emphasis on BAY. Yeah.
Ashton: Cool. And so what drew you to that? Did you always know you wanted to be a park ranger?
Addy: So growing up, my family traveled to national parks. I think a lot of people in this career and they kind of, you know, was really interested. I fell in love with the Tetons and I was like, I want to live where they are one day. And the way to live there is to become a park ranger. So simple enough, I'll just just do that. And, you know, it got a little bit more complicated than that. But in high school and college, I started to look more seriously into pursuing a career in that direction. I actually visited Yellowstone in college and spoke to some Rangers on that trip and asked them, "Hey, how do I get into this field?" And they gave me some good information on internship programs like the SCA and also how to find jobs in USA Jobs.
Brett: What is that, SCA, just for those who don't know?
Addy: Yeah. So the SCA is the Student Conservation Association, and the internship that I did in Glacier Bay was through them.
Ashton: Okay. And so what exactly did you do?
Addy: Yeah. So the position there was an education intern, and Glacier Bay has pretty few visitors that actually set foot on the land there. And the number of visitors in the winter is pretty much nonexistent. And so most of the visitation is in the summer on cruise ships. So in the winter, they have a pretty robust distance learning program. So we were actually using Zoom before COVID and before Zoom really became a thing and essentially taking students on virtual whale-watching tours and field trips to the park.
Ashton: Wow.
Brett: Wow. That sounds like a good gig. Yeah. So you're on a boat, like, while you're doing this?
Addy: No. So we were in an office with a green screen that made it look like we were on a boat. I did get to go out with the oceanography team, though, which was really fun one day and we got to take water samples. So I did get to have that experience in the bay, but most of the time was spent in the office.
Ashton: Okay, so did you go from Glacier Bay and then Yellowstone or were there other stops in between?
Addy: There are few steps in between, yeah. So after Glacier Bay, I did a couple of seasonal positions as an interpretive park ranger and also an education position in Grand Teton National Park. And then I was pretty fortunate to get offered a permanent job pretty early on in my career. And that was in Hot Springs, Arkansas. That was also a park guide position. I was there for a few months and then took a lateral reassignment to a part guide position here, and I've been here since it's been about four and a half years, I think.
Ashton: Okay. So tell us a little bit about being in Yellowstone. A lot of people don't know that there are actually park Ranger rangers that live on the interior of the park. So what that means is like, you know, not at any of the park entrances. And so Yellowstone closes down in the winter. So you're you know, you're at Lake Lake Village outside Yellowstone Lake. So tell us what that is like. Like, how did you even get here this morning? Talk us through what that is like.
Addy: Yeah. So essentially, we kind of get snowed in and the winter and often we, you know, things are complicated, but there's a lot of snowmobiling to your car and then transitioning to take your car to a location. Currently we have less snow this year, which you think would make traveling easier, but it's actually made things more complicated because my car is at one location, but there's not enough snow for me to snowmobile from the roads. I have enough snow on them to my car, so I have to take like an in-between car to get to my car. So to get to the studio this morning, I took a snowmobile and a couple of vehicles. So and it took about 2 hours. Whereas normally if I could just snowmobile straight here, it would have been probably 30 minutes faster than that.
Brett: So, wow, that is dedication and confidence that we appreciate you.
Addy: Yeah, but those of us in the interior look for excuses to get out. So I was very happy to be out here today.
Ashton: Wow. Well, we're glad you're joining us and that you took the long trek to come all the way up here.
Brett: What's your typical like? How often do you get out to get groceries and things like that?
Addy: So it really varies depending on the year. Typically, I try to stockpile groceries in the fall so that I never need to go out specifically for a grocery trip. But if I happen to be out for another reason, then I always get groceries. But I'd say usually in a normal year I probably leave twice a month each winter. So every two weeks.
Ashton: Okay. So I've seen some park rangers who live in the interior in winter. They do a lot of canning. Are you into that?
Addy: No, I am the unhealthy ranger that lives off of pasta and frozen pizza.
Brett: Ramen!
Ashton: Hey, it's delicious.
Addy: I don't do any canning, but, you know, if you just eat a lot of pasta, dry goods, that stays really well. So I can really stock up in the fall.
Ashton: Wow. So in a typical winter, like one that we're not having now with not as much snow, you would normally just snowmobile everywhere, correct?
Addy: Yes. Yeah, I snowmobile to my vehicle at whatever entrance it's located at. And typically it's not a big deal. You know, I actually really enjoy snowmobiling most of the time and there's incredible opportunities to see wildlife along the way. Amazing scenery. The sunrises and sunsets in the winter are always really special. So although it has its challenges, overall, I really like living at Lake. There's incredible opportunities for skiing around the neighborhood. But it's not to say it doesn't come without its challenges.
Ashton: Mmhmm, for sure. So in your current position as part guide, do you have a typical day? Can you tell us a little bit what that's like? I know it probably varies from day to day.
Addy: I'd say my I have a typical summer day and a typical winter day. Would you like to know about both of those or just one of the seasons?
Ashton: Sure!
Addy: Okay, so in this summer, a typical day, a third of it is usually spent working the visitor center, front desk, answering questions, helping people plan their trips, answering questions about what birds they're seeing, animals they're seeing, like the number of questions we get. You know, you never know what's going to come out of someone's mouth. Search me all over the place. Another third of the day is typically spent leading a ranger guided program. So that can be a talk, a campfire program, a walk. And the remaining third of the day is typically spent out in the field roving and so talking to visitors on boardwalks and some of the thermal areas, interacting with people at wildlife jams, making sure no one's petting bison.
Brett: Very important.
Addy: Yeah. So that's kind of a typical summer day in the winter. My job is kind of unique and then I staff a building called a Warming Hut and so, you know, most people are kind of putting out figurative fires in their day to day work. And my job is literally to go and start a fire. So I go to the warming head, start a fire. And the purpose of that is to serve as a place for snowmobile groups to stop in and warm up. That's the sole source of heat for the building. So depending on the day, if it's really cold out, it could be ten degrees inside. When I get there, it take a few hours to get up to temperature, but we try to get at about 60 degrees in the building and interact with groups as they stop by throughout the day. The fishing bridge warming hut is a quieter location, so on average we've got about 20 to 40 people that stop per day and in between groups. Surprisingly. And cell service is actually really good at that location. So I'm able to plug into a mobile hotspot and respond to visitor trip planning emails. I've helped with social media at times as well, and so I can stay connected and do other work in between groups. So it's more kind of office and admin work mixed in with splitting firewood.
Ashton: Wow. Wuite a variety of skills required.
Addy: Yes.
Ashton: And so where do you live? Like what are your living accommodations like? I'm sure a lot of people are wondering.
Addy: That's the number one question I get asked at the Warming Hut. And what I usually tell those visitors that are asking is that we have housing at each of the developed locations in the park. So my housing area is only a couple of miles away, so it's just a couple-mile snowmobile ride to the warming hut. Often groups get there and like, how did you get here? And I'm like, well, I snowmobiled here just like you, but like I had the easy commute. Like they're snowmobiling 26 miles just to get to me. I only did two.
Brett: I just crawled out of the lake.
All: [laughter]
Ashton: Which you probably could this winter because it's not frozen.
Addy: Yeah, I did a training once in the park where I spent the night in a snow trench and sometimes I do consider telling people that when they ask, where do you live? Where do you sleep at night? I'm like, Yeah, just in a trench in the snow over there.
Brett: I've been here a few years, so they moved me to the three-bedroom snow trench. Yeah, they take care of us here.
Ashton: So what's the most important skill you'd say for your job?
Addy: Yeah, the most important skill in my position is probably communication. So as an interpretive position, it's really important to communicate these messages and try to foster a connection between the people that are visiting Yellowstone and the resources that we have here in the park. And so being able to tailor messages for specific audiences is really important in order to communicate that effectively and try to hopefully inspire the next generation of stewards for these lands.
Brett: What's one of the like hardest or most memorable questions that you've had asked?
Addy: Oooh. That's a good one. So this is a funny one. But the most memorable question, there was a girl. She was probably about 12 years old and she was really shy. I was at Mud Volcano and I could tell she was kind of embarrassed to ask this question. Her mom was like, She has a question. And I was like, Sure. And she was like, I don't know if I want to ask. I was like, No, like, go for it. No judgment. And her question was, how do you bison poop in such perfect circles?
All: [laughter]
Addy: And I loved it because so often we get the same question over and over again. And so that I'd never gotten that once before, and I've never gotten that one since. And so, you know, I took a moment and I was like, well, it has to come. It has to do with the consistency in which the poop comes out. So it's like pancake batter, if you think of it like that. Yeah, like spreads out in a circle, I'm like, it doesn't come out that shape. Yeah. So I think that helped her out. So I wonder if she thinks about that.
Brett: Eating your pancakes that you bring to the office. But it's a great way of explaining it.
Ashton: Yeah, I'm going to think about that every time I see some bison poop out there. So what is your favorite part of the job?
Addy: My favorite part of the job is probably getting to re-experience the magic of Yellowstone through the eyes of first time visitors. I've literally had kids jumping up and down for joy when they saw Grizzly Bear for the first time. And I've seen adults like cower when they hear a bull bison grunt during the ride. And those moments just remind me of like, how special this place is. They allow me to remember why I fell in love with this place and why it's worth protecting. That's great. Yeah.
Ashton: Yeah. And so on the other side of that coin of that, you know, there's great parts of the job, maybe some that are not so great or just a little tough. What's like the toughest part of your job?
Addy: I would say I think the toughest part of my job is probably dealing with angry and frustrated visitors. You know, people are coming here on vacation and everything supposed to go right for them. And when it doesn't go right and they're on vacation, they really want someone to blame and someone to give them answers for that. And being a frontline staff member, we're kind of the face for the park. So we're often the person that receives the brunt of that anger and aggression. And especially in the middle of the summer, if you're receiving that day after day, multiple times a day. And often these complaints are about things that we have little to no control over. Sometimes they're because of natural disasters like floods. It can be really hard to deal with that.
Brett: Yeah. Yeah. It takes patience.
Addy: Yes.
Ashton: Yes, lots of patience.
Ashton: So even with those kind of tougher parts of the job, why do you still want to work as a park guide or work for the Park Service? What is it that keeps bringing you back?
Addy: Yeah, although there can be tough days and those negative people, I think the good days and the good people really outweigh it. You might have someone who's mad at you one moment and then you have a really special connection with a junior ranger the next. And it just reminds you kind of why we were doing this. Also, just having an opportunity to live here is something that I try not to take for granted. There's incredible recreational opportunities that I have right in my backyard, and I've also had incredible wildlife sightings, literally from my couch, like I've seen bears and coyotes. I think the only thing I haven't seen out of my back window is a wolf. But there's not a lot of places in the world where you have opportunities for recreation like you do in a national park and opportunities for these really incredible wildlife sightings. And so I think those moments remind me of why I'm here, why I'm doing this. They're incredibly rewarding personally, but they also remind me of the importance of protecting that so that other people can experience that too.
Brett: My gosh, like being at lake in the winter when it's slower has got to be so quiet and peaceful.
Addy: Yeah, I mean, the other morning actually Sunday, I went to the warming hut and there were four wolves in the road.
Ashton: Wow.
Addy: And that was like on my two-mile snowmobile commute to work, got to my office and I saw four wolves at my office. And I've seen foxes and coyotes passing in front of that building as well. And I was all alone. No one else was there. And so it's a really special moment when you have moments like that. And those moments always kind of take me back to why I'm here. And I, I find that some of my best moments in the park, best sunrises, sunsets, rainbows, wildlife sightings have occurred on some of my most difficult days. And so it's like even though there are those tough days, the park always finds a way to remind me of why why I'm here.
Ashton: Yeah, that reminds me of a time few years ago I was driving home. It was a Friday at the end of the work day, just trying to get back to the office, and I got stuck in this bison jam for 2 hours, so I didn't get home till, like, 8 p.m. Yeah, but it's moments like that, like a lot of those people are experiencing that for the first time and it's super cool. They get to be in a place like that where you get to have those types of experiences. And sightings.
Addy: And when you're frustrated in that bison jam, but you look over at like a little kid who's just glued to the window, can't believe what's happening. Kind of makes it a little easier. At least you're not stuck on an interstate somewhere.
Ashton: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So do you have a defining moment? You've talked about some cool, like, sightings and things, so you get to experience living in the interior in winter. Is there like, one moment that really stands out to you as, like, a career-defining moment?
Addy: Yeah. I don't know if this is a defining moment, but when I thought about this a moment that made me feel like I was really in the right place and doing a good job and something that I was really proud of happened a couple of summers ago. I had a father and daughter asking questions, and the daughter, the father is the main one, asking the questions. And the daughter was really curious and she started chiming in and so she'd ask a question. I'd give her an answer. She'd ask another question. And so a really natural flow of conversation began. I even went and got a bear skull and brought it out to show her. And I was sitting on the porch with this bare skull talking to her about it. And I remember she looked up at me and said, Ranger Addy, I love learning with you.
Ashton: Awww.
Addy: And it really just melted my heart because it felt like all of this was worth it. And I really was having an impact and inspiring the next generation of stewards for these lands. And after that, her father pulled me aside and was like, I just want to tell you, like, I really appreciate that you took the time to speak with her and answer all her questions. He was like, I know she had a lot of questions and he's like, I don't know if you know that the impact that that had on her. And I didn't even realize that the time or tell him, but I don't think they realized the impact that they also had on me because that was just reminded me of why I'm here and why I'm doing this.
Brett: And that's kind of one of the interesting things about your job is it's less like quantifiable all the impacts that you have. And so like, who knows what that little girl is going to grow up to be or do?
Addy: I know you were talking about Junior Ranger badges in the intro and after I answered all those questions for her, I was like, Well, you you're working on a Junior Ranger book, right? She said she'd never heard of the program. And so I got her a book and she was like, I want you to be the Ranger to swear me in. Like, When are you working again? Tomorrow at 10 a.m. is the one hour that I'll be there. Got a deadline for this because I'm going to be on my weekend backpacking. And she was like, I'm finishing it. And so she came back. I think she was only six, but she did all of her work that day and came back the next morning and I got to swear her in. So maybe she'll be in this position in the future, you know? Maybe she'll be a Ranger one day.
Ashton: That's awesome. And that's a lasting impact, too. Yeah, it's really cool.
Ashton: So we'll get into the nitty gritty of your job. The park guide position that you're in, do you know what the series is on USA Jobs? So if people want to go apply, what should they look for?
Addy: Yeah, the series is 0090.
Ashton: And do you know, are those like entry level jobs? How far up the ladder can they go with those?
Addy: Yeah. So part guide positions are typically more entry level and mine is a GS-5 position.
Ashton: And do you need any formal training or anything like that?
Addy: There's no formal training needed for this position. Just having experience in education and interpretation is helpful.
Ashton: Okay. So if you were to give somebody advice, like what type of experience they should get, yeah, what would you tell them?
Addy: My recommendation would be just get experience where you can, whether that's like volunteering at your local environmental center, which is something that I did, or working at a nearby state park. If you can get experience in interpretation and environmental education, that's going to be a really good way to get your foot in the door.
Brett: And how did you I mean, obviously you have to know a lot about the resource to answer all those questions about circular bison poop. So so how I mean, is that just the stuff that you research kind of on the job or on your own just because you're curious? How how do you get that knowledge?
Addy: I'd say a combination of both. I had visited here I don't know how many times before working here, probably five times with my family and so from that I just had a lot of basic knowledge of what are the popular sites to see and how do you be a visitor here? Because I had visited, so I kind of had some of that background knowledge. I had some knowledge on the ecosystem that I learned when working in Grand Teton National Park. Some of that was on the job learning, some of that was reading before I did that position. And then since I've been here, I'd say more of the knowledge that I've acquired has been on the job, either reading different references, learning from fellow Rangers is probably one of the biggest ways that I learn and just answering questions. It's really scary as your first day being a ranger, working at the front desk, having to answer questions, But that's the only way that you're going to know what people are asking and know what information you need to know.
Brett: Yeah, I've worked the front desk a few times and I'm just like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that one either.
All: [laughter]
Addy: And then you're one of the main people that is contributing to the research that we're using.
Ashton: Well, in Yellowstone, there's so much information to possibly know too.
Addy: So that's another thing that's like really kept me in Yellowstone for so long is that it's hard to get bored here because one day I'm getting questions about circular bison poop. The next day I'm getting questions from a microbiologist who knows more about the thermophiles in these features than I do. Yeah, but yeah, there's just endless knowledge to know. And so, yeah, there's still questions that I get that I don't know the answer to. And I tell them I'll go look it up and get back to you. And sometimes I it's hard to find an answer, but yeah, I try.
Ashton: Well, that's really cool. And so the last thing we like to ask people, what is your favorite memory that you've had? It could be here in Yellowstone or any other national park since it sounds like you've you've worked and visited lots of different national parks. Do you have a favorite moment you've had?
Addy: So something that stands out to me as a moment I had here in Yellowstone and it doesn't involve wildlife or hiking or thermal features like you might expect it to. It actually involves the ice on Yellowstone Lake, which I know some of you here have heard me go on and on about the ice on Yellowstone Lake. Yellowstone Lake freezes in the winter and living at lake. This is something that is a pretty exciting event to us. Like what day is ice going to free or the lake in a free is what day is it going to melt? Sometimes it sings as well, so you can't really like live our lives by the seasons of the lake and ice-off day is like my favorite day of the year. I just think it's so incredible and it doesn't happen every year. But if conditions are right as the ice breaks up, it gets pushed out of the lake at Yellowstone River, which is the only outlet to the lake, and it flows down underneath fishing bridge. And as that happens, those chunks of ice all kind of get compressed into each other. And you can stand on fishing bridge and look underneath your feet. And it's just mesmerizing, watching this like, icy slushy move. It sounds really cool, too. It's like a bunch of shards of glass almost. And usually it occurs late May, like Memorial Day weekend. And a couple of years ago, I was actually out of the park on a temporary work assignment. And I wasn't scheduled to get back until June. And I was like, there's no way I'm going to make it back in time for ice-off. And I was I was pretty sad about it because it only happens once a year. Like, it's not like, Old Faithful, it's not happening every 90 minutes. So I was really bummed that I was going to miss ice-off day and I was moving back into the park on June 3. And as I'm driving along the lake, I see that the ice is still there and it's starting to break up. And I rushed to fishing bridge, got to fishing bridge in time. I'm standing there watching the ice and listening to the sounds and I look up and there is a double rainbow!
All: Woah, cool.
Brett: [sings]
Addy: Yeah, yeah. It just felt like the lake had waited for me. And that was, that was Yellowstone's way of welcoming me back home.
Ashton: That's really cool.
Brett: I would like Yellowstone to you to welcome me back home with a double rainbow next time down there, too. So if you could, I'll try to make that happen, that'd be great.
Addy: I'll try. [laughter]
Brett: And I have to go back to one other thing you said real fast before we go, because you said it sings?
Addy: Yeah. So as the ice cracks and forms the those sound waves are kind of sent through the ice and you get these really unique sounds. It kind of sounds like lightsabers. It doesn't happen often. Conditions have to be just right, but it's really cool when it does occur.
Brett: Sorry, can you give us a like, what does it sound like? Can you give us your best impression?
Addy: Yeah, it's like, pew! Pew! Pew! There's other sounds too, but those are the coolest sounds.
Brett: That's cool. I'll be listening for light sabers next time I'm down there.
All: [laughter]
Ashton: Well, thank you so much for joining us, Addy.
Brett: Yes, thank you.
Addy: Thanks for having me today. Yeah, this was really fun.
Ashton: Well, that's it for this week's episode of What We Do. Thanks again to our guest, Addy Falgoust. If you like what we do, write and review the show wherever you listen. Every positive review helps do listeners find the show. If you have questions or want to learn more about a particular job, contact us using the form at go.nps.gov/WhatWeDoPodcast. Thanks for listening!
Bear/Bison jam: A traffic jam that occurs as people stop their vehicles on park roads to view roadside wildlife.
Detail: A temporary assignment from one position within the federal government to another, with the expectation that the person will return to their official position upon completion.
Distance learning: On-demand videos created by Yellowstone park rangers that teachers can use in their classrooms.
Junior Ranger Program: A self-guided program for people ages 4 and older to learn about the natural wonders of Yellowstone.
Ranger Programs: A variety of walks, talks, and other in-person programs led by Yellowstone park rangers.
Student Conservation Association (SCA): A nonprofit organization that partners with the National Park Service to foster the next generation of conservation leaders through an internship program.
Warming hut: Small buildings in the park that provide shelter and basic amenities for people visiting Yellowstone during the winter.
John Cataldo, Fire Management Officer
We’re coming in hot with a FIRE episode today featuring Fire Management Officer John Cataldo! John has worked on wildland fires in 18 states with both the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service. From fighting fires on the ground to managing Yellowstone’s fire program, John talks about his professional journey and offers advice for those interested in a fire career.
Miles: From Yellowstone National Park, this is what we do. I'm Miles Barger.
Ashton: And I'm Ashton Hooker.
Miles: Hey, Ashton.
Ashton: Hey, Miles.
Miles: How's it going?
Ashton: Pretty good. How are you doing?
Miles: I'm doing pretty well. Are you ready to record a fire podcast today?
Ashton: Yes, straight fire podcast coming your way.
Miles: Because today we're going to talk to John Cataldo, Yellowstone's Fire Management Officer and before we get started I have to do a little fire trivia, it's it's going to be a trite one, but I think it's still interesting. So Yellowstone record fire in 1988. How many acres of the park burned? during those fires.
Ashton: I know it was massive. I know it was a lot.
Miles: It was a lot.
Ashton: I mean, in.
Miles: Round to the nearest 100,000 if you want.
Ashton: Okay. I was going to say a few hundred thousand. I'll say 600,000 figures. Okay. I'm getting the motion a little more. 800,000.
Miles: That would be the right rounding.
Ashton: nice.
Miles: 793,880 is the official number I found.
Ashton: You know, like if we were to compare.
Miles: And that's. That's not the full fire.
Ashton: Like what's, like, 800,000 acres compared to.
Miles: Gosh, that's a good question. Yellowstone, 2.2 ish million. Okay. Which is what states combined Rhode Island.
John: To roll out.
Miles: To Rhode Island.
John: And.
Miles: So not so maybe two thirds of Rhode Island is 36% of the park. Pretty big.
Ashton: That's a pretty big fire.
Miles: Yeah, pretty big. And that's just inside of Yellowstone. Anyway, there's our trivia. But today, like I said, we're talking to John Cataldo, fire management officer here, ready to dive in. I'm ready. All right, good. So in your career, have you always worked for the National Park Service in your career? Did you start with a different agency in terms of fire?
John: I started with the National Park Service and 1992, and I've kind of oscillated back and forth between the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service, but always a federal agent.
Miles: Okay. Yep. What was your first job in fire?
John: My first job in or in general or. Well, in general, It was actually part of my financial aid package when I was an undergrad at Humboldt State University. I was offered a work study opportunity as part of my financial aid, and I was studying wildlife management at Humboldt State University in Northern California. And my my advisor and a department chair was married to the branch chief of Wildlife at Redwood National Park, and I was on academic scholarship as well at Humboldt and he kind of passed my name along to his wife and said, We've got a potential work study student, if, you know, interested in picking them up for some work and they
John: gave me a key to the office for Redwood National Park and a pile of wildlife observation cards that visitors and employees had filled out. And there was a pile pretty much up to the ceiling, and they gave me a key to the office and let me go in there 10 to 15 hours a week, all during the school year.
John: And just at my own pace, whenever I could fit in, in between classes and whatnot. And that was kind of my yeah, my my very first park service job.
Miles: Interesting. Yeah. So how long after that was it when you first got into fire of some kind?
John: The very next summer, I was working up in Alaska for the Forest Service and Cordova. Which is the last place I ever moved to without checking the Farmer's Farmer's Almanac. Like, how much rain or Sonic gets or doesn't get. And it turns out that Alaska gets 169 inches of rain a year. And I was working in fisheries at the time, so I studied wildlife and fisheries in college and so that was how I got my start in the service was those sorts of positions.
John: And so working in fisheries, we were outside every day in Cordova, you know, wearing rain gear. And I mean, honestly, after a couple of months of that, I was basically pruning like it just been like you know, you just had been in the shower for two months and they said, hey, do you want to go to a fire school?
John: And I just said, Is it indoors? And they're like, Yeah, it's it's down here. And the the district office was an old courthouse of some kind, and it was like, yeah, fire school is in the judge's chambers or something in the courthouse. And it was in fact indoors. And I said, Yeah, I'm your man. And so I took a took fire school.
John: And of course the place where it rains that much, you don't get off fires. But it was an exceptionally dry summer there. The next year when I returned, and we had a couple of, like, little fires out on the Copper River Delta fireworks, something. And I got to go to those. And then the 1994 fire season in the lower 48, which is kind of another benchmark fire season in the lower 48, it really kicked off in August.
John: And I spent the last six or eight weeks deployed down here on fire crews. I kind of went to each each little team on the district up in Alaska, and everyone had to volunteer, somebody to go be a firefighter. And I was good at hiking and carrying a big pack and stuff. Yeah.
John: They said, Why don't you go and let's go?
Ashton: Well, so what did you. You said you were studying wildlife. Starting out? Yeah. Did you ever envision yourself being in fire? Like, what did you. What were you kind of working toward before you got you know, you got the offer of like, hey, you can come indoors and. Yeah.
Miles: Well.
John: I was just working towards, you know, a career as a wildlife biologist or a fisheries biologist. You know, I studied both and I, I grew up loving it and, you know, loving the outdoors and whatnot. I'm a kid from suburban Long Island, New York, like 20 miles outside city. And that was my big escape, was going to the woods and, you know, even if that was running around catching garter snakes under garbage on the side of some parkway on Long Island, which is honestly how you start in wildlife management.
Ashton: Areas.
John: And a little suburban Long Island kid, there's not a lot of open wild spaces or places to get away from, from the crowds. so yeah, now the woods kind of became my, my retreat when I was young and just got out the book of colleges, You know, when you're in high school and it's like the size of a phone book and it's every, every college in the country and, and all the programs they offer and take three or four of the top wildlife management programs.
John: And one of them happened to be 4 hours from where my brother lived in Oregon, and I ended up at Humboldt.
Ashton: cool.
John: Yeah.
Miles: So when you finally did get into fire, what was it that kept you there?
John: I've always been into a lot of sports growing up, so just like, being really physical. And honestly, probably statistics and organic chemistry pushed me towards firefighting because to kind of take the next step in wildlife and fisheries, it was going to be really heavy. And, you know, you kind of get to that point in your education where it's like, I don't know if I'm good at I don't know if I'm ready to take the next step.
Miles: I think organic chemistry is that line for quite a few people.
Ashton: Yeah, Yeah. Kind of weak people out.
John: Yeah. So just working on a team and being outside and it was just a good fit. it was like I was kind of made to do it, you know? I just. Just felt right. Yeah, it just felt right. It was just right off the bat. It was. It was a good fit. I just fell right into it.
John: I You're lucky if that happens to you. Yes, whatever. Good. Whatever you do.
Miles: Yeah. Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm like, How did I get to where I am today? And I feel lucky. I don't think I would have planned it. Like you're saying. Sometimes these things just happen.
John: Yeah, I had some apprehension, you know, in the beginning, and just talking to other folks who've done it previously and they're like, No, it's great. It's like camping for dollars. Like you're going to yeah, we're going to go camp for four weeks and we're going to work hard all day, and then you go sleep in a tent and we're going to get up and do it again.
John: I was like, That sounds great.
Miles: So what was the I think I'm guessing I don't know yet, but I'm guessing a theme in these podcasts that will come up is, is the career progression can be interesting. So like, what are the steps to go from that where you're like actively out camping, fighting fire.
John: Yeah.
Miles: To where someday you're spending most, if not all of your time in an office and dealing with budgets and hiring in the big picture. Like what did that look like for you? Timeline wise? Yeah, that's kind.
John: Of one of the hazards of the job, is someday someone's going to hand you a radio to talk on. That's the first hazard of the job, right? They kind of leave you alone for a few years because it's dangerous to let you be in charge of anything. And then at some point they're like, like your you seem pretty squared away and they hand your radio and that's a big fork in the road.
John: So you're going to let me talk on the radio while I'm on a fire and actually, you know, help coordinate what's going on and yeah, I've held a lot of positions along the way. We get to go a lot of different places in this job, which is also what attracted me to it. I think I've been to fires in 18 different states.
Miles: Wow.
John: At this point, and I'm not done yet. Right. I got a lot left in me, but,
Ashton: Was one of those states more memorable than the others? Does one stick out to you?
John: You know, they're so they are so unique. I know it sounds cliche, but I mean, literally, I've spent three weeks camped three feet from the Yukon River in Interior, Alaska, helping manage a long duration fire up there. You know, and I've done a lot of prescribed fire down in Big Cypress down in South LA. So literally this job has taken me from one corner of the country to the other.
John: Yeah, and a lot of places in between. And you just get to granted you're working really long hours while you're there, but you get to see a lot of interesting things. A lot of the you're off the beaten path a lot. Yeah. So you just have a lot of shared experiences and.
Miles: Must be interesting to to, to get to like be pretty intimately familiar with so many different types of forest as well. And like the way fire behaves so differently in these different places.
John: And yeah, and you have to be a student of it because it.
Miles: I bet.
John: It'll kill you if you're not paying attention. So you are very eager to learn. Yeah. When you go to a new place, like how does it move right through this stuff? Does it move by jumping from tree to tree, or is it mostly ground fire? Are there interesting local factors? Like does it burn? Some places it burns really hot and downhill at night.
John: I didn't see that coming. Right. So you got to you got to make sure you're being a student and finding the people that understand how fire moves on that particular landscape helps keep us all safe. Yeah, they meet the objective, whatever that is.
Miles: Yeah. So let's jump ahead to now. So do you have a typical day in your job? You know.
John: A lot of what drew me to this is that it's it's not a lot of typical I guess I should focus on maybe on the summer because like you mentioned the winter, you know, when you're a year round position and you live at 6300 feet, National Park, we get a lot of opportunity for winter and typically don't have fires.
John: And in the off season it is a lot of just planning for next season and hiring and communicating with our partners and cooperators and just kind of getting on the same page for the next season. But once we kind of throw the switch and the temporary employees come on in the spring and and we kind of ramp up and just sort of get into the mode, so to speak.
John: And a typical day, we start off with a briefing with everyone on the team and we get together for about 20 minutes and we go through a safety conversation and a weather conversation situation. Whatever's going on, fires in the park, fires around the park, fires we may find ourselves on later that day. Just whatever's going on go through a plan for the day and then we just sort of fledge everyone to their assignments.
John: And typically we'll go five different directions on a given day and we'll be engaged with a fuels reduction projects. You know, in some of the urban interface areas around Park will be out monitoring the fuel moisture and different types of fuels that we're curious about in the park. That's a big part of the program, is being prepared for what might comment and how wet or dry the fuels are is a big part of that.
John: So we'll be out doing that, maybe helping our neighbors with some incidents that they're managing. So they're just really every day is different.
Miles: Yeah.
John: Especially once we get around to like May or so and then through October, you just really never know what you're getting into.
Miles: So it's a good, good career field for someone who likes to keep, keep moving and have surprises thrown at them.
John: There's a lot of moving. Yeah, there's a lot of moving parts you have to be in.
Miles: You're out in the field a lot in the summer.
John: I get to pick and choose my spots at this point a lot. Unfortunately, the field part of my job is definitely dropped off and particularly here just because of connectivity issues. Yeah, because we are so remote, relatively speaking, to a lot of other places in the lower 48 that because a lot of my day to day responsibility is to be what we call a duty officer.
John: So I'm the first phone call on any new potential or vegetation fire. So I get however that report comes in from a visitor or from an employee. It'll get routed to our dispatch center. Then they call me as the duty officer and say, Here's what we might have. What do you want to do about it?
Miles: So you need to be reachable and.
John: Reachable at all times. Yeah. And if people can't find me, I'm not doing my job. So it does kind of keep me around headquarters. Yeah, a lot. But of course, I do enjoy getting out on fire.
Miles: Yeah. Yeah. So what in your current job, what do you think is the most important skill.
John: For my position? I think the ability to triage a lot of emerging problems and to pretty quickly sift through what's important and what's noise and what can wait and what you know, you're pretty much in a when things are rocking and rolling, there's a constant state of just, you know, your awareness is just piqued and you're just constantly trying to update what we call a common operating picture of like, what is our fire environment, what's going on and what the biggest threats are, right?
John: It's all about risk management. Fire management is risk. So risk to people first and foremost, risk to infrastructure, you know, buildings and then everything after that. So yeah, just the ability to maintain the correct flight altitude. And, you know, all of us start out as just ground pounders, right. Swinging a tool, sort of £5 tool 10,000 times a day is how you first prove that you can you can do this right?
John: And then you go from there to where you're virtually never swinging a £5 tool anymore. Yeah. So sometimes when you know, when really things start rocking and rolling, some folks all revert to what they're most comfortable with. Right. Which is the like the first thing you ever learn. And they want to kind of get in the weeds and just being able to maintain that 30,000 foot wide altitude as a fire management officer, that's pretty critical.
Ashton: On that skill to like bring in like all that different types of information and then be able to make decisions that probably comes with a lot of experience and that you've had over the years. So if you were to like, you know, what advice like what types of experience should people be seeking out if they want to, you know, get to your type of position one day.
John: Variety is really see seek variety and particularly prescribed fire so controlled burns and other way we describe those being involved with that is a great way to just see a lot of fire on the landscape and watch it and not necessarily have to just be responding to take those opportunities to see how it moves and understand the physics of it just really pays dividends down the line.
John: So it really it's just experiential learning, all of it. I mean, there's a big on the job training component. We have a huge continuing education component to all of this where as you progress along, we're sending you to like more or less one week long classes. We have a lot of like 32 to 40 hour classes will send it to you, but those just sort of complement that field experience.
John: So it's just go full sound like just get as much fire under your belt as you possibly is the best way to be good at my job. And so that's why I oscillated between the two different agencies because, you know, the Forest Service, that's the big green machine, right? So I think half the U.S. Forest Service budget is fire management.
John: Well, so they're highly invested in it. And that's where the majority of the resources in America are. You know, they're in the green trucks with the different the different logo. And so coming up in the Park Service was great. But I also realized I'm not seeing enough fire on Park Service land to get as good as I need to get at this to have the job I want to have some day.
John: So I. I knew I wanted a job like I have now, but to get there, I had to leave the agency, you know, go to a different federal agency and ended up running a Hotshot crew for close to a decade, which is a great way to see a lot of fire.
Miles: Yeah.
John: So that was just all by design that I was like, Well, I think I've done what I can in the Park Service. There just wasn't as many opportunities to move up or move laterally. We just don't have as big a program. And it's like, I'm going to go fight fire with Forest Service for about a decade and then I'll come back and I'll feel a lot more confident what I'm doing.
Miles: So you wanted you did want to end up back at the Park Service, perhaps? Ultimately, yeah. Why? Why that over? You know, like you said, Forest Service is the big the big agency, the tail end of all this stuff. What what about the Park Service made you want to end up here?
John: I just love the mission. Really. And, I mean, it's the the greatest last, best places. And it's I mean, the the the Park Service units are, you know, particularly for me, loving the mountains. I mean, being in the northern Rockies, it's just outrageous. And I just this region in particular, I've spent time in the Pacific West and the Pacific Northwest, and I love those systems as well.
John: But I mean, the Rockies are just outrageous for me. You can't beat it.
Miles: So yeah.
Ashton: Yeah, I was that kind of same sentiment. What drew you to Yellowstone or was there some sort of draw to Yellowstone for you in particular?
John: You know, I'd I'd spent about five years of my life in Alaska, so one of my early park service positions, actually my first permanent appointment was I was the first helicopter manager hired at Denali in the year 2000. We had the the National Fire plan came out. So we'd had kind of a succession of really intense fire seasons in America.
John: And the result of that was the thing called the 2000 National Fire Plan. And a big part of that was a big injection of funding into fire management in America. So, you know, a lot of life's timing, right? And so when the National Fire plan rolled around, I had about nine seasons under my belt, either a fire management or wildlife or fisheries management, and I think three, three full seasons and and a few qualifications under my belt and then all these permanent jobs popped up and I was sort of in a really good position to compete for one.
John: So that was that was just good timing. And a lot of my peers, we call ourselves like National Fire Plan babies because we all got our start. We all got our very first appointment sometime in the spring of 2000.
Miles: I mean, I think yeah, a couple of things you said I think are good for people to keep in mind in terms of thinking about wanting to work for federal agency in general. In the Park Service specifically is like there is timing, there is luck, there is when these things come along. And also being having having the 30,000 foot view of your own career, like you were saying, is like, maybe I need to leave for a while to get these other experiences because I think sometimes people think I'll just be able to follow this exact path that I want and get the jobs I want.
Miles: And I feel like that so rarely happens. If anyone that I know in the Park Service, whether they leave for a completely different field sometimes or switch agencies or whatever, it's like, this is where I would like to be, but I need to get this experience here or this there, or thinking about the career ladders in the way things can go.
Miles: Yeah, I think that's I'm glad that you brought up those points because I think it's a good thing for people to remember. That's certainly how my career has been. I think almost everybody I talk to.
John: Yeah, I think a big part of it is I tell folks all the time, you know, to some extent you have to be prepared to move at the speed of opportunity, you know, And you can't just expect in a in the federal service and the Park Service like plant roots in one spot and march up the ladder through your entire career in one place.
John: It's just not realistic. Possible that a massive unit like we work at. Right. Because I do have a tremendous organizational chart here and a lot of really deep programs and a lot of career ladder potential. That's pretty unique. It is in the service, though. Yeah, pretty rare. Yeah. You can go to a lot of parks and there there might be you know the chief ranger and to seasonal law enforcement.
Miles: Yeah.
John: You know at these smaller units you know in that career and obviously there you know you're not going to try to stay in one place 30 years, become the chief ranger like you might have to step to the side to step up and step back. And now there's tremendous opportunity to move around. I think that's a great thing.
John: You know, I'd want to see a lot of places and I want to do a lot of different things. And for me, the emphasis in my life wasn't going to be plant roots, start a family, young, be in one place, you know, coach the volleyball team or someplace. Like, I didn't want to do that. I wanted to, like, just really move around a lot and to see a lot of things.
John: Like I said, I'm a suburban Long Island kid, yet once I hit the West, I wasn't slowing down. Yeah, I wasn't going to move out west and plant yet somewhere. So I've achieved that.
Miles: So even so, with all these different experiences that you have, might be hard to pick one. But is there like a moment in your career that stands out to you as really being a defining moment or even the defining moment? Is there was there some time where you were like, This is it for me? Or was it more gradual?
John: You know, in my in my fire service career, I'd say the day that we were certified as a as a hotshot crew in Northern California, that was a that process took several years and was pretty intense. And so I'll remember that day for sure.
Miles: Yeah.
John: You know, anytime you're working towards the same goal for six years, year round, it's a pretty big day. Yeah. Someone finally says you're good enough. Wow. But it and within my park service experience really that the entire 2016 fire season here in Yellowstone is kind of a kind of a benchmark to, you know, any fire season you're a part of that ends up with like a commemorative pint glass or something is usually probably a pretty big deal.
John: Yeah. And in that year, we successfully managed 100 square miles of fire. Wow. In Yellowstone and while concurrently celebrating the centennial.
John: Yeah. So there was a period of time where we had an incident management team just managing the centennial celebrations and in Mammoth in Gardiner, Montana, and we had a separate incident management team assigned to the Maple Fire, which was out by West Yellowstone, ultimately burned about 55,000 acres, and we had a third incident management team concurrently managing a basket of about five or six smaller fires, most of which were out on the northern range of the park.
John: And we had all that going at once and we didn't have any single serious injuries, you know, rotating firefighters through that for for months on end. There's a single shingle off the side of the structure, so no one got hurt. We didn't burn anything up that we didn't want burnt up or or were willing to accept burning up and, you know, I mean, we a hundred square miles of a pretty incredible natural process in the world's first national park so that that year sticks out.
Ashton: Yeah. Yeah. So you just mentioned like protecting these historic, you know, buildings that are in the park and stuff like that. And earlier you mentioned fuels reduction projects for people who don't really know what that means. Like how do you do that? How do you protect like because, you know, there's all these historic buildings throughout the park. How do you how do you go about protecting those?
John: It's really all about just creating what we call defensible space around those. And we really focus on the first 30 to 300 feet of vegetation immediately around that structure. So we just basically need some elbow room around there to function as firefighters. We can't have a little baby trees growing out of foundation of old building and pushing the shingles off the side of them and stuff like that.
John: That'll happen in a place like Yellowstone. You know, Lodgepole Pine is a pretty robust species and it's a little bit weedy in some places where it gets really thick and comes in pretty strong, especially after a fire. So when we're talking about fuels reduction, we're just literally in and around the the developed areas in the park, just reducing the amount of biomass.
John: So we're focusing on the the smaller brush and grasses and trees that are, say under 4 to 6 inches in diameter and just removing those and just basically thinning it out.
Ashton: Okay.
John: In other areas we might use prescribed fire or controlled burning to try to accomplish that same objective because fires are really efficient way to to reduce the amount of biomass around, you know, around a subdivision. But lodgepole pine, when it burns, it burns completely. So it's natural fire regime is stand replacement. So it burns from the surface of the ground or the tops of the trees and and completely is what we would expect.
John: And that's not really a great thing to have in and around a community because you're just treating one problem for another. So you do a controlled burn and then you have a patch of dead trees next to your homes and then you're dealing with that. So we just prefer not to do controlled burning around our developed areas and we just go in and yeah, just then out the vegetation so that if a fire does come in there, it's not moving through the tops of the trees, which is of course where it's really intense and dangerous.
John: It's it's going to stay on the ground where we can deal with it and probably on the ground with wavelengths less than eight feet. That's kind of our cut off. If the flames are taller than eight feet, we're going to need a pretty heavy hand to deal with that. We can't swap that out.
Ashton: Gotcha.
Miles: So for people interested in your field, you know, your career field, what before we get to your series and and grade and all that kind of stuff, where would people look if they wanted to get started and fire? Like, what series would they look for?
John: We're actually going through a really big transition right now and in how we're classified as firefighter tours. We were forestry technicians for the first few decades of this profession, and essentially it's been decided over the past few years. That's not a very accurate description of wildland firefighting for lots of good reasons. And so now there's a new wildland firefighter job series, and that's zero four, five, six, and it's designed to be a higher to retire job series.
John: So we're going to be recruiting and advertising positions in that from now on, literally from the GS three to the GS 15 level. Wow.
Ashton: So that's really cool.
John: Yeah. And previous to that, we were we were hiring entry level positions as OE for six to forestry technicians and then I'm currently in in 0401 which is biologist ecologist job series and that's all transitioning. So going forward it will be zero four or five six from just three to just 15.
Miles: Wow. So that simplifies it a lot for people interested in looking at does. Yeah, yeah. They can focus in on that series and find something that aligns with whatever experience they have. Yeah. And get in the door.
John: Yeah. And getting in the door is not that complicated. You know, we don't have super high educational requirements, basically a high school diploma and a great attitude and an aptitude to learn new things, you know, commitment to physical fitness. Like, let's go. Yeah, that's it. Like we can, we can start there, right? And we can we're going to teach you the rest.
John: So it's.
Miles: Pretty cool. It's I think. Yeah, yeah. Because I've definitely noticed, like I've never been in wildland fire, anything myself, but just being around people who are, there's definitely like a vibe, a culture. I think of the people who stick with it because like you said, you got to you got to want to Yeah. Into it.
John: Well, when you have a lot of intense shared experiences, right? Yeah. So any time you do that, you do form a certain bond with the people that you're doing that with, that you can't simulate elsewhere, except maybe like within your actual immediate family, like the experiences you might have with your brothers and sisters growing up. And there's so many stories I can't tell anybody because they won't even understand.
John: Sure. You know, and that's a powerful thing. And it can be lonely at times because there's, you know, you got to like, find your old hotshot friends to, like, talk about, you know, some fire you're on because you just spend all your time trying to explain it to other people. Yeah. You know, So, yeah, it's it's kind of a unique and unique job in that in that regard, would you meet a lot of great people there?
John: It's not easy. It's not an easy job to do, right. So if if you're around people that are doing it and sticking with it and making it pass, there's kind of this imaginary line at year three where you're sort of in or out, right? You're either like, This is what we're doing because the commitment level's so high or maybe this isn't for me and I don't like sleeping on the ground.
John: Yeah, yeah. Being completely convinced, like when the next meal is going to show up, you're out here or just being out in that environment. Yeah. So when you're around people that have made that commitment and made those sacrifices, it's a pretty special. Very. Yeah, Yeah. So real good stories if you can get us to tell them.
Ashton: Maybe someday.
Miles: That to say I could keep that I Yeah. I wish we could talk for like 3 hours.
Ashton: Yeah. So along those lines, like, if somebody is looking for this job in a national park, not every national park has these jobs, right? Or do they.
Miles: Not.
John: Ever unit certainly the larger midsize to larger parks. So, for example, in our region we have 14 park level fire programs and those programs either manage one or group of parks. So, you know, when you talk about a Yellowstone or Mesa Verde or a bent, we're Rocky Mountain Dinosaur, Zion, all those units have a program. and pretty robust, you know.
John: So sometimes when you get into like a much smaller unit, like we manage fire for the little big, you know, a Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, about 4 hours east of where we're sitting. And we provide fire management services for. But they don't have any firefighter, okay. Or any equipment. So it's just sort of an administrative responsibility. And so, yeah, we we manage their fires through agreements and relationships.
John: So the Crow agency has agreed to put out fires if we get any. So yeah, but most mid midsize national parks are going to have, especially out west will have their own program. So there's a ton of opportunity investment. The bipartisan infrastructure law has it's I call it National Fire Plan 2.0. It's essential labor. The next huge influx of investment in wildland firefighting in America.
John: The Park Service has benefited greatly from. So all those programs are kind of on the kind of on the uptick. It's a great time to get your foot in the door and start a career or or advance in your career in fire.
Miles: Awesome.
John: Yeah.
Miles: Well, like I said, I wish you could talk for like 3 hours. I want to just ask you about fire ecology and behavior and what it's like to get to know such a it's such a it's just like a fascinating process to me. You know, it's like a chemical reaction happening that.
John: Yeah, has.
Miles: Its own life and scale and like you said, behaves so differently. But we do have to wrap it up. So, do you have a favorite story or memory from your time in Yellowstone or another national park? But just something that.
John: You know, I've been reflecting on that. Yeah, recently and I couldn't come up with, you know, the one thing, and maybe that's because at this point in my career, in my life, I've learned to appreciate, like, smaller, small things, you know? And I mean, obviously we live in a place where we're just kind of surrounded by wonder, and people have a hard time even relating sometimes to the things we try to describe that happen in our backyard.
John: But for example, literally in my backyard the other day, I went out to chop some wood for our stove and was just enjoying the weekend and I kind of had a quiet moment and I stood there and a wolf howled and it sounded like it was, you know, maybe a mile behind us. And I thought, you know, it's like noon.
John: That's not typically when I hear wolves howl. Sometimes they come around at night and I'll I'll hear them when I'm wet the dog out, you know, for the last time in the evening or something. And, so I sat there real quiet and and howled again, you know, and I, I probably have a 100, you know, little stories like that.
John: we're just surrounded by it all the time. And, yeah, it's there all the time. If you're, if you're listening for it and if you're, if you're open to it and Yeah. Mean we're just surrounded by. I wonder if you got your eyes and ears up. That's always there. Go enjoy it.
Miles: I think that's the perfect way to wrap up. Thanks for coming and talking to us today. You're all fascinating.
John: Let's do it again.
Miles: Yeah, I would like to call.
Ashton: Thank you. Thank you.
John: You're welcome.
Miles: Well, that's it for this week's episode of What We Do. Thanks again to our guest, John Cataldo. If you like what we do, rate and review the show wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. If you have questions or want to learn more about a particular job, contact us using the form at Go dot NPS dot gov forward slash what we do podcasts.
Biomass: Organic material that comes from plants and animals.
Defensible space: Clearing a space near and surrounding a developed area or other valuable structure of living or dead plant material that could be ignited by a fire.
Dispatch center: Yellowstone’s Fire and Aviation Dispatch Center is responsible for taking fire reports from fire lookouts, visitors, and park employees. The center also tracks resources assigned to park incidents, follows flights involving aircraft in the park, and takes requests for personnel/equipment and dispatches them to the appropriate locations for fire and search and rescue incidents, law enforcement operations, and other special events.
Fire ecology: Learn about fire’s role in Yellowstone.
Fuels management/reduction: This includes both planned/intentional burns and other mechanical treatments to change and/or reduce the amount of living or dead plant material that could be ignited by a fire.
Hotshot crew: A group of highly trained and skilled wildland firefighters who are equipped to work in remote areas for extended periods of time with minimal logistical support.
Incident management team: A team that is formed to respond to large, complex incidents (which can include fires, natural disasters, search and rescue operations, among others).
Prescribed fire: A planned fire (sometimes called a “controlled burn” or “prescribed burn”) that is used to achieve specific management objectives. A plan is developed for the fire, including the objectives, fuels, size, and environmental conditions under which it will burn and be suppressed.
Brian Batzloff, Engineering Equipment Operations Supervisor
Have you ever thought about how we maintain park roads that are exposed to some of the harshest conditions in the country? Brian Batzloff joins us today to talk about the challenges of maintaining roads that are subjected to geologic and volcanic pressures, extreme negative temperatures, dense snowpack, and use by millions of visitors annually!
Jake: From Yellowstone National Park. This is What We Do. I'm Jake Frank.
Miles: And I'm Miles Barger.
Jake: Miles, how’s it going?
Miles: Going great.
Jake: Yeah?
Miles: How are you?
Jake: Good. How was your, how's your drive to work today?
Miles: Very short. [laughter]
Jake: Yeah. how are the roads?
Miles: Very clear and in excellent condition.
Jake: That's good to hear.
Miles: Honestly. Yeah.
Jake: So, speaking of roads to start, I have a trivia question. I'm curious if you. I would say this is on the easier of some of the questions that we've been hearing.
Miles: OK.
Jake: Do you know how many miles of road are in Yellowstone National Park?
Miles: 475?
Jake: That's very close. 452, I think, is the number that I've been given from facilities. And some of the reports that I've read. Yeah. 450 plus. That's roughly the distance between like DC and South Carolina, Charleston as the crow flies. So, it's like multiple states. So, it's a lot of, a lot of roads that are in the park that we maintain.
Miles: In harsh condition.
Jake: In harsh conditions.
On a volcano. No big deal.
Jake: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's either, it's either burning the road away or it's frozen and under snow.
Miles: Or both.
Jake: Or both. Yeah, so to talk a little bit about that, you know, I think when people come to the park, they just drive on the roads. You kind of take that for granted. But there's a lot of a lot of work that goes into keeping those up to date. So today we're joined, by Brian Batzloff. He's in the engineering equipment operator supervisor for the Special Projects crew. Did I get that correct?
Brian: You got that correct.
Jake: All right. Well, thanks for joining us.
Brian: Thank you.
Jake: Yeah. How are you?
Brian: Thanks for having me.
Jake: How was your drive to work today?
Brian: It was wonderful. Yeah.
Jake: When the roads are in bad shape and you're like, man, that pothole. What happens in your mind when you're driving to hit a pothole?
Brian: I try to figure out why. Why it's there.
Jake: Who do I need to call to get this fixed?
Brian: Exactly.
Jake: So, Yeah, we'll go ahead and get started. When and where did you get your start in the National Park Service?
Brian: Here in Yellowstone, actually. I got my first job here in 1998. I was a carpenter's helper in the carpenter shop here in Mammoth. And then that was my last year of college. And then I went back to school, tried out some telecom work for a little bit in Atlanta, Georgia, and then decided I wasn't a city person. So, I came back here. My family's from the area. You're right outside the North Entrance, so I'm actually a third generation to work here in Yellowstone.
Jake: Oh, that's awesome.
Brian: My dad, my grandfather both worked up here in the park, on both. Actually, my grandfathers on both sides.
Jake: What?
Miles: Whoa!
Jake: Wow. So, what jobs did they do?
Brian: So, my grandfather, ironically, he at one time held my position for a short time. [laughter] I didn't know that until recently when I was going through some of my dad's stuff. And I've actually found his old nameplate from his door on there. So, I have it in my office now.
Jake: Oh, that's so cool.
Brian: But no, he started. He came, I believe, in the 50s, you know, shortly after World War II, after he got out of there and he came with his uncle at Yellowstone and started his career out in Grant village, and then kind of worked his way into Mammoth here. And then I think when he retired, he was the foreman for the carpenter shop.
Jake: Awesome. And you mentioned him working at Grant Village. You are on special projects that's based out of Mammoth. Yeah. Have you worked at other areas? Yeah. my first full time position at Yellowstone was out at Old Faithful, and I was a heavy equipment operator out there for about a year. And then an opening came back with special projects, and they actually approached me for a lateral transfer for that position.
Jake: So, between the job that you currently have and that first job, you mentioned that you had some movement in there to get where you currently are. Can you walk us through all the variety of jobs that you're at?
Brian: Sure. So, like I said, my first year I was in the carpenter shop as a carpenter's helper. And then, I had that year where I was down trying to do the telecom stuff in Georgia.
Jake: Your “Rumspringa.” [laughter]
Brian: Yeah. And then, then when I came back, I actually applied for a labor position with special projects. And when I got that job, I enjoyed the work. And so, I just tried to take in as much as I could with the job and everything and saw what I could do. And then my next position with them was a seasonal truck driver, motor vehicle operator for them. And then, then eventually when I was able to get on at Old Faithful as a heavy equipment operator and then transferred into Mammoth, then worked my way up to be the work lead for special projects. And then here probably three years ago, I was hired as a supervisor for special projects.
Jake: Awesome. Yeah, it's really cool. Like a lot of the jobs in the Park Service. this is like a theme that we've noticed, I think, is that you have you, people need to move around a lot to kind of, you know, have, to find advancement. But Yellowstone, because it's big enough that there is also that opportunity for a lot of people that there there's a more linear, there's more linear, ladder opportunities here than other parks. Like, a lot of times it's just you might be the only heavy equipment operator, and it's at a certain level. And if you want to promote, you got to go somewhere else.
Brian: That's correct.
Jake: So yeah, that's cool to hear. So, do you have a typical day? And like, you know, I know that there's seasons.
Brian: Sure. But like, you know, for us, there's really not a typical day. I mean, we have our big projects or large projects in the summer, which consist of paving projects and chip sealing projects, which are road maintenance that we have to do every year. Certain sections of the road. But, you know, there's always the stuff that comes up and that seems to be a daily occurrence, especially with the higher visitation and use and everything more we see more and more, stuff that actually wouldn't normally, you know, be there as far as that goes. But a typical day, you know, I try to get into work early, about an hour before, before our team shows up and then get everybody rolling as my group likes to be out the door and work. And so, I try to have him out the door by 7:00 on the dot there so they can get after it. And, and then kind of whatever the day takes us where it kind of goes there.
Jake: So, if, if not a typical day, do you have, you have typical seasons of, you know, you mentioned a summer season. So, like, what sort of projects do you guys do in different times of the year?
Brian: So, like for the summer season, like I just mentioned, basically the chip seal and the paving projects and unfortunately, it's the time where we hinder the most with the public and the visitors, but with the way our work is, it's, depends on the weather. You know, I mean, we can't work in the real cold temperatures. We can't do this work if there's a lot of moisture, you know, so unfortunately, July, August is when we're the busiest. And, you know, we create we do create a lot of traffic problems out there in the park, but it is for the betterment so that they can have nice surfaces to see the park, you know. And then in the fall we start winding down a little bit and we actually start gearing up for spring opening, for open in the park in the spring, because that is a major. It takes us about three months to do all of our plowing. We start in to open the park after snowmobiles in March the 1st week of March, and we typically don't get done until about, oh, usually this Memorial Day weekend is what we shoot for, but the first week of June, a lot of years,
Jake: Wow.
Brian: That's because we have to cover all so the Beartooth Highway, which is outside the park, but it's, 11,000 almost, yeah, about 11,000ft, I think, is the elevation up there. So, they'll be they'll be snow 30 or 40ft deep up there in in early June.
Jake: So, for somebody who's interested in, you know, getting into this, line of work, is there a skill set or a, you know, something that you'd, you know, that is the most important to have for.
Brian: You know, like a lot of it's just you got to be willing to work hard, you know, and, and put in the time because we do our groups put in a lot of time. We use a lot of project money. So, in the summertime we have the ability to have overtime and it takes the overtime to get these jobs done. But it'll be typical when we're on our projects will work, 12, 13, sometimes 14-hour days by be 5 to 6 days a week if we need to, you know, for two to three weeks at a time. And then, you know, as we jump to the next project. So, you've got to be willing to, you know, put the time in and everything. And but it pays off in the long run.
Jake: So, speaking of overtime, I know that your crew was responsible for the, you know, when we had the flood on June 13th, 2022, you guys were the basically the first responders, you know, more or less to the road that is now paved like it was an old dirt road. What, like your crews did that? Like how much time and effort did you guys?
Brian: Oh, man.
Miles: Seemed like you worked around the clock is my memory.
Brian: Just about.
Miles: For people who don’t remember the flood. The one developed road between headquarters and the rest of the world basically just got wiped out. So, I remember you guys were on it seemed like instantly.
Brian: Yeah, they gave us the. Okay, I can't remember the exact date. I believe it was two days after, and we needed to get the old wagon road from Mammoth to the north entrance in Gardiner, shaped up to where we could get access because basically Mammoth was cut off, you know, and to everything. And at one point, both Gardner and Mammoth were cut off to everywhere because highway 89 was also flooded out in Yankee Jim Canyon. And so, yeah, we started on and, you know, talking with Cam and everything, it's like, do what you got to do to get it done. So, we started on 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and we just hammered it out until they kind of got things in place to have a contractor come in and, and, and take it the rest of the way to final completion.
Jake: Yeah, you guys crushed that. Thank you again for all of that. For us that live in Mammoth. I think we can’t thank you guys and your team enough. That was really awesome.
Miles: I couldn't believe how fast it was. Yeah. I mean, yeah, just if anyone had been on the OGR before that, it was basically like.
Jake: Yeah, if it if it rained you couldn’t ride a bike.
Miles: A little rain and it’s ice. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't ice, but it was just like just the way the dirt is around here is just so slippery. And so, to see it go from that to passable in a passenger car.
Brian: You definitely wouldn’t recognize it now. You wouldn't realize what was under there.
Miles: It's amazing. Sure. Yeah.
Jake: So, what's your favorite part of the job?
Brian: Yeah. You know, I that's kind of a tough question. I mean, there's a lot of things. Of course, when you've worked here as long as I have, there's so many different things you could jump into. But I just, like, just. Oh. More of the challenge, you know, of everything. And like, I, like I mentioned before with the higher visitation, so that creates its own challenges. And to try to not ruin the visitor experience for everybody. So, the challenges that go into planning the projects and making sure that everything's up and running, I think is, is probably what I enjoyed most of it. And it creates a lot of stress as well.
Jake: But so yeah, like on the flip side, you're you have things that we all love about working in a national park. Are there any like what's your biggest challenge or the hardest part of your job?
Brian: Again, I think it would be the planning phase because there's so many variables. I mean, between weather, between traffic, between just anything that I mean, just for instance, the OGR. All the sudden that through our whole summer into chaos because we still had to get our normal work done to that summer and it just. And that's kind of that's kind of the way we run a little bit is, is to get our stuff done, and then whatever else pops up, we'll try to fit that into and go from there.
Jake: Were you guys able to take a break that winter? Once, like once it snowed in the road was there…
Brian: Somewhat, we ended up having a fairly decent winter that winter also. So, this winter has actually been kind of a blessing for. Yeah.
Jake: Yeah. so, you know, with the challenges, like, you know, obviously if everything's great all the time, then there's no, you know, reason to leave. But with challenges, like even with those, what keeps you here, what keeps you in the green and gray?
Brian: You know, like, it goes back to the challenges. I mean, I like the challenge. I like I like to be able to push myself and push my team. And they like to be pushed in and me to be able to say that I went out and look at what we did for that project and be happy with what we did and have people to come back and even tell us and compliment. I mean, just like you guys just compliments with us, you know, here it's I mean, that the pride that we have in our work is.
Jake: Do you have a, is there a moment in your in your park Service career that kind of stands out as like a defining moment or something that you did or like something that you look back on and you're like, man, we did that.
Brian: Like, you know, I mean, there, if you put it that way, there could be so many just because of what we do with what we have and what we have to do. I could probably say that for a lot of things, you know, and everything there's I can't say that there's one specific thing. I mean, I just look back, there's a lot of years and I look back and say, well, we accomplished that much. I mean, I guess the OGR would be a great example, though, you know, for that, because that and that's not just us either. That's I mean, the whole team, the whole park came together for that. Yeah. You know, we had a major role in it, but there was a lot more involved than just us.
Jake: Yeah. So, you know, do you we've had a lot of people talk about, you know, how they feel like, you know, the mission of the National Park Service and, you know, keeping this place in great shape for visitors and for future generations when we think of, you know, national parks, a lot of people think about the resource itself. You guys are working on roads, you know, how do you see yourself fitting into this mission? Like what is the, like, how do you feel that you are personally, and your team contributes to that larger mission?
Brian: Well, the infrastructure is major. I mean, that's the major of what the visitors, you know, that's their main travel ways and that's makes the experience of their trip to the park. If the infrastructure is poor, they might have the most beautiful scenery. But if they have to drive over terrible roads and, you know, to get there and are miserable doing it, then you know they're not going to have a good time and enjoy themselves. So, it's important. And what we do and what we have to do here.
Miles: Do you have a lot of employees that come into the Park Service from like private industry contractors, things like that?
Brian: You know, we get a few.
Miles: I'm just curious what the experience is like, you know, like it's different, I’m sure. Like you said, planning around the visitors.
Brian: Yeah. And it's so for with what we do, we're, we're so varied in the different tasks that we perform. So we'll get a few private, you know, people that come from private professional settings and everything. But a lot of people, I mean, for us, for a lot of years, it's been a lot of development. We've had to develop a lot of people and everything because you a lot of private sector stuff is more centralized. And I do this. You know, they don't have a maybe a wider range of what their skill sets and what their needs be. And it doesn't seem like we get as many applicants from the private sector. And I don't know if that is a pay gap difference or where that comes from. But we do. We do a lot of inner development for us.
Jake: And so, is there like, like formal training or, you know, for somebody who is wanting to get into this, like, how does one get into your line of work?
Brian: So, they're there is formal trainings out there. There's a lot of, like tech schools and things like that that we'll do the trainings, heavy equipment trainings, truck driving trainings for, commercial driver's license and things like that. We don't require necessarily any formal training. We do have obviously, the trainings that we do through the Park Service and that we do through our department, you know, and everything to keep everything up. And the in-house trainings we do to develop our people is kind of the direction we go. But, in order to get these jobs, obviously you do have to have some experience, you know, with the heavy equipment.
Jake: You probably need a driver's license.
Brian: And a driver's license. Yes, obviously. And yeah. And so, we require all of our heavy equipment operators have to have a commercial driver's license class A type one. And so, they have to be able to, to maintain one of those licenses to perform the duties. But other than that, for the most part, no formal training is necessarily required for it.
Jake: Gotcha So this is, you know, for the people that are listening that are interested in this type of, career. And if they were to go on USA jobs and look for this, what is the series of your job like in the people that work for you?
Brian: Actually, I wrote it down because I don't remember it off the top of my head.
Jake: And we we're laughing with ourselves because it's like so in the weeds, you apply for it and then you're like, I forget what my job was.
Brian: Yeah. So, the series is actually for the equipment operators. It's 5716. We actually do have a couple of other series that are for our seasonals, and I think 3502 is one. And that would be kind of our entry level positions there. And those are seasonal positions. And then I think, 5703 is for our seasonal motor vehicle operators that drive our dump trucks and things like that.
Jake: And what grade are those entry level positions?
Brian: So, the entry level for the labor positions are WG five, and then our seasonal, truck drivers would be WG eight.
Jake: Gotcha. Cool. So, you know, do you have any advice for somebody other than, you know, obviously have your grandfather work in a park and you're born into it is, you know, [laughter] not everybody can do that. But right now, that you've been in, and you've been doing it for a while for somebody who is, you know, looking at, you know, transitioning, getting out of the city and wanting to come drive a truck in Yellowstone. What sort of advice?
Brian: I would say, first of all, get your license. Yeah, obviously your commercial driver's license and apply, you know, just apply, get out there and apply for multiple jobs, you know, I mean, see what you can get because there's different things. What we do might not be best suited for what you want to do, but you don't know until you get there.
Jake: You know how many how like, you know, I think I've heard that Yellowstone has one of the largest fleets of vehicles out of like all every park we have like 1200 or something like that. How many heavy equipment machines do we have that you guys run?
Brian: You know, that's actually a really good question. We have probably just of heavy equipment. This isn't counting our dump trucks, our tractor trailers or pickups and our utility trailers and things like that. We have over 70 pieces of equipment just for special projects.
Jake: Wow. So, for our, for all the five-year-old boys that are listening, that want to know all the different pieces of equipment, can you rattle off some of the ones that you guys have that you use?
Brian: Yeah, I can so we use, road graders. We actually have five of those just on special projects. We have, front end loaders, bulldozers, rotary snowplows. That's usually everyone's favorite.
Jake: I got to ride them on with you. Yeah. That was awesome.
Brian: Yeah, yeah. And those are pretty amazing machines. The one we have, the ones we have right now, will move. I think 3500 tons of snow an hour, and. Yeah, and we have seven of those.
Miles: Wow.
Brian: Because as, like you were saying before, we have over 400 miles of road in the park and as what we plow in the spring, we have to plow over 300 miles of that in the springtime, over pack snow that's been groomed all winter and pack down like concrete, basically. So, and we have basically two months to get that done.
Jake: Yeah, yeah that's crazy. Have you, have you seen the operation before, Miles? Like have you ever seen like in person?
Miles: I haven't seen the full operation. I was just wondering what the I mean, I've seen pictures, but I was wondering what the full cadre of vehicles it is.
Brian: It's pretty if you get a chance. I think if you can look on YouTube and look up minute out in it. Yeah. I think is what it's called and that gives a pretty good a pretty good show. It's a pretty good video. And of most of the equipment working and that's our park plowing here, which that operation is a little different than when we're up on the Beartooth Pass. The snow conditions are a little bit different, but in that operation, we have, we have one grader that has, V-plow on the front of it, and we hook two bulldozers to the front of it, and we have to pull it through the snow to break up the snow.
Miles: WOW!
Jake: Yeah. It's crazy. So, yeah. And then you got the cleanup crew that comes in behind.
Brian: Yeah. And widens everything out with them.
Miles: Do you have a mechanic with you?
Brian: We run two mechanics with us the whole time out here, and then we have to actually separate rotary plows that run in the areas when they get out in the park. So, they'll split off from the main crew and they'll work in the areas, and they'll have a mechanic with them so that we can open up the areas while we're still open in the roads.
Miles: Amazing.
Jake: When my first year here that I came after winter and it was the spring plowing and I had the opportunity to go out, I think we're at Lake right?
Brian: Between Lake and Grant. Yeah.
Jake: And we're Brian was running the rotary plow and just like it like huck snow forever. It's really cool to see that. And then, I think two winters ago I went up to the Beartooths and it was like a lower snow year, but it still was like a 35ft wall of snow. What's in it? What's the name of that big famous curve?
Brian: They call it the Bar Drift up there. Yeah. And it's I, I don't know the full history on it. But it has to do with years ago, back when the state of Montana and the state of Wyoming would meet because the state of Montana plows the Montana side. And then we take care of the Wyoming side, they would meet up there, and then they would cut a bar into the into the snow out there and, or whatever.
Jake: Ahh!
Brian: And then the town of Red Lodge would come up and they'd have a big party. And I believe I'd have to look this up to get verification. But I believe there's some pictures out there. One time they even had an elephant up there wandering it, [laughter]which is so random.
Jake: Oh, yeah. It's really, it's really like, just unbelievable to see that operation. And again, that happens in closed areas like that. It's just another thing that happens behind the scenes. You know, you drive through construction in the summer, but you're not driving through with the plow operations. And so yeah, that's like a huge thing to and the schedule that you keep I've, I used to work in Glacier, and they also have a road that requires crazy plowing Going to the Sun Road. But they don't really put a time limit on it. It's kind of like it's open when it's open when we're done. You know, you guys are like, cutthroat. Like, we got to hit these dates. These are when the things open,
Brian: And we're pretty proud of that. We haven't missed the park. We haven't missed an opening date since I've been plowing out here. And I think I've been plowing since 2007 or 2008.
Jake: Yeah, yeah. Knock on wood. Yeah, there we go. So, yeah.
Miles: Another thing I was wondering about is like, I assume you kind of get to know different areas of the park when it, you know, being on a volcano. So weird. Just like, is it, is it been interesting over all these years to get to, like, there's probably going to be a pothole there this year.
Brian: Yea, sure.
Miles: And like, because the weirdest things pop up on the road, you know, just one day I'm driving by, and I've come the next day and there's just like a three-foot tall, three-foot-wide bubble in the road.
Brian: Yeah, and some of it's so unpredictable because the geothermal stuff moves so much. I mean, there could be an area that you've never had problems with before, and all of a sudden an issue pops up, you know, and it's I mean, we've like, I think Jake was kind of saying before we built roads on a volcano or what's not a volcano, we're on high mountain slopes and or over swamps, so we don't have the most ideal areas that our roads corridors are built on. [laughter]
Miles: Yeah. And I hadn't thought too about the increased visitation. And also like, vehicles just keep getting bigger.
Brian: Right.
Jake: Yeah. You know, RVs are bigger.
Miles: And then and then a lot of electric vehicles are really heavy.
Jake: Yeah.
Miles: Like it's amazing. Sometimes I read the weights on these things. I'm like, oh 7,000 pounds for a, you know, normal sized pickup or something. I hadn't thought about that, but yeah.
Jake: So, before we go, one of the last things that we like to ask everybody is, you know, it's doesn't have to be work related. I mean, if it was, then that's great. But do you have a favorite story of, you know, in a national park, you know, whether vacation or on work time just like something where you're like, man, I like this is such a cool thing that I'm a part of that I get,
Brian: You know, probably and it's not really a story because it encompasses a few years of time, but I was able to actually my when my dad's last few years here, I was able to work beside him a little bit. He worked in a separate crew. He worked for the North District maintenance crew at the time, but I was able to work alongside him on a lot of projects and stuff his last few years before he retired. So that's pretty amazing when you look at the scope of what the Park Service entails and everything.
Jake: Yeah, that is pretty cool. Did, you guys have a, a father son friendly competition going on whose work was the best? [laughter]
Brian: Oh, you know, there's always that. Whether it's even now.
Jake: Yeah. So, yeah. That was awesome. Thanks for joining us today. And, Miles, do you have any other things you like to ask?
Miles: No, I don't think so.
Jake: Yeah.
Brian: Well, thank you guys for having me.
Jake: Yeah. Thank you so much. And we appreciate again all the work that you guys do and especially all the work that, you know, hopefully you guys can relax this winter a little bit from the winter two winters ago and OGR stuff.
Brian: Yeah. Well thanks again I appreciate the time. And in getting the word out there on what we do is we are kind of one of the behind-the-scenes type of people. They might see us out there and everything, but a lot of people don't know actually what we really do.
Jake: Well, that's it for this week's episode of What We Do. Thanks again to our guest, Brian Batzloff. If you like What We Do, write and review the show wherever you listen, because every positive review helps new listeners find the show. If you have questions or you want to learn more about a particular job, contact us using the form at go.nps.gov/WhatWeDoPodcast. Thanks for listening!
North District: Yellowstone is divided into four operating districts – North, West, Lake, and Backcountry. The North District includes 85 road miles between Norris, Mammoth Hot Springs, North Entrance, Tower Junction, and Northeast Entrance.
OGR (Old Gardiner Road): A historic, one-lane, dirt entrance road constructed in 1879, which was the original entrance road to the park. When the flood event destroyed the North Entrance Road during summer 2022, the park and contractors improved the OGR to reconnect Yellowstone to the gateway community of Gardiner, Montana.
Park road status: Most park roads open to regular vehicles in mid-April and close in early November.
Wage grade: Trade, craft, and laboring positions that are paid based on local prevailing rates.
Jason Murphy, Water & Wastewater Utility Systems Facility Manager
You might not think much about it whenever you flush a toilet or turn on a faucet. But for Jason Murphy, utility systems facility manager, that’s his job! In this episode, Jason talks about what it’s like managing some of the 44 water/wastewater systems in the park, how he and his team have been repairing systems damaged by the 2022 flood event, and he offers tips for listeners interested in pursuing a similar career.
Jake: From Yellowstone National Park. This is What We Do. I'm Jake Frank.
Brett: And I'm Brett Raeburn.
Jake: Hi, Brett.
Brett: Hey, how’s it going?
Jake: I’m great. How are you?
Brett: I'm good. I had a good weekend.
Jake: Yeah? That's good to hear. Hey, how are your pipes in your house doing? You like that transition?
[laughter]
Jason: Have you flushed your toilet today?
Brett: My pipes, I think they're. I think they're good. Do you know something I don't know?
Jake: No, I just wanted to, that was the best transition that I could come up with,
Brett: That was terrible. I’m not going to lie.
Jake: I have a trivia question, actually, I want to ask you.
Brett: Okay.
Jake: All right. So, Yellowstone, we’re a big park, 2.2 million acres, 4.5 million people roughly visit the park every year. We have a lot of infrastructure in the park that's hidden to support all that visitation. Part of you know, those systems are water and wastewater systems in the park. So how many combined between the, you know, making clean water and then making dirty water clean, if you combine those two systems, how many of those are in the park?
Brett: Like pipes? The number of systems?
Jake: No, the number of systems, the number of total systems. Yeah, you don't have to it's not like, you know, miles of pipe or anything.
Brett: OK, that’s what I was trying to anticipate.
Jake: Because they're located all throughout the park. So, if you were to count the total number, how many of their across the park?
Brett: Fifteen?
Jake: There are 23 wastewater systems and 21 water systems. So, a combined 44.
Brett: So, I wasn't even close.
Jake: It's a lot. It's like and, and this is like something that I had no clue about until when I started, you know, working with the facilities team to document all of our infrastructure, you know, from like the GAOA projects and putting in money to improve our infrastructure. It is unbelievable how much infrastructure there is. And it's all hidden like no one sees it, but it's by design. It's all, you know, behind the trees and whatnot.
Brett: So, do we know how many feet of pipe there are in this park? I really want to know that now.
Jake: I have no idea. But maybe, I guess maybe our guest today, Jason Murphy, he's the utility systems facility manager for our water and wastewater systems. Do you know that answer?
Jason: The exact number to the top of my head?
Brett: To the centimeter to the millimeter.
Jason: So, between water and sewer, it's thousands.
Jake: Yeah.
Jason: There are over 500 manholes that one sticks in my head from that spec sheet.
Brett: Wow.
Jake: Yeah, that is crazy water.
Brett: That's a lot.
Jake: Well, speaking of water and wastewater and manholes, how are you today? Another great transition.
Jason: It is a very great transition. I am fine. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us today.
Brett: How are your pipes?
Jason: My pipes are good. Yeah, toilets are flushing. Great.
Jake: That's a win. So, you know, why don't we just kind of dive in? How did you get into the Park Service? Did you start in the Park Service? Or, like, even before then,
Jason: Just how did you get my first park Service job? I applied as a summer seasonal in 2001, and I was picked up as a wage grade three garbage truck operator and not the driver, but I rode the garbage truck we had ride along garbage trucks in Canyon. Then we had about 300 of those swinging bears cans and I rode the garbage truck for that summer, picking up garbage in Canyon.
Jake: That seems like a fun job.
Jason: It was very fun to do.
Brett: Like on the outside, like you're the one hanging out? That is cool.
Jake: That's like the one that all the little kids want to be when you grow up.
Jason: Correct. Yeah, we've taken that away. Now we have mechanical arms that do that, but it was a very fun job.
Jake: They always got to ruin all the fun stuff. Yeah, so.
Jason: Can't hang on the back of a truck around town.
Jake: Yeah. There's somebody probably got seriously injured and then that.
Brett: Yeah.
Jason: Yeah.
Jake: So, how did you find that job? How did you hear about, you know, how did you even know to apply?
Jason: Friends at University of Montana who came down here and work for YCR as seasonals?
Jake: Okay.
Jason: And they were like to apply for these jobs.
Jake: And so, are you from the area? Did you go to school here?
Jason: We were living in Missoula at the time. I grew up in Buffalo, New York, but we had moved out in 98 to Missoula and just met some folks that, you know, had been coming down and working seasonally for the Park Service. And the housing was a very big draw at that point that you could get a job that came with housing.
Jake: Yeah, In Yellowstone.
Jason: In Yellowstone.
Jake: Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So, you know, between, hanging off the back of a garbage truck and your current position, there's probably a few jobs in between those two jobs?
Jason: There are a few in between, yes.
Jake: Yeah. What you want to walk us through that?
Jason: Well, you know, my father was in the utility stuff, so I kind of grew up with some of that, at least in the collections and distribution side of things. So, I had known about it. And then in between that summer season and kind of, you know, still as a seasonal working for, you know, doing the ski school thing in the winter and then coming back. It was even back then it was recruitment and retention for water and wastewater operators was tough. The people came and came and went pretty regularly, even going all the way back into the late nineties. So, I kind of saw that there was there was a way to get in there. Then I did then do a little stint for the Department of Defense in Germany, working for the Army for a few years in early 2002 through 2004 or 2005 when we came back, and I've been here ever since then, and it was kind of that on the job training, you could get in, do some correspondence courses, grab some certifications and then get in the door that way. And that was pretty much the easiest way to get a permanent job in Yellowstone.
Jake: Yeah, so we've done a handful of these interviews now and it's at the consistent thing is like I think that John Cataldo said move at the speed of opportunity is that it's just kind of being in the place and being willing to learn some new thing and then take advantage of it.
Jason: Yeah. I didn't leave.
[laughter]
Jake: Yeah, yeah, yes. That is another way is just to plant your roots. Okay. So, in your current job, so as the utility systems facility manager, do you have a typical day and like or a time of year or like, like what does your job look like?
Jason: Well, let's be honest, there hasn't been any quite typical day since June 2023.
Jake: What happened then?!?
Jason: There was a flood.
Jake: There was a big flood, yeah.
Jason: Yeah. So I've been pretty wrapped up in that project, getting the wastewater plant up and running here in Mammoth, which it's been up and running since July of, did I get the date mixed up? It was 2022.
Jake: Yeah. So, for folks that don't know, we had a big flood in June of [20]22 that washed away one of our roads and in that road was a wastewater line that would take our sewage from Mammoth out to the town of Gardiner, [MT] where it was processed. And then when that line severed, we basically had to build a temporary wastewater facility in Mammoth.
Jason: We resurrected a facility from the it was last used probably in the late sixties, within a matter of 48 hours after we lost the main line down to Gardiner.
Brett: It's like a zombie facility. Yeah, came back from the dead.
Jason: There's a lot of chainsaws and weed whackers out and things to YCC and a bunch of other folks and fire crews for getting some stuff cleaned up and we were able to utilize some existing infrastructure actually to great success for a while to keep the community of Mammoth here. And then over the course of that, that year, I got those dates mixed up. So, June 2022 to July 2023, build a biologically processing wastewater treatment facility here in Mammoth.
Brett: It wasn’t on your radar either, as I was just like, by the way,
Jason: Not on the radar.
Brett: But this is a new thing that you have to do starting now.
Jake: Yeah. And, you know, living in and living in lower Mammoth, looking down and seeing that thing go up and just the how fast, you know, there's always speed bumps in the road. But I mean, with the government building things like building a wastewater facility in like less than a year isn't a typical timeline.
Jason: No, no.
Jake: Yeah. So, so I'm guessing that that's been your primary thing to take care of?
Jason: Yeah. Yep. Being on site. There's a few other folks like Molly or Parks civil engineer who's very critical in getting that up and running. We got great support from Denver Service Center and then the contractors and stuff that stepped up to get it all going.
Jake: So, with, you know, all of the things that you're mentioning, is there like a skill set that you have that you found that has like kind of allowed you to be the most successful in your position?
Jason: I feel like I'm pretty adaptable. Flexible. Kind of got to roll with the punches. And you need to be creative and use what you have around you. Like I said, those you know, there are some folks here who have been here for a while. So, when the flood happened, we reached out to a few a few people that have been here for a while and they were like, You do this and you got to have a good network of people to get all that information across and then implement. So being able to strategize quickly and then implement that, that plan and that's kind of the general thing with utilities is stuff's going to happen and you're going to need to figure it out kind of on the fly. And, you know, you don't always have those parts on the shelf or even whatever it is, if it's a water main break or something like that. You've got to really be able to react quickly but yet systematically and approach to keep everyone safe and to get the job done.
Brett: Yeah, that's one it's one of those things do that's like everyone's looking at you are waiting for you to figure it out too, because they're like just holding their pee over there, waiting to use the toilet again.
Jason: Yep, yep.
Brett: It's a high stress.
Jason: And I think the park had a great, a great team response to from the whole flood that I don't think anyone was holding it too much.
Jake: I had my wag bags ready.
Jason: Right. You bust out the groover, we're going, we're going on a raft trip. But no, that that's pretty much it. And then generally work with outside partners, EPA, rural water associations for both Montana and Wyoming, Wyoming DEQ. There's this position here in with Molly and the civil engineer for the park. We work a lot with Denver Service Center, and it is kind of that kind of position where you're balancing between the regulatory agencies. Wyoming is the only state in the nation that did not take primacy over drinking water. So, we get the fun of we work with EPA for Drinking Water Region eight and then Wyoming DEQ for wastewater. But in Wyoming, DEQ who also has everything to do with construction and permitting and things like that.
Jake: So that's also a benefit. But the majority of our infrastructure is in Wyoming, right?
Jason: Correct.
Jake: Like we do have a little bit, that does bleed into Montana, but the majority of its Wyoming. So do you have a favorite part of the job? Like what? What do you wake up and enjoy doing?
Jason: I like pumping sludge. Yeah, that's kind of like my favorite part of when I when I get to get out of the office or, you know, those kinds of things. Pumping sludge is very rewarding.
Brett: Do you put that on like the calendar on the days that you get to do that? Today I’m pumping sludge!
Jason: We’re doing that a lot more than we ever have at this new treatment facility.
Brett: So, it'd be a good day.
Jason: Closure of the wastewater loop.
Jake: So where does the sludge go?
Jason: Right now, it's going to the compost facility at the landfill in Logan.
Jake: Okay.
Jason: And they'll use it. They use it in the landfill. They mix it with woodchips and most of the municipal wastewater treatment facilities in the area, Livingston, Bozeman, even Three Forks and some of the other ones, they all use the compost facility too. So, they use it in as they layer things in and when they close cells and in between intermediate stuff in the cells, they put that layer of that material and mix it with woodchips and other things like that.
Jake: So, if pumping sludge is your favorite part of the job, what is your least favorite part of the job?
[laughter]
Jason: That's a loaded question.
[laughter]
Jake: What are some of the challenges that you face in your job?
Jason: That's a that's a better way to ask.
Jake: Yeah.
Jason: I think right now recruitment and retention is definitely a challenge. Finding certified operators nationwide is a challenge. I think through that, whatever happened a couple of years ago, we don't want to talk about the pandemic.
Jake: Yeah.
Jason: We did lose a lot of that knowledge base and some of those older operators. And we're struggling as a as a profession nationwide from coast to coast.
Jake: Well, and you mentioned that even in your, you know, when you were at Canyon doing garbage, that you noticed that it was hard to recruit and retain people back then. Is that is that just like do does anybody have an idea as to why that is that just like the hazards of the profession and or is it?
Jason: Yeah, I think you know, it seemed kind of clear back then that, you know, people with families being someone who has experience that staying in the interior of the park and that remote duty station is difficult.
Brett: No pun intended.
Jason: No pun. Yeah. D-o-o-d-I that that's just a struggle. You know, even when we had children and that was kind of my exodus from the interior after being out there for eight, nine years was, you want to be home and that makes it difficult.
Brett: Can you kind of go into why like, what are some of those difficult things that.
Jason: Yeah, the school.
Brett: Yeah. I mean what does that look like getting your kids to school or homeschool.
Jason: Yeah that, that was not an option.
[Laughter]
Yeah, I could see like, kindergarten. We could do blocks and, you know, music and all the fun stuff.
[laughter]
Yeah, no.
Brett: Teach me trigonometry.
Jason: My wife worked for the park for 20 years. Yeah. So, we didn't. We decided not to do that. She was here in Mammoth time, and I was able to come into Mammoth and work out of the plumbing shop for about ten years, doing some HVAC stuff and just all kind of project work and things like that before this position came up.
Jake: So now that you're, you know, the in your facility manager position and you're, I'm guessing you supervise a handful of people.
Jason: Yes.
Jake: With all those challenges and trying to recruit and retain people, I mean, why do you, why do you stay here? What keeps you at the National Park Service?
Jason: Well, I've always loved being here, so I feel like that's as far as recruitment goes, when you're looking for people who want to be here, you want wherever they are, whatever job it is. If you're in, you know, Michigan or Florida or North Carolina, I would think anybody you're recruiting for any job, you want the person to want to be where they're at, at least at that time. So, I've always wanted to be here. I was in love with the park. To be honest. I was in love with the skiing in the park for a long, long time. I still am. But you just don't have that kind of say.
Brett: That's sounds past tense.
Jason: Well, you know, life, healthy kids, there's adulting.
[laughter]
So. Yeah. And just the idea of and I always thought this might sound a little cliche, but you're you get to do some of that mission statement stuff the stewardship model take Canyon wastewater treatment plant for example. It's the only treatment plant in the park that discharges directly into the Yellowstone River. So, I always thought, even going back to 20 years ago, that you had a part of that kind of responsibility and stewardship. And plus, you're doing a little bit science. There's some science to it. And I just thought that was the best part of working in the park. And you can only, you know, I was never going to be in our REYP or anything like that. So, it was just for me, it was part of that. You could see that in the mission.
Jake: Yeah.
Jason: Well, relate to it.
Jake: And you know, 2001 is when you said you got your first job here, is there between then and now, has there been some point in your career that you kind of identified as like a turning point or a defining moment that you're just like really stands out to you?
Jason: I think there's a lot and, you know, not to talk. The flood was definitely one last year, two summers ago. Now, I think a defining moment was, you know, getting that first permanent job because that was a roller coaster and then even progressing up and moving from the interior to Mammoth up, that was a big deal in that.
Jake: Yeah, because that's like the whole everything other than work. It is improved by being up here, not the logistics of with your kids. And you know, things like that.
Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was when the skiing stuff.
Brett: Yeah, yeah. So, I guess I'm in some ways improved and in some ways, yeah, yeah,
Jake: Yeah. I do get that. And that's like, that's a cutting edge that cuts both ways. Like it's super fun to be in the interior in the winter. You have access to all this stuff. But then on the flip side of the coin, you got to get on the snowmobile and drive to the store.
Jason: But I think it's important though, that we make sure that people know that the interior life in the winter is not, it's manageable. You know, if you don't make a grocery list now, you if you come and you work in the interior, you might want to start working on your grocery list.
Brett: Can't forget eggs.
Jason: Can't forget. Yeah. You know, there's just a little bit there's another level of logistics and organization that goes to it. But I, I loved it. It was and that was a hard part of moving.
Jake: Yeah.
Jason: You know, I kind of felt like I was abandoning something that I really wanted. I always wanted, even when we were in Germany working, I was always like, okay, this is great. Europe. We're traveling.
Brett: Eating schnitzel.
Jason: Yeah, we get to go to Croatia on our day and on our trips or wherever it was, but I was always like, All right. And then the supervisor at the time, he would call my mom like, is he coming back? No, he's not coming back yet. And so, when I when we decided to pull the plug, it was just a phone call was like, okay, I'm ready. Come back. And they welcomed us back here with open arms and a lot of mosquito bites. Mary went down to the south entrance.
[laughter]
Not a lot of mosquitoes in Germany that was.
Brett: Not a lot of bugs in general, probably.
Jake: So, you know, we're mentioning like recruitment, retention, finding the right kind of person. So, say that there are people listening right now that are interested in this type of career. If they were to try to find this job on USA Jobs, what are they what are they looking for? Like, do is there a job series like that you're hiring for typically that, you know,
Jason: We are typically we're hiring for its utility systems repair. I believe the series is 4742.
Jake: Okay .
Jason: We do we do hire we have some higher graded positions that are open right now that would come with, you know, being more certified at the beginning. But more and more, we're opening positions that are entry level positions we hope to do, you know, in this recruitment push, we hope to do some other things. I don't want to, you know, say things and never be able to implement them.
Brett: So, yeah, this is recorded.
[laughter]
Jason: So then I, like you said you would do you get this huge in this one. Yeah. But I think we want to get creative and you know and work and talking to Wyoming rural water last Friday and just reach out and try to come together with other organizations that are having the same problem and try to just pull together and work through this because this is this is a nationwide kind of thing for us.
Jake: Well, and it's one of those things it's one of those professions that no one notices it until something isn't going right. And when it is going wrong, it's really bad.
Jason: Right.
Jake: Like it's like an emergency type of a thing. So, yeah. Do you have any advice for people, like if they wanted to get started in this, you know, like if they have their certifications and everything, it sounds like they would just apply for a job because somebody is brand new. Like what? What, what are they? Start with.
Jason: I think you could start with, you know, like this. It's going to, you know, that it. Even that quick Googling like water, Environmental Federation or American Waterworks Association starting with that, I feel like a lot of things just start with that. That basic research and then reach out. Every community has people that do this.
Brett: Everyone has waste.
Jason: Everyone has water and wastewater, you know, and I'm sure you've noticed somewhere driving around your town, you've seen somebody in a truck, Department of Public Works truck, Yellowstone has municipal features. We operate, we plow roads, we make water, we do wastewater. I would encourage people to start there, go to a water and wastewater district board meeting, meet people, get in that way with your local folks. There's a lot of people right now nationwide trying to start intern programs or apprenticeship programs or things like that. I would be really surprised if your local high school biology teacher or doesn't have or knows some way to get a hold of somebody in your community that knows the water and wastewater guy or gal.
Jake: Yeah.
Brett: And going on a tour like I went on tour of a wastewater treatment plant, and it was like fascinating. Like I didn't really know what I was getting into, but it was like, I want to know more about how this actually did. Do you have like a, like a really nutshell presentation of how that process works?
Jason: Yeah, it all depends on the treatment facility, right. Or whatever. If it's for wastewater, if it's a biological or mechanical treatment facility, water what the source is, is it groundwater, is it surface water, those kind of thing.
Jake: So, pick, pick one and like it sounds like we have all the flavors in Yellowstone.
Brett: That's kind of interesting.
Jake: Yeah. So, if you just say, what's the most complicated one? What's the what's the wastewater facility here that's giving you the hardest time? And like, kind of explaining?
Jason: Well, I think we deal with we deal with some of the aged infrastructure that gives us a hard, harder, harder time. I think some of the ideas behind, you know, you turn it off and you turn it on every year that wears on a system more than the thought of maybe, well, you only use it six months out of the year. It should last double the time.
Jake: Yeah.
Jason: No, you know, and just in the in the learning of bring in this facility here in Mammoth online, it's a more modern treatment process than we have anywhere in the Park Service, you know. Teton We went down to Teton, Patrick Larson down at Teton has an MBR down there at Moose. That he's had, they've had probably maybe inside ten years. We went down there, and we talked to him and we learned about some of that. And I think what was good for us is we had that Great American Outdoors Act push already going. So, we had a lot of this stuff in the lake. We had a year under our belts, a planning for building Old Faithful in Grant Village and Canyons. So, we had some of that experience with the engineering firms already to kick this off the ground.
Jake: But and one of the things I learned, you know, going out with you guys is when you said aging infrastructure, a lot of our facilities were put in like 40 or 40 plus years ago.
Jason: Right.
Jake: And what's the average lifespan of a facility?
Jason: Well, I think that the average lifespan of a facility is if it was maintained. And we've we some we've struggled with that for a whole host of reasons. But I, I struggle with the idea of putting a number on it.
Jake: Gotcha.
Jason: You know, like, I don't, I don't want to say, you know, it's going to last for 50 years. It's going to last as long as we needed to last if we take care of it.
Jake: Yeah.
Jason: We're lucky here. We're not in a situation like a municipality that's going to put in another 15,000 homes. So, we don't we can cap our capacity for the most part. So, we don't need to worry about having another million gallons of capacity when we might do some lodging updates and infrastructure, stuff like that. But we're not going to have those same issues as a municipality, like a like a Bozeman or somewhere.
Jake: But even like so if these facilities were put in 40 or 50 years ago, visitation was much lower. And where the facilities kind of built that there was room to grow them or are we kind of now we run everything even from my time here, everything that's on.
Jason: When it's on, I always go back to the campgrounds were full in 2001 when I showed up and the lodging was full. In 2001 when I got here, right?
Jake: Yeah.
Jason: That those plants were operating the same way then as they are now. They're on their, you know, 14 hours a day or 24 hours a day. They're running, they're running at that their capacity that they were designed for.
Jake: Gotcha. Well, yeah, admittedly so this is an anecdote that I like to say. When I was a little kid, you know, you'd always drive by the wastewater plant, and you'd get the smell. My mom's like, that's the wastewater plant. And in my mind, I thought it was like the pipes dumped into, like a plant with, like, leaves.
[laughter]
And there was like, a plant that just, like, absorbed in the waste. And I was like, Wow, that's a really cool plant. Like, just like trees. They take the carbon dioxide out of the air.
Brett: The plants don't like tomato plants grow out of the sludge because we can't, like, process tomato seeds or something. Or am I just like a dream. That's a weird thing to think.
Jason: No, I've heard something along those. But I mean wetland treatments is a very real process.
Brett: Yeah.
Jason: I mean, so it's not far off.
Jake: Thank you for thank you for not making me feel like.
[laughter]
Brett: He's winking at us because you guys can't see it. But he's like, we’ll make Jake feel better.
Jake: Yeah. So, the last question we like to ask everybody before they go is, do you have like a favorite story or memory in Yellowstone or some other national park that just like a fun thing to share with our listeners?
Jason: I just think I was really lucky for the better part of 12 years to have my family here, raise my kids here in the park and just have that have that experience. But I feel blessed to have gotten to where I'm at today and I look forward to, you know, taking the challenges head on and getting to where we're going to go tomorrow. And then all those great powder days at Canyon over the course of nine winters are always in the back of my head.
Brett: Do you think your kids, like, fully grasp the fact that they grew up and like, that's not normal? To get to grow up in Yellowstone.
Jason: Yeah, I think I do, actually. Yeah, I think they do. But, you know, as much as a teenager can grasp.
Brett: Yeah.
Jason: I mean, she didn't have a phone then, so.
[laughter]
Brett: Yeah, those are those like icebreaker things that I think they can be like. I grew up in Yellowstone, you know? Yeah. Good story.
Jake: Well, thank you so much for taking the time and talking about water and wastewater with us. It's one of those things that I, again, getting to go out with you guys and your team and seeing what you do. It's really very interesting. Also, I think everyone in Mammoth and the hotels and everybody that's here, like the fact that we can even be here because you guys got that facility up and running as fast as you did. We really appreciate that as well.
Jason: Appreciate that. Thank you. It took a lot of people.
Jake: Well, that's it for this week's episode of What We Do. Thanks again to our guest, Jason Murphy. If you like What We Do, write and review the show wherever you listen, because every positive review helps new listeners find the show. If you have questions or you want to learn more about a particular job, contact us using the form at go.nps.gov/WhatWeDo. Thanks for listening!
Denver Service Center (DSC): The central planning, design, and construction management office for the National Park Service.
Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA): Passed in 2020, this legislation provides funding to improve infrastructure and expand recreation opportunities in national parks and other public lands.
Yellowstone Center for Resources (YCR): A division in Yellowstone created to centralize the park's science and resource management functions, including branches for wildlife and aquatic resources, vegetation and resource management, physical resources, science communication, cultural resources, and environmental compliance and science coordination.
Youth Conservation Corps (YCC): A summer program that allows teen enrollees and staff the opportunity to learn, work, and recreate in Yellowstone National Park.
Katy Anderson, Law Enforcement Specialist
Katy Anderson always knew she wanted to work in national parks. From visiting Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior as a child to eventually working at a variety of parks across the country, Katy talks about her experience pursuing a law enforcement career with the National Park Service. Today, Katy joins us virtually from her temporary detail as acting chief ranger at Glacier National Park in northern Montana.
Brett Raeburn: From Yellowstone National Park. This is What We Do. I'm Brett Raeburn.
Ashton Hooker: And I'm Ashton Hooker.
Brett Raeburn: All right. Ashton. First of all, it's great to see you. How's it going?
Ashton Hooker: Good to see you, too, Brett. I'm good. How are you?
Brett Raeburn: Good. I'm awesome. so I have a question for you. Have you ever hitchhiked before?
Ashton Hooker: you know what I don't think I have.
Brett Raeburn: I see the way your face. When I thought you were about to tell me an epic hitchhiking story.
Ashton Hooker: No, no, no, I'm actually surprised I haven't done that, though.
Brett Raeburn: Well, I did some research in the superintendent's compendium, and, hitchhiking is legal within Yellowstone National Park as long as you follow some certain rules. So one of those rules, which is in section five, part 4.31, which I'm sure you read.
Ashton Hooker: By heart, yeah.
Brett Raeburn: All the time. Says that you can you can hitchhike as long as a sign isn't bigger than certain dimensions. Do you know what the max dimensions for your hitchhiking sign would be?
Ashton Hooker: Wow. This is a very niche question. I honestly have no idea, but I'm just going to take a random guess. I'm going to say I can't be bigger than, like, five by five feet.
Brett Raeburn: So five feet. That's a big. That's a really big sign.
Ashton Hooker: I was trying to, you know, go a little bigger than I thought.
Brett Raeburn: That's huge. it's actually it's two, two feet by two feet. So you’re going to have to trim a few feet off that.
Ashton Hooker: That's a more like, normal size of sign.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. So next time you're you're recruiting someone to pick you up for hitchhiking. It just needs to be under that two feet by two feet and you should be good.
Ashton Hooker: Okay, interesting.
Brett Raeburn: if you want to hold a five foot sign, the sign spinners, that might be your, that might be your go to. So our next guest, probably or is a lot more likely than we are to knows section five, part 4.3 of the superintendent. I can't say that superintendents compendium, by heart, because she's the law enforcement specialist here at Yellowstone National Park.
Brett Raeburn: So, Katy Anderson, have you ever cited someone for hitchhiking with a sign, like, if that if Ashton gave them their five foot by five foot sign? Have you ever cited someone for that?
Katy Anderson: No, but I would have definitely stopped and talked to her if she had a five by five sign. I would want her life story. I would want to know her.
Ashton Hooker: That would catch your attention.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. I feel like you don't even need to know the compendium to know that. Like that. That's probably someone you want to talk to.
Katy Anderson: Exactly.
Brett Raeburn: Well, there's always a first time for everything. so I'm guessing. Yeah. And I'm guessing you see a lot of things. Something different every day as a law enforcement specialist. But I want to backtrack a little bit first. before, we get to your current position and talk about where and when you got your start in the National Park Service.
Katy Anderson: Yeah. So thanks so much for having me. my where and when. So my career with the National Park Service began in 2001. as a GS-3 Park Guide at Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland. living with those wild ponies, which was pretty much a childhood dream being fulfilled right out of the gate.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, that's that's pretty awesome. So was it the wild ponies that that got you to that job, or how did you hear about the Park Service?
Katy Anderson: well, so the Park service go goes way back. for me, I'll have to go many decades back from that. It pretty much goes back to about the late 1950s. when my grandparents jumped on the Ranger three, which is a vessel that takes visitors, from the mainland of Michigan. and takes them out to an archipelago of islands in Lake Superior called Isle Royal.
Katy Anderson: and the island, as it sort of lovingly called by all of us who sort of grew up there, or grew up going there. along with my family, were super instrumental in my formative years in instilling a strong conservation ethic and just, in turn, inherently me knowing that my life work was going to end up being working on preserving wild, and public lands, like Isle Royal.
Brett Raeburn: So did you grow up near Isle Royale then, or just vacation there?
Katy Anderson: Yeah, I, I grew up in northern Minnesota, and so that was, we always kind of came from that Grand Portage side out to the islands. but the island has always been a huge part of my life.
Brett Raeburn: That is that's a big bucket list park for me. I've never not been there.
Katy Anderson: It's incredible.
Brett Raeburn: Have you been there?
Ashton Hooker: no. Actually, I just visited northern Minnesota last fall, but we were there just after the boat. Like, the ferries went out to Isle Royale, so we have to make another trip. I'm definitely bucket list.
Katy Anderson: Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. So. So how did. So you kind of started out with that background of of the conservation ethics kind of being, instilled in you from a young age? and then you got that job at Assateague. How did you as soon as you got that job, were you like, this is what I want to do. This is where I belong.
Brett Raeburn: So it.
Katy Anderson: Yeah, it is. I knew it like growing up. There was no question that this is what I was going to do, the National Park Service. It was just really refining what part of the Park Service I was going to be part of.
Brett Raeburn: And so how did you get from playing with wild ponies to where you are now? What are the the steps and iterations of jobs and units that you've worked at?
Katy Anderson: Yeah. So that is, there are such interesting journeys for us in the National Park Service. for a lot of us, what's neat about the National Park Service is that you can really experience the entire country on a deep level by working in the national parks. Really, from coast to coast. and that's pretty much what I did for those first 15 years, with the Park Service.
Katy Anderson: right after I finished my season at Assateague, I made my way into the heart of DC to work for the Wilderness Society, and I was interning for them, and really just getting amazing exposure to the hill, and really understanding how important the work of the nonprofit world was, but also how it coincided with the, federal government agencies and, you know, decisions being made on the Capitol.
Katy Anderson: And so, spent spent a good chunk of time there. really kind of digging in to, like, how do I get on permanently, permanently with the National Park Service? after I finished up, my DC work, I ended up going up to Acadia National Park in Maine, and spent a fall up there counting raptors, that was another big part of my life growing up.
Katy Anderson: in northern Minnesota, we had big flight migration routes. And so, was an intern up there, a volunteer up there as well, just really kind of starting to build my resume and figure out, how I could get my foot in the door full time. as I learned about, the different types of rangering in sort of the longer I got in, I made my way to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, another archipelago of islands in northern Wisconsin.
Brett Raeburn: I used to live in Bayfield.
Katy Anderson: Yes. And exactly. So, you know, the, apostles well. And I dipped my toes in interpretation, and lived out on Stockton Island, and it was just it was an amazing experience. and from there, I put myself through a seasonal academy, which was kind of the norm in, in how to get permanent in the law enforcement ranks.
Katy Anderson: And so put myself through that academy. because I really wanted to be running more of like the adrenaline junkie calls that were kind of coming with rangering. And I really wanted to get in on some of the craziness. and so then I spent the next five years of my career seasonally at Rocky Mountain National Park as a seasonal law enforcement ranger, doing the front country side of things, and then also the backcountry work.
Katy Anderson: I was able to jump in on the search and rescue operations. Really got my first, experience working fatalities and working the family liaison roles. and then also starting and really integrating the other side of my life that had always been so strong for me. And that was, having a horse component, in my career and started my mountain patrols, at Rocky Mountain National Park.
Brett Raeburn: Oh, wow. So you that you've done, like, a lot of things.
Ashton Hooker: [laughing]
Katy Anderson: I have, and that was the seasonal days. and I'll make it brief on the permanent. But the permanents were really neat because that that Rocky experience, and my offseason, I had been doing ski patrol work, full time and had some avalanche background. And so Yellowstone picked me up permanently to be working on Sylvan Pass and, and be doing avalanche control up there as well.
Katy Anderson: So I sort of could bring a skill set of the rangering skills as well as sort of my other, life loves into one into one job and then ran down to Grand Canyon for five years and got some crazy experience down there. and that experience on the South Rim, being a South Rim Ranger for about five years, really built the core of who I am as a person and ranger and supervisor.
Katy Anderson: at this point in time, and then returned to Yellowstone, to the justice, operation and the law enforcement office as the court liaison. And, which I can say is now definitely one of the best jobs I've ever had. and, and into the role that I have now full time as a law enforcement specialist for Yellowstone National Park.
Brett Raeburn: That's awesome. And I guess we should mention to folks that you're joining us remotely. from from Glacier National Park. So you're on a detail currently at Glacier as well, right?
Katy Anderson: I am, yeah. With, within the National Park Service and just federal agencies in general, we're able to do either temporary promotions or details, kind of, where a park unit will borrow you for a period of time and let you get some really good experience. So right now, I'm the acting chief ranger in Glacier, and, filling in a gap a period from when the old ranger, old Chief Ranger retired, and when they get their new Chief Ranger in.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, that's an awesome opportunity to have some of those.
Brett Raeburn: so do you have a typical day, in your position at Yellowstone? I'm guessing not, but but what what is, normal if you had to. You know, I'm doing air quotes for people listening. What's a normal day for you to look like?
Katy Anderson: Completely not normal.
Katy Anderson: You know, it's really interesting. The Yellowstone law enforcement office is super unique in the National Park Service. we've got a full time federal magistrate. So a judge right there, we've got a United States attorney right in the building. We've got a United States marshal, who works on all of our arrests with us and our warrants, and, and Yellowstone cases are all prosecuted in-house.
Katy Anderson: And our sole purpose in, in my operation, is in support of the field, the field staff. So the field rangers who are doing all the patrols and the response to emergency stuff, and really providing our office provides subject matter expertise. We assist you know, search warrants and blood draw warrants on DUI and filling out criminal complaints and really just supporting our partnership in and out of the house.
Brett Raeburn: yeah, that's a lot of different things going on. And I'm guessing it's that, like variety that, that you're seeking. I mean, you talked about being an adrenaline junkie, obviously. You know, you don't seem like you're the type of person that just sits sits down often. You're always out doing stuff. Is the vibe I'm getting from you?
Katy Anderson: Yeah. The operation is a dream for me because it's super dynamic. There's a ton going on, it's slightly out of control. There's a lot, a lot of stuff happening. And, there's always like kind of big balls or big issues floating up in the air that need to be tackled. And, I like that. It's definitely the energy that I like.
Katy Anderson: dealing with stuff at.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.
Ashton Hooker: And that's something that, you know, not every person is going to thrive in that type of environment. Like what are some things that you do that helps you. Yeah. Juggle all those things that you say is up in the air like what qualities do you need to have to enjoy a job like that?
Katy Anderson: You know, I think there has to be sort of a natural, comfort level with, with multitasking things. And I'm not sure if that's an ADD portion of my universe or something else, but, being able to to ride the waves of chaos a little bit and be okay with that and, and take a left hand turn when you were supposed to take a right hand turn that day like that is absolutely critical.
Katy Anderson: I think it's also super cliche, but, communication, like literally being able to communicate with everyone from defendants, who are sitting in your jail, prisoners to the chief magistrate, judge and beyond is, it's completely mission critical. in our operation, I'm sure 90 plus percent of my day, and my job as a law enforcement specialist is just building trust and bridges with the field and all of our partners through it.
Katy Anderson: Just so much like you cannot overcommunicate in this job.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot. I mean, and, like, the communication can make the difference between, like, de-escalating somebody and escalating somebody. I mean, that can make a huge difference. And and what your day ends up being like.
Katy Anderson: Absolutely.
Brett Raeburn: So so is that your favorite part of the job that that variety that, you know, you just never know what's going to happen doing a lot of different things. Or is there something else.
Katy Anderson: That is a huge part of what makes me love my job? I think if if I was really going to be pinned down on having to say what my favorite part of the my job is sort of in the last decade of my career here, I would say whether we like it or not, the National Park Service is like a giant family, and it needs tending to very similarly.
Katy Anderson: my my favorite part of the job, I think, is probably having really meaningful connections, with my team and my peers, and those many levels above me, and being at a point in my career right now that I'm given some creative liberty to create the type of work environment that fosters those connections. I think that's it's like it's it's so interesting because I think that adrenaline junkies like your younger years, you know, and the older you get, it's just, life is short.
Katy Anderson: And the relationships that you have at work, which is where we spend most of our time and at home, are just so critically important. yeah.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. And that that's been, that's come up a few times in our conversations with people, especially those have like, lived in the interior of the park or like remote areas. It's like that community is so important because that's that's who you're that's who you have. Yes. And so you, you know, you do you do a lot with those people.
Brett Raeburn: You work with them and you know, you have them over to dinner and all those things. And I think that's part of what the it's so special about the National Park Service experience that you just don't get in other jobs.
Ashton Hooker: Yeah. It's not a lot of work environments where you work with your coworkers, and then you also go live in the same neighborhood as them, you know, like they're you're literally your neighbors. Yeah. So that's a big difference.
Brett Raeburn: I know when Jake takes his recycling, I mean.
Katy Anderson: Right, there's.
Brett Raeburn: I can see what I can see what he's been eating for lunch if I wanted to.
Katy Anderson: That's perfect.
Katy Anderson: That is a perfect example of how this works.
Ashton Hooker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brett Raeburn: so, so on the flip side of that, what's what's the toughest part of the job?
Katy Anderson: You know, similarly, I think I went the first half for two thirds of my career here, I have gone, full blown energy, like I have done things at 1,000% and really kind of gone full send on everything. But, it takes a toll. Like this career is not for the faint of heart. we see a lot of the underbelly and the darker sides of society, and to have to deal like we have to deal with the aftermath of all of that.
Katy Anderson: It is us. We are exclusive jurisdiction here. We don't have, other agencies coming in to sort of take the case from us with it. It is it lays in our hands. Yellowstone sees, you know, 2 to 3 million people in a really condensed portion of the year in the summer there annually. And all of those visitors and those of us living in the park bring our issues and problems and addictions with with them and with us.
Katy Anderson: And so.
Katy Anderson: It's really critical at this stage in my career. And we've seen the aftermath of not sort of dealing with some of that stuff and talking about it that we actively process the cumulative work stress and the trauma. And, thankfully, you know, Yellowstone National Park is at the forefront of supporting their team, with the Yellowstone Resiliency Project.
Katy Anderson: And the National Park Service is, building out some exceptional peer support. Mind body wellness type programs to support us proactively for a fulfilling career, but more importantly, for our well-being the day we retire and beyond. so we're we're we're still coming out whole. And that has been a huge cultural shift that I that has accelerated, I would say, in the last three years.
Katy Anderson: and so the toughest part of my job is that is like the loss that we see through trauma. And, you know, dealt with issues. but also just the light in that is that I've got the opportunity right now with my own career to, like, hyper focus on those things and be part of, shifting a culture nationwide, really.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. That's awesome to hear. I mean, especially, you know, we all take our jobs, home with us somewhat. But in your position and especially I, I'd imagine that that's like one of those things that's really hard to, to not take home. And, you know, I mean, that could really eat away at you if you, if you don't take care of yourself when you're home with your family.
Katy Anderson: Yeah, absolutely.
Ashton Hooker: Yeah. And and you mentioned the Yellowstone Resiliency Project. I'm not sure a lot of people might not know what that is. Do you mind just telling people a little bit about what that entails?
Katy Anderson: Yeah. So the project, came about in cooperation with Yellowstone, I believe, in Yellowstone Forever was was where that, partnership really came about after the Yellowstone flood and, after the loss of some and some coworkers, to suicide and, there was some forward thinkers and, and support from the superintendent's office and the chiefs, to move forward in that partnership to fund mental health resources in Yellowstone.
Katy Anderson: I mean, the most amazing, one of the most amazing parts about living in Yellowstone is it has its remoteness. And, and its disconnect from the rest of the chaos of the world that's happening around us. But the downside to that is we we have a hard time with resources and getting them and and so, the Yellowstone Resiliency Project, has funded bringing in, health care providers for counseling and touch bases and just, connection.
Katy Anderson: So, so we're not kind of going through these big life events and sort of suffering on our own. and there's, you know, bigger conversations that are sort of happening on like, where next? What what next for these programs? but absolutely critical for every division in the park to have this resource to be tapping into and just normalizing the conversations around it.
Katy Anderson: I mean, this is the human experience that we have right now, and nobody is alone in their suffering. We all go through it. and just the pressures of life, you know, create environments that we need to take care of, take care of ourselves and one another. I mean, that's just the reality in the park services. we have to have to take care of one another.
Katy Anderson: So this Yellowstone resiliency project is brilliant. the folks that are working on it have just done an incredible job, implementing it. And we are so lucky to have that team working for us.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, it definitely forward thinking that that was that was the key point I think you brought up there. It's like one of those things that plays dividends. It's it's you're playing the long game when you're investing in people's mental well-being and so that that's awesome. I guess cycling back to kind of, your career, it sounds like you've had a lot of moments that you could probably choose as a defining moment.
Brett Raeburn: Do you have one defining moment that you would say, you know, kind of defined your NPS career or set you on a trajectory or that you can look back on?
Katy Anderson: you know, I, I think about it often is I get asked a lot like, what's the best park you've lived in? What's the best position you ever had? And I can I can honestly say that I am so, like at the core of my being, I am so incredibly proud of every single job that I've had with the National Park Service over the past 23 years.
Katy Anderson: I'm so proud of myself as a GS-3 at Assateague Island. Like, you know, that that I ever even, like, stepped into it and got that job. I would say it all builds on itself. It builds character, it builds, who you are to the core of your being and each of these positions that you're in. And I would say just sort of sitting here in this window now, like watching the snow dump, you know, on Glacier Park, the acting chief ranger in Glacier National Park, right now is one of those highlights.
Katy Anderson: And I feel so honored to have the support from my Yellowstone team. which is like my core team, to take on this role and, have to have this connection now with yet another incredible gem of a park and the amazing people that call this place home.
Brett Raeburn: You have all of these connections to places where people like they're on people's bucket list. Like they're happy to just make it to one of those in a lifetime, and you've got all these special memories at so many. And we all do. I mean, that's that's kind of why we all do what we do, I guess, in a way.
Katy Anderson: So lucky.
Brett Raeburn: That's awesome. Yeah. Since it was such a good answer, I'll let you get away with. I technically said you had to have one defining moment, so. But I'll let you get away with it because it was like it was a really good answer.
Katy Anderson: But if you know me, there's never one I always juggle at least three things.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah, I'm the same way.
Ashton Hooker: Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: so. And this is, this is a pretty, you know, probably a more straight connection than, than some of the other, people that we've interviewed. But how does your job contribute to the Park Service mission? so, you know, the Park Service mission, is kind of drives everything that we, that we do, and it's at the forefront of our minds every day.
Brett Raeburn: But. So how does your job, contribute to that?
Katy Anderson: I would say, it takes it takes a massive village of committed public servants to come anywhere near fulfilling the mission of the national park Service. I am just a cog in the wheel. But at the core, I. I truly believe that my work is super meaningful and impactful. and I feel that every single day, whether it's helping the field Rangers with a complex victim case as we run the victim program, victim witness program in my office or supporting the, you know, the prosecution of a significant poaching case, I, I love my job.
Katy Anderson: And, you know, I've heard people say that, like, you shouldn't love your job because it'll never love you back. And I just am unconvinced of that. And I think you need to find deep joy in the work that you're doing and think, believe truly that that it's, making an impact is for the greater good. And I never question that, no matter how hard my days are.
Katy Anderson: I know that, like, I'm giving back way bigger than I'm getting, and I'm totally okay with that.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. That's awesome. And someone has to keep Ashton with her five foot by five foot hitchhiking sign.
Ashton Hooker: You gotta keep me in check.
Brett Raeburn: On the right side of the law.
Katy Anderson: Unreasonable, Ashton.
Ashton Hooker: Hey, I went big.
Brett Raeburn: So? So for those those of people who are listening to this and are just like, wow, that sounds like an awesome job. Like me, like I'm like, wow, that sounds like so, so what what series do I look at in USA jobs to to do what you're doing?
Katy Anderson: Yeah. the series that that fly, that post, on USA jobs, which is where I work, which is where all of our, you know, federal jobs are posted is 0025. So right now that's the Ranger series. and, you know, at some point there may be a shift in that, but right now, 0025 Park Ranger law enforcement is what, folks would be looking at in USA jobs.
Brett Raeburn: And is it is at the same series for like all the positions kind of working their way up the ladder?
Katy Anderson: Yeah, it is everything from your field level law enforcement GS-5, all the way up into your Chief Ranger positions.
Brett Raeburn: Awesome. That makes it easy. I feel like a lot of times it jumps around and gets complicated, and it's hard to keep track of all those numbers. So 0025 is the one to remember. and do you need formal training, to, to get that like GS-5 position.
Katy Anderson: You do. There's a couple. Oh, a couple routes now, kind of the old way is where we would put ourselves through a seasonal academy. A law enforcement academy, that's connected with the National Park Service. And then you would apply to seasonal positions like summer positions. This last year, a new system, a direct hire initiative was sort of started.
Katy Anderson: And, we're hiring things a little bit differently. So, in that case, a couple times a year, there's announcements that are flown nationwide for the National Park Service, law enforcement positions. either way, you'll spend a significant amount of time at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, Georgia. and and then in a field training park as you build a foundation to your law enforcement career.
Brett Raeburn: How long are you in that field training park for?
Katy Anderson: It the field training park? is I gonna think about how many weeks...I think it's 13 weeks. I'm kind of talking off the cuff here, but, and sometimes that's your home park. Yellowstone is. We're really lucky. We're one of those parks to have a field training park, in and staff in place that can field, field train folks in person.
Ashton Hooker: and what's the kind of stuff that, people are exposed to in that training? Like what could if somebody is interested in going through that, like, what would they expect to be exposed to?
Katy Anderson: Yeah. You know, I think, it just kind of ties into, to another portion of some of the questions at the core of these jobs, we are federal law enforcement officers. Like, that is the core of what we're doing. And so, for example, FLETC, the federal law Enforcement Training center, they do foundational like basic, basic law enforcement training.
Katy Anderson: So everything from some people's first day on the firearms range, with your pistol and your shotgun and your, rifle to patrol tactics, like, how do I literally drive my police car? How do I do high speed, high speed, pursuit kind of chases? how do I care for victims in in cases? how do I physically maintain my fitness and show that I can, you know, ground fight with somebody that I'm going to need to go hands on with in my career?
Katy Anderson: How do I handcuff somebody? What are my arrest procedures? So it really takes you through, all of the basics of how to be a cop.
Brett Raeburn: yeah. So it's like a good crash course then.
Katy Anderson: And. Yeah, you make it or you don't. It's. Yeah, a crash course. You have to have the mental space and be really there to want to do it because it's, it's not all fun and games at all.
Brett Raeburn: Sure, sure, sure. I bet you you build some really strong connections with the people that you go through that with, kind of like, you know, boot camp or something.
Katy Anderson: Absolutely.
Brett Raeburn: Well, before we let you go, Katie, do you have we like to ask this of everybody because it's just fun for us. And we I come up with more things that I want to do in my summer vacations. But do you have a favorite story or a memory? It doesn't have to be from Yellowstone. any National Park Service unit that you visited or worked at, do you have a favorite story?
Katy Anderson: I, it's going to come from Yellowstone, and I don't know if it's a specific story. I think what I would say is this kind of speaks to the specialness of living in these places. living in Yellowstone is like being a National Geographic episode every day. And, and I would say it's, amplified when you live in the interior, which I've lived in several times, and I don't now.
Katy Anderson: But, what I would say is you can almost gauge the rhythms of the year, like the seasons of the year by the flow of the wildlife and the thoroughfares and the tracks that they are, walking and, you know, just this season, right now, as I'm not in Yellowstone, I'm in Glacier, and I don't have the bison out my window.
Katy Anderson: I, you know, I'm starting to wonder if, you know, if the cow bison right now with their big swollen bellies, if they're starting to make their way towards Mammoth Hot Springs and down to their calving grounds. And that always is like my sure sign that spring is coming. And I just think that's just one of the most incredible parts about living in Yellowstone, is that you can just, it feels very prehistoric to be living there with them.
Katy Anderson: And just watching these, these old rhythms just float by like we are truly just there in somebody else's world, and, we're just guests. It's amazing.
Ashton Hooker: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty special.
Brett Raeburn: Yeah. I love being in a place where it's like. Like, like you said, there's connections to, like, the natural world. Like the bluebirds are like. I heard a blue bird, you know, spring is coming, and everyone's just as excited as you are.
Ashton Hooker: Yeah.
Brett Raeburn: Some places people will be like, what the what?
Ashton Hooker: that's that's awesome.
Brett Raeburn: Well, well, thank you so much for for joining us and taking the time. I, I know I speak for all of us, but we thank you all for your service. And thank you for keeping us safe. I know I live, like, literally all of my neighbors are law enforcement rangers, so I just feel like the safest person whenever I'm out and about my home.
Brett Raeburn: so thank you all for. For what you and your, your team do, day in and day out.
Katy Anderson: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.
Brett Raeburn: All right. That's it for this week's episode of What We Do. Thanks again to our guest, Katie Anderson. If you like what we do, rate and review the show wherever you listen. Every positive review really helps new listeners find the show, so thanks for doing that. If you have a question or want to learn more about particular job, contact us using the form at go nps.gov/WhatWeDoPodcast.
Magistrate Judge: A judge appointed to assist U.S. district court judges in the performance of their duties.
Superintendent’s Compendium: The summary of rules and regulations that pertain to Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone Justice Center: A building in Mammoth Hot Springs that includes a courtroom for the park’s federal law enforcement division.
Yellowstone Resiliency Project (YRP): A program funded by Yellowstone Forever’s Resiliency Fund that brings several local, trauma-informed counselors into the park to engage with employees about mental health.
Miles Barger, Publications Program Manager
One of our hosts takes the hot seat! From park newspapers, maps, trail guides, and more, Yellowstone has a lot of publications. Miles Barger, publications program manager, joins us to talk about his job writing, designing, and managing these dozens of printed materials. We discuss his professional journey since starting as a seasonal housekeeper at Canyon Village, as well as his nail-biting grizzly bear sighting during one of his first hiking trips in the park.
Concessioner: Private companies that work with the NPS to offer necessary and appropriate services to park visitors that parks do not provide directly. Yellowstone partners with Yellowstone Forever, Xanterra Parks and Resorts, Delaware North, Yellowstone Park Service Stations, and STG International, which provide important support for education, sustainability initiatives, management solutions, and park research.
Harpers Ferry Center: The National Park Service's Media Center that creates a variety of interpretive tools to assist NPS field interpreters.
Resources & Issues Handbook: An annual publication of important concepts about the park’s many resources, park history, science and research conducted in the greater Yellowstone area, and critical management issues facing Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone publications: View a list of publications that will help you plan a safe, enjoyable Yellowstone adventure.
Heather Basak, Administrative Support Assistant
Working for the National Park Service was never on Heather’s radar, but after interning at a few different NPS sites after college, she got bit by the parkie bug and discovered that working in parks was the right fit for her. Today, Heather joins us virtually to talk about her work as a remote administrative support assistant, or as Ranger Jake calls it, “the grease of the Yellowstone machine!”
Resource Education and Youth Programs (REYP) division: A division within Yellowstone National Park of rangers who help connect visitors to park resources by staffing visitor centers; providing talks, walks, hikes, and other ranger programs; and writing/designing exhibits, publications, and digital media.
Time in grade: A specified amount of time federal employees are required to be in a position before being eligible for promotion.
Bret De Young, Supervisory Telecommunications Specialist
Yellowstone is one of the most remote places in the Lower 48, which presents unique challenges for telecommunications systems. Our technology services team provides computer, radio, and phone support for employees, maintains the communication center/dispatch services, and more. Today, Bret De Young gives us a peek into his job and provides tips for those interested in working in the growing telecommunications field for the NPS.
Fire Tower: A small tower, usually on a mountaintop, that provides housing and protection for a person known as a “fire lookout,” who searches for wildfires on the landscape.
Repeater: Specialized radio stations that receive and retransmit radio signals on different frequencies to extend the range of two-way radio communications.
Becky Wyman, Concessions Management Specialist
While most people probably know of the NPS when it comes to parks, did you know Yellowstone has hundreds of contracts with commercial operators to do business in the park? These operators provide services such as hotels, campgrounds, guided tours, and more! Today, Becky Wyman talks about her job overseeing these contracts to ensure we provide a world-class visitor experience.
Commercial Use Authorization: A business permit with the National Park Service that authorizes someone to conduct commercial activities within a national park unit.
Concessioner: Private company that works with the National Park Service to offer necessary and appropriate services to visitors that parks do not provide directly.
Telemetry: The Sound of Science in Yellowstone
"Telemetry" refers to the wireless transmission of information, often via radio waves, from one location to another. Our public radio-style audio series helps transmit some of Yellowstone's scientific investigations to listeners, wherever they are. Go on a sound safari in the world's first national park for surprising stories and in-depth reporting that highlight science and issues in the region.
Telemetry is supported by Yellowstone Forever, and by a generous grant through the Eyes on Yellowstone program. Eyes on Yellowstone is made possible by Canon U.S.A., Inc. This program represents the largest corporate donation for wildlife conservation in the park.
Thanks also to the Acoustic Atlas at the Montana State University Library.
To Catch a Loon
What do scientists do when they're racing to understand what's happening to one of the smallest and most isolated common loon populations in North America? Whatever it takes. Get ready because this story might change the way you think about birders forever.
"I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" performed by The Proclaimers. Licensed courtesy of Warner Music UK Ltd.
Host Intro: For Yellowstone National Park and the Acoustic Atlas at Montana State University, this is Telemetry. I’m Jennifer Jerrett. NARRATOR: When I say ‘top predator of Yellowstone,’ what’s the first thing that pops into your mind?
NARRATOR: Well, Vincent Spagnuolo has another idea.
VINCENT: They’re basically the wolves of the aquatic ecosystem here. NARRATOR: Vincent is a loon biologist with BRI, the Biodiversity Research Institute. He heads up BRI’s common loon project in Yellowstone National Park. VINCENT: They are top predators and they own that lake. NARRATOR: But in spite of their top-predator status, Yellowstone’s loons are in trouble. There are only about a dozen breeding pairs left in the park. And they’re really isolated: The closest other loons are over 200 miles away. This is Vincent Spagnuolo again, along with Dave Evers, the founder and executive director of BRI. VINCENT: And so, these are the only loons here and they’re basically on an island…
VINCENT: We don’t believe that there’s any immigration or emigration with this population…and that can be an issue when you have a small population with no chance of rescue from the rest of the species range. DAVE: And it could blink out…and it blinks out, we know it’s not going to be recolonized for a long, long time. and < loon wail> NARRATOR: If you want to keep a population from blinking out, if you want to preserve it, first you have to understand what’s going on with it. Scientists are investigating what might be happening with the Yellowstone loons and capture and banding is one way they’re gathering those data. But catching a loon is not easy. VINCENT: They are powerful, powerful birds…And yeah, when we get them in hand we feel that as we get beat up pretty good. NARRATOR: In fact, getting a loon in hand is so tricky that in the early days of loon research just the thought of a reliable capture technique was pretty inconceivable. Biologists basically surrendered to the idea that they’d be outmaneuvered by the birds. JEFF: 35 yrs ago…all of the working loon biologists in North America that I knew—and there weren’t many then--KNEW KNEW that you couldn’t capture a loon and band it. NARRATOR: Jeff Fair has been on the leading edge of loon science for more than 40 years and he’s worked with Dave Evers since the beginning. JEFF: And a few years later this ignorant grad student, by the name of Dave Evers, developed a way to capture and band loons. NARRATOR: And the trick was to go after breeding pairs at night. DAVE: The night capture is a method that really works with the birds. So we’re not chasing the birds. If we tried to chase the loons anyways, we’d never catch them.
NARRATOR: Dave Evers’ nighttime technique works because it lets the loons approach the researchers instead of the other way around. Researchers use a spotlight to shine a beam of light on the water that they can kind of hide behind. Then they mimic chick calls. Loon parents are super protective so they approach to find out what’s going on. And if all goes well, the scientists have caught their loon. …
NARRATOR: I went out on a night capture attempt with Vincent and his team here in Yellowstone. And as I was about to learn, it’s not just the loons that are tough.
NARRATOR: These guys were packing in a car battery--they use that to run the spotlight. If you’ve ever swapped out the battery in your car, you know how heavy those things are! NARRATOR: And they had nets and all this sampling equipment
NARRATOR: Oh, and they were carrying a canoe. Seriously. They had a canoe.
NARRATOR: And they hiked all that stuff into the backcountry for like 3 or 4 miles. And there were hills – I mean, so many hills – and bugs…
NARRATOR: …and even a couple of creek crossings.
NARRATOR: And the best part is that the BRI folks were totally upbeat about it all.
NARRATOR: We hiked to Yellowstone’s Wolf Lake. The team was trying to recapture the female from that territory; They had banded her last year. VINCENT: “One bird’s banded. One’s not. We’re going after the banded bird.” JEN: “How important is it that you get It?” VINCENT: “It’s critical. We don’t know where this population winters yet.” NARRATOR: Like a lot of birds, loons are migratory. During spring and summer, the Yellowstone loons breed and raise chicks in the park but they winter somewhere else. Scientists can keep tabs on the birds while they’re in Yellowstone -- address any of the big threats they face here like human disturbance or habitat changes. But that’s only half the picture. VINCENT: “And we put a small device called a geolocator on one of its leg bands” NARRATOR: That’s so they could track her VINCENT: “And getting that device back, we can download data that will tell us where this bird wintered…we’ll know what kind of threats they face on the wintering grounds and that’s a key piece to the conservation of this population.” NARRATOR: Not to overstate things, but let’s just say that they really wanted to get that geolocator back. Oh and just to kinda up the ante a little bit, the team was 0 in 3 in their capture attempts in the park so far this year.
NARRATOR: They missed it. NARRATOR: The male from that pair spooked and tremeloed. And that made it a lot more difficult to try to catch the female…and the geolocator.
NARRATOR: Once a bird is captured, the team does a work-up. Dave Evers walks us through the steps. DAVE: So when we catch a loon, we want to be fairly speedy and efficient with our time because we want to get that bird back in the water.
DAVE: So we go through this process of measuring the bird in many different ways. We want to get the weight of the bird. We want to measure the bill.
DAVE: Once we get the measurements we want to take some tissue samples—so, blood and feather.
DAVE: Blood’s used for a lot of different reasons. We can look at contaminant analysis like mercury and lead. We can also look at different diseases and parasites. The overall health of the bird.
DAVE: So a little vacutainer of loon blood, 5 ccs of blood, can really tell us this world of what’s happening for that loon.
DAVE: The feather that we grab, we usually cut the feather
DAVE: and that feather tells us from a mercury standpoint how much mercury has been in that bird’s body over its lifetime. DAVE: And then we put bands on their legs…
DAVE: …There’s two different banding schemes. One has a band number that fits in to the Federal Bird Banding Lab DAVE: And then we have a unique color banding combination that only that individual would have.
DAVE: So that way we can look at that individual loon from the shore with a spotting scope a year, or two, or 10 years later and that’s our way of tracking these birds over time. All of this took less than 20 minutes. And then…
VINCENT: “And that’s a loon capture” JEN: “Holy cow. That’s not easy. That’s not like any animal capture I’ve ever seen”
NARRATOR: One of the things that was so crazy about this capture was the fact that Jeff Fair was able to pilot that canoe in the dark toward a moving bird. Jeff’s paddling is legendary in the loon world. But he shines in teambuilding, too. JEFF: “There’s one other job that I have. In fact it’s the major contribution I’ve made to loon science and that is when you do a good job, you celebrate. We call it communion. Here’s to the loon.”
JEN: “Wow. Thanks for including me in on that. Did Vince–I totally cried you guys. See this is why I’m not in science and I do what I do. Oh my goodness, I can’t believe how beautiful that bird was.”
JEFF: Loons are a high-profile species. They sing and they dance. They attract people’s attention and people fall in love with them without ever being a biologist. You fall in love with any species and you suddenly realize the complexity of the whole natural web of life. NARRATOR: And that we’re all caught up together in that web. Loons are one of our more sensitive indicator species–a true canary in a co al mine. We’re beginning to understand that threats to loons can be threats to humans, too. DAVE: Yeah, it strikes me just to build on that that there’s this connectivity that I think we’re all--a lot of us--are missing with nature… that we all want clean air and clean water and a high quality of life and we need nature to provide that. VINCENT: We’re fighting the good fight and that’s for loons and that’s for all species and for advancing research and knowledge of the natural world. I think I’ll stick with loons for a long time not just because of the birds but because of the amazing people that there are. The entire loon world; just really dedicated and amazing people. NARRATOR: And speaking of dedicated and amazing, we still had to hike out. With the canoe. And the car battery. But this time, we had to do it in the dark.
Host Outtro: This podcast is supported, in part, by the Yellowstone Association, the Yellowstone Park Foundation, and by a generous grant through the Eyes on Yellowstone program. Eyes on Yellowstone is made possible by Canon U.S.A. This program represents the largest corporate donation for wildlife conservation in the park. This is Telemetry. Thanks for listening.
One Fish, Two Fish: Saving the Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout
Back in 1870, a member of the Washburn Expedition wrote in his diary about the Yellowstone cutthroat trout: "Two men could catch them faster than half a dozen could clean and get them ready for the frying pan.” Since then, things have become a lot more complicated. For this episode, a story of native fish conservation and what it takes to restore an ecosystem.
One Fish, Two Fish: Saving the Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout
[Lake water lapping sound]
Narrator: It’s a cold October morning on Yellowstone Lake. Heavy frost covers the dock the last few boats in the marina while fresh snow blankets the Absaroka mountains in the distance. [BOAT STARTING SOUND] Yellowstone National Park Fisheries Supervisor Todd Koel starts up a cold aluminum boat and scrapes frost off the windshield. [BOAT STARTING SOUND] We’re heading out to join fisheries crews working on the lake. Along the way Todd is thinking about the native Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout.
TODD - Really, the park and especially Yellowstone Lake, lies right at the core of the distribution, the range-wide distribution, of the Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout subspecies.
Narrator: Yellowstone Lake is huge, roughly twice the area of Washington DC. It the largest high-altitude lake in North America. And, it is thought to have held the single biggest population of Yellowstone Cutthroat trout in the world. TODD - estimates were in the range of about four million or so catchable Cutthroat Trout in Yellowstone Lake. That's a lot of Cutthroat in the system.
Narrator: This was in the early 1990s. And in those days, people used to say there were so many fish that you could walk on their backs across the Yellowstone River when they spawned. Tourists and anglers gathered by the thousands just to see the Narrator: fish moving up the spawning streams. One year over 300,000 people visited La Hardy Rapids and Fishing Bridge to see the brightly colored cutthroat trout.
BOB - Fishing Bridge got its name because there used to be so many people fishing from it when I worked there in 1969, you had to roll your windows up as you drove across there to keep from getting a lure in your ear.
Narrator: That's Bob Gresswell, Research Scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Bozeman, MT. Bob has studied Yellowstone Cutthroat trout in the park for over 40 years.
BOB - there would be thousands of cutthroat trout at the mouth of Yellowstone Lake that could be observed during the peak of the migration.
Narrator: Lots of fish everywhere. [Sounds of fishing reel spinning]
Narrator: But then, over one decade, everything changed dramatically. By the mid 2000s cutthroat had practically disappeared from Yellowstone Lake. Biologists estimate the Yellowstone Cutthroat population plummeted from over 3 million fish to less than 300,000. Some big new factor had to be causing the decline. Again, Todd Koel.
TODD - For probably 10 to 15 years we really saw very little recruitment of small Cutthroat Trout. Why? Because they were getting eaten by the Lake Trout, that's why.
Narrator: And here was this big problem. Lake trout had invaded Yellowstone Lake. A native of the Great Lakes and Canada, lake trout had been introduced to some large bodies of water in the Western US as a sport fish early in the last century. But not Yellowstone Lake. Yellowstone Lake was a high mountain stronghold of the cutthroat until…
TODD - The first Lake Trout was first verified in 1994. We know some were probably introduced in the mid to late 1980s and the early 1990s
Narrator: It was theorized that anglers illegally dumped the lake trout into the Lake, but the theory couldn’t be verified. No matter how they got there, Koel says the invasive lake trout were uniquely suited to have a huge impact on the native cutthroat. TODD - Lake Trout do great harm to cutthroat trout. Lake trout are predatory fish, first and foremost. Essentially just big, predatory fish-eating machines. They grow large. Live 30, 40 or more years. Grow 30, 40 or more pounds. They're highly prolific in the numbers of eggs that they can produce, so they've got a lot of built-in mechanisms that give them sort of an advantage in Yellowstone Lake, over and above the native Cutthroat Trout.
Narrator: And the problem didn’t stop with the drop in cutthroat. Over forty species in the park depended on the native Yellowstone cutthroat. And they suddenly had far fewer cutthroat to eat.
Narrator: Before lake trout showed up, enough bears fed on cutthroat in streams around the lake that the park enforced bear closures to protect bears and visitors. But by 2005, very few bears showed up in the closure areas. In the early 1990s over 100 osprey nested around the lake. By 2000 there were roughly six.
Narrator: And this highlights one of the basic problems with invasive species: in any ecosystem, an invasive species can quickly upset the natural balance and affect many other species.
Narrator: As the cutthroat declined, the lake trout population exploded. And the new lake trout? They were no replacement for the cutthroat. Behaving quite differently, they preferred deep water. They also didn’t leave the lake to reproduce in the tributary streams. All of which made them inaccessible as a food source.
It was an ecosystem at risk.
[BOAT REVVING UP AND GETTING UP ON PLANE SOUND]
Narrator: Todd Koel drives the work boat out of Bridge Bay Marina headed toward the southeast arm of the Lake, over fifteen miles away.
TODD – So we’re lucky that most of the boats are in the same general area of the lake today, so hopefully we won’t have to travel too far and wide to see gill netting boats, operating out there today, and then…[FADE IN NARRATION OVER TODD TALKING]
Narrator: The Park Service started trying to control the lake trout population soon after the fish were found in 1994. Taking a page from commercial fisherman, fisheries staff deployed gill netting boats to catch the invasive fish—an effort that still continues today. Currently, the Park has somewhere between 30 and 40 miles of nets set in the lake to catch lake trout every day during the fishing season. [SOUND OF A GILL NET PULLER STARTING UP, BINS RATTLING]
Narrator: Bouys mark the location the nets are set. Then gill netting boats haul up the nets full of lake trout. As the net comes in, crews pick the fish from the nets. They note their size, weight, and sex. And then they slit them open and dump them back in the lake.
[NETTING SOUNDS FADES OUT]
Narrator: And here is the next big challenge with invasive species. Once installed, it takes a ton of work to control them, they can also be nearly impossible to erradicate. In 2016 nearly 350,000 lake trout were caught in the gil nets—the highest catch yet in a single year. And this is the main effort to save the cutthroat—the effort to catch the invading lake trout until their population crashes. But, because of the massive amount of work that effort takes, biologists are looking at new ways to knock down the lake trout population.
Narrator: In the fall lake trout group up in large numbers, sometimes thousands of fish, to lay their eggs at specific locations—making both the lake trout and their eggs vulnerable. To find these sites, scientists have implanted radio telemetry tags in some lake trout. And by tracking the fish they’ve identified over a dozen lake trout spawning areas in Yellowstone Lake.
TODD - Then we're doing research on methods to kill the Lake Trout eggs on these spawning sites…
Narrator: …To stop the lake trout at the start. One experimental technique involved shocking the eggs with electricity. Another attempted sucking them up with a small suction mining dredge. But by far the most promising new method is surprisingly simple.
[GRINDER NOISE START] Narrator: Fisheries technician Mike Symiantowski stands on the deck of a gill netting boat with a large lake trout in his hands.
MIKE SYMIANTOWSKI - So we got all the lake trout we just caught in the last couple gangs of net. So right now we’re over one of our dumping sites. We're taking the lake trout and we’re putting them through this fish grinder here so that way we know that all the pieces of the fish are sinking all the way down to the bottom.
GRINDER SOUND FADE OUT
Narrator: Grinding is used over some sites, while on others whole dead lake trout are being dumped. Laboratory tests show that the decomposing fish carcasses kill the eggs by eating the oxygen in the water. Oxygen that the eggs need to survive.
TODD - We're moving forward pretty quickly with that method because it's so simple, because we're not taking anything foreign from the lake and bringing it in, like some kind of a chemical or something like that. We're just simply taking the dead fish that we're catching and putting them strategically on spawning areas.
Narrator: And these big efforts to keep the ecosystem healthy, They seem to be paying off. Fewer small young lake trout and fewer big, old lake trout are being caught in the nets.
TODD - That's telling us, even though our catches are still high each year, that's a strong signal that our suppression program is collapsing this population. Narrator: And as a result the cutthroat are making a comeback.
TODD - For every Lake Trout we kill each summer, we're probably saving 40 to 50 or more Cutthroat Trout just in every given year.
Narrator: More cutthroat of different sizes are being found in annual population monitoring. Anglers are catching more cutthroat. Visitors are returning to watch the cutthroat spawn in the late spring. Nesting osprey numbers are growing around Yellowstone Lake. And finally, bears are coming back to the spawning streams. Koel has even seen this firsthand.
TODD - I was on that spawning stream trying to collect a water sample in June with some of my crew and a grizzly bear showed up. TODD - That was his stream, and those were his fish. Then watching him get after the Cutthroat Trout and bring them up on the bank, and chow them down. That's pretty amazing to see. Then on top of that, the hundreds of people that were gathered to watch that as well. That occurred for well over a month.
Narrator: All encouraging signs. For Yellowstone National Park, whose mission to preserve our natural resources unimpaired for future generations, the effort to repair the damage done by invasive lake trout is worth it. Yellowstone is one of our few remaining relatively intact ecosystems left in North America. And restoring the cutthroat? [Lake water lapping sound] It helps it stay that way. [Lake water lapping sound] From Yellowstone National Park, I’m Scott Christy. [Lake water lapping sound]
Cougar M198
Last January, one of Yellowstone's marked mountain lions went missing. Scientists traveled deep into the park to investigate. And that journey? It wasn't as straightforward as they thought it would be.
Music by Chad Crouch, Victrola Dog/Podington Bear Music
Dan Stahler: Test Test 1-2-3…OK we are live Narrator: This is Dan Stahler. And—I swear—Dan Stahler practically has fur in his blood. He studies wolves and elk…He’s the endangered species coordinator for Yellowstone National Park. And he’s the project lead for Yellowstone’s research on mountain lions—also called pumas or cougars—And last year, Dan and his team had a cougar mystery to solve. Dan Stahler: All right, Good Morning. It’s January 28th. Dan Stahler, Colby Anton, Nathan Varley heading on in to the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone to go investigate on our only cougar collared right now, M198. He’s a 3-year-old male. We’re gonna go check it out and see what we see. Narrator: First, a little background here on M198. The M stands for male and 198 is his identifying number. M198’s collar that Dan was talking about is very high tech. Dan Stahler: sort of FitBits if you will for cougars One of the things those collars can do is communicate with a satellite system to record the cat’s location on the landscape every 3 hours. Dan could log in on a computer, look at all those location points and see where M198 had been. Dan Stahler: We used those points to identify clusters on the landscape where he spent time. Then usually about a week after he was in that area we would go investigate. Narrator: Investigating the places where cougars have spent time turns out to be incredibly valuable. And it’s a little like a crime scene investigation that you see on TV. Dan and his team can comb the area for DNA, like hair and scat, to help identify individual cats … like how many are out there and who’s who. This non-invasive technique of getting at the demographics of a cougar population is a powerful tool for studying such secretive animals. Or, let’s say a cougar made a kill in that spot. And if so, was it a deer or an elk or a marmot… how old was the animal… was it healthy…how many animals did the cougar kill over a given period of time… these things tell scientists a lot about the food habits of cougars like M198 AND what their impacts might be on populations of prey species like deer or elk. Dan Stahler: We found where he’d killed an adult cow elk. It was the only animal he fed on for 20-some odd days. And that’s kinda typical of a male cougar. They can go a long time without feeding. They’ll make a kill, feed on it, then do their other cougar things and roam around. If the cat stops roaming around – if it stops moving altogether, then the collar sends Dan an alert. For M198, that alert meant that either the collar came off somehow, or it stopped moving because M198 was probably dead. And Dan and Colby and Nathan needed to figure that out. The problem was that the collar suddenly stopped transmitting GPS locations. So finding it was going to take a little work. Dan Stahler: Colby, it’s too bad we don’t have a more recent track on him, Colby. He’s either down low or he’s tucked in a rock in the boulder field which let’s hope isn’t the case. Who knows Colby, we might get lucky. Narrator: Let’s just say that they didn’t get lucky. M198 had made his way into what Dan calls the Promontory. It’s a gnarly boulder field with rocks the size of cars. Dan Stahler: There are lots of places a kitty could tuck away up here. Narrator: This explains why Dan and his team were unable to get GPS coordinates from M198’s collar. There was no way a collar could communicate with the satellites in outer space through that huge pile of rocks. But those collars also come equipped with radio telemetry. And because the radio beacon transmits its signal directly to Dan’s handheld receiver, he could use THAT to zero in on M198. And the way that works: The closer Dan gets to the collar, the louder the blips -- the radio signal. Dan Stahler: OK we’re getting closer guys. Dan Stahler: It’s kind of a fun process because you try to read the signal but think about what the cat would do—how he would move through here. I don’t know they ARE cats. They do amazing things. It would be nothing for him to bounce through this boulder field, but you’d think he’d take a path that would be a little easier on him. Dan Stahler: OK I think I see some blood up ahead. I don’t know for sure. Yeah….I see where birds or something pecked at blood in the snow. Dan Stahler: Lot of tracks. He’s in there somewhere. Clicking in real nice on the telemetry now. It’s interesting. Something dramatic went on here. Because there’s blood all over the rocks…look at the stain on that lichen right there…there’s a bunch of cat hair stuck to the rock…. Dan Stahler: Wow. There’s caves all over the place in here….Wow. There’s blood way down. Holy smokes. Hey might be WAY down in here guys. Dan Stahler: Uh this is a pretty…well…(grunting)…a little spelunking! I didn’t think I’d be doing THIS today. Dan Stahler: Let’s hope he’s dead and not a wounded cat that’s not happy to see me. Narrator: Twenty feet under the earth, tracking a bloody cat, Dan and Nathat started to piece together a story of what might have happened to M198. Nathan Varley (talking to Dan): Did he get pinned in there by a bigger cat? Dan Stahler: Yeah bigger cat, maybe… Nathan Varley: …and they’re fighting…that’s nasty. Dan Stahler: That’s how toms die often. Nathan Varley: Lions are lions. They’re just so powerful Dan Stahler: And you know he’s a 3-year-old tom and was probably trying to establish himself in here and all it takes is one bigger tom to say nuh-uh. Dan Stahler: We’ll know. You know they crunch the skull… Nathan Varley: Oh wow. Brutal. Dan Stahler: …when they kill each other. I think we’ll see it in his head. Dan Stahler: Well, you know, he has an accelerometer collar. So we can look at the activity. We can look at the movements... We might even see signs of a chase taking place somewhere else once we get the data back from it. Nathan Varley: So like, ‘he ran over here and this is where the other cat caught up to him and pinned him in the rocks…” Dan Stahler: Mmmm Hmmmm Nathan Varley: That’d be pretty interesting, wouldn’t it? Dan Stahler: Yup Nathan Varley: That’d be really interesting…How ‘bout that? Dan Stahler: Yeah, like, what are the energetics of a cougar fight? Narrator: OK this is where the idea of the cougar FitBit really comes in. Scientists can use the information from accelerometer collars to understand a lot more about animal behavior and energetics – basically, how much energy it takes for an animal to live its life. This is pretty cutting edge stuff. Dan Stahler: So, our ability to study carnivores like cougars is changing all the time. We take advantage of new technologies that become available…And those of us who have iPhones or FitBits or any activity exercise monitoring machine, may have heard the term accelerometer because they’re all built to these devices. These collars have built in accelerometers that continuously measure the 3-D axis--the neck position--of the cat wearing the collar. So when the animal is walking or resting or pouncing on prey it will record a specific type of activity pattern This data has been calibrated with captive animals--captive cougars--wearing collars on a treadmill, jumping and pouncing on a training course … measuring how much oxygen they’re consuming and that translates to calories burned… Narrator: Calories in. Calories burned. This is the basis of energetics. Dan is collaborating with Colby Anton, a PhD candidate at UC Santa Cruz, on the energetics research. Dan says they will be able to link the data from the captive cougars to the wild cougars in Yellowstone. And biologists in the park have these same collars on wolves. Dan Stahler: …so we can compare the energetics of a stalking carnivore that lives mostly by itself – the cougar – compared to a group-living carnivore that chases after its prey – the wolf – and can see different patterns in their energetics that may have been shaped through evolution, might be shaped by current environmental conditions Narrator: Understanding how these animals respond to environmental conditions, how they survive…what they eat…where they go…how they affect each other and their prey… All of this goes beyond just understanding cougars or wolves. Dan Stahler: It’s really about understanding how the ecosystem works. I think those of us who work with these animals don’t think of ourselves as a wolf biologist or an elk biologist or a cougar biologist. We’re ecologists trying to understand the pieces that make this ecosystem function the way it does. Really, what we’re trying to do is understand Yellowstone—it’s importance to the world, its importance to science …to nature—through the lens of wolves and cougars and elk. So these collars have opened up that world in a much more accurate way. Narrator: And because they want to interfere with the lives of wild cougars as little as possible, Dan and Colby only fit a couple of cats with those collars. Which made M198’s even more important to get back. Dan Stahler: OK, hey I’m gonna listen to the telemetry. Dan Stahler: It’s 12:07. Don’t tell me that beacon turned off. Dan Stahler: That should not have shut off…(sighs) I don’t hear it Colby… Narrator: Despite continuing the search through the caverns without the signal, Dan and Colby and Nathan could not. Find. The cat. Dan Stahler: That pisses me off…. I hate leaving here without this cat and knowing the end of this story. ¬ Dan Stahler: Damn it, Colby . Colby Anton: beacon. Dan Stahler: Pffft…Another typical day in wildlife biology. Narrator: I think most scientists will tell you that dealing with frustration and overcoming setbacks is something scientists get comfortable with pretty quickly. In fact Dan tells me that a few days later, they were back in that boulder field. Dan Stahler: …and that’s what we did we went back into the area and it was another frustrating search… < “It’s so interesting, we’re at the site but we can’t quite find him” sounds of effort, rocks sliding, Dan in the field saying “that’s just me moving some rock”> …And then there was one little spot where I noticed some hair stuck to the top of the rock a little bit of blood and it was just another little slit I the rock that I wasn’t able to catch before… Dan Stahler: …I squeezed through it… Dan Stahler: …and I looked down with the headlamp and… Dan Stahler: Definitely not moving. (Sighs) Here he is. Aww. 198. Damn it. So, here I am down in the lions den with 198. He is dead. He’s lying on his side. Blood all over him. Hard to say what happened here but it does look like he’s been attacked. Wow. He must have been beat up pretty good to come down here like that. Bummer. Hard to loose a cat like that. He was the 1st one of the study—but certainly we’ll learn something about him from this event, too (sighs). Narrator: M198 the very first Yellowstone cougar to contribute accelerometer data to the study. But maybe what’s even cooler, is that he is one of only two wild cougars in the world to have his entire genome sequenced. And this has implications for big cat research worldwide. Narrator: Back in his office, Dan talked about the death of M198. The necropsy revealed the cat was indeed killed by another cougar. Narrator off mic: And he was your first… Dan Stahler: It was very discouraging. But at the same time, you know, you appreciate the wildness of Yellowstone and the lives these animals live … …There are relatively few places where you can understand how all these carnivores coexist, compete, interact, and what those impacts may be on prey, scavengers or each other… Narrator: And you know, Yellowstone is pretty special that way. Thanks to focused efforts of native species restoration, the park is more carnivore-rich today than it’s been in over 100 years. Dan says that ecologically, this is great news because carnivores like cougars have a critical role to play. Dan Stahler: Cougars, like other top carnivores through the act of predation, which is a powerful ecological force, they have the capacity to shape and structure ecosystems. Narrator: But from a human-dimensions standpoint, things are still a little thorny when it comes to these top predators. Dan Stahler: If you look at carnivores in particular they have a long history of persecution… Narrator off mic: Where do you think that comes from? Dan Stahler: We have a long evolutionary history with carnivores. Our ancestors competed with them for space, for food…And so it’s probably very much built in to our brains…and it’s hard to shed that baggage that was probably shaped over eons of time…But even today there are still challenges living with carnivores. If you raise livestock, carnivores can be a threat to your way of life. If you’re a hunter, you might find that carnivores compete with you for areas on the landscape that you like to hunt. And for others, they embrace the fact that we live in a place today where we can hunt and recreate and still be in a place where there are carnivores. I certainly feel that way living here at the gateway to Yellowstone in Gardiner MT. It’s a privilege to be able to live in a place where we have so much… Narrator: It’s a place where natural processes--like a cougar fight to the death--still play out. And although it was hard to lose him, the ghost of M198 lives on – inside the larger context of what we know about cougars in Yellowstone. M198 had a story to tell. But there are other cats on this landscape and they have their own stories. Dan Stahler: We just finished picking up M198 and we have tracks on at least mom and one or two probably big kittens or yearlings…and we’re looking in the snow here and you can see here where the young ones were romping and chasing each other. Colby found a good bed site over here so he’s taking his forceps and collecting the hairs and putting them in a sample envelope hoping we get some follicles on the hair for genotyping the DNA of one of these little buggers. Dan Stahler: So we’re just leaving the site where Colby got some hairs and lo and behold a nice fresh scat…one of the yearlings, probably…they were goofing around in here…. Dan Stahler: Another quality DNA sample…we’ll collect this too. Narrator: For Yellowstone National Park, I’m Jennifer Jerrett.
Reburn: The Maple Fire Story
On August 8, 2016, a lightning strike ignited a small fire on the edge of Yellowstone National Park near the community of West Yellowstone. Most fires in the park never burn more than about a quarter-acre, but the Maple Fire would go on to burn over 45,000. It was the largest fire in the park since the historic fires of 1988.
Music by Chad Crouch, Victrola Dog/Podington Bear Music
JOHN CATALDO – Is there anything as wild, beautiful, and important as fire in Yellowstone?I’m not sure.
Narrator - This is John Cataldo, the Fire Management Officer for Yellowstone National Park. Which means it’s his job to manage everything having to do with fire in the Park.
JOHN CATALDO - It seems like we're always at work in the summer and somehow at least my impression is that 80% of the fires we get are when I'm at home eating dinner. So, fires and telemarketers are who finds me a seven o'clock at night, at my home.
Narrator - And on the night of August 8th, 2016, John got that kind of call. An aircraft full of smokejumpers flying over Yellowstone National Park spotted a new fire. The jumper aircraft circled the fire, collected a GPS location, and then they texted John’s crew.
JOHN CATALDO - Yeah, sent us a photo. I mean, that's the information age, right? So we had a report we had a photo from the aircraft of the fire. It gave us a basic idea of the fuels that were in the immediate vicinity of it. It was about ¼-acre and that’s generally speaking, what I have to work with in a remote environment .
Narrator - The fire was located on the far western side of the Park, just about six miles east of the town of West Yellowstone. So John did what he often does. He notified the Deputy Superintendent and the Chief Ranger, and then he called Yellowstone’s fire ecologist to run the nearest weather station for wind data. And then very early the next morning John poured over maps of the area and all the collected data on the new fire, and he had this really big decision to make. To put the fire out or to let it burn.
JOHN CATALDO - Essentially it comes down to do we think this is a good fire or a bad fire?
Narrator - And with this fire, the Maple Fire, being so close to the town of West Yellowstone was a huge consideration.
JOHN CATALDO - A lot goes into it, but at the end of the day it's a real estate game, and it's location, location, location.
Narrator - But the fire had two things going for it being a good fire. First, 95% of the winds in recorded history at the closest weather station had blown from the west or southwest. Directions that would push the flames farther away from the community of West Yellowstone and deeper into the park backcountry. So while winds were likely to push the fire in the other direction, John knew that the proximity to West Yellowstone would have a lot of people interested in this fire.
JOHN CATALDO - Well, you want to provide insurance, so 95%'s pretty high number, right? If I gave you 95% odds on a blackjack hand, you'd probably push your house payment out there, but 5% is a pretty substantial risk if you're the one living in the community on the 5% end of that.
Narrator - But the second thing that helped managers feel like the Maple fire might be a good fire? It was that the fire had started in an area that had burned way back in the 1988 fire season.
JOHN CATALDO - If you were to play word association with anyone in West Yellowstone since 1988, and you say "'88," the first thing they're going to say is "fire." There's no other word.
Narrator - 1988 was a particularly dry summer in Yellowstone. When lightning storms hit the Park in August large fires sprouted everywhere. Fires so big, tens of thousands of fire fighters were mobilized to fight them. National news covered the events nightly.
(Roy Renkin): In recorded history, we had not been that dry…
Narrator - That's Roy Renkin, a Yellowstone Vegetation Management Specialist who has been looking at fire’s effects in the Park for almost 40 years. Roy saw the 1988 fires firsthand.
ROY RENKIN - …and as a consequence these fires were large with these big flaming fronts… and they were moving and with dramatic spread rates. You could up measure them in multiple kilometers per hour
and you fly along at the head of some of these fires and you would think that you know the fire is moving faster than the aircraft. Its pretty dramatic stuff.
Narrator - And back in 1988 there was a lot of pressure to put these fires out. For 100 years the majority of land managers had been putting out almost every every wildfire they could immediately. And it was part of greater American culture to automatically think of forest fires as a threat. And because fires hadn’t burned in Yellowstone for hundreds of years, the forests were thick with fuels to burn. A whole lot of fuel in a really dry year. The fires got big enough that their smoke blew all the way from Wyoming to Chicago. Media scrutiny was intense. So much so that President Ronald Reagan weighed in sending in the military to fight the fires.
ROY RENKIN - , it was a quarter of an inch of snow on September eleventh of 1988 that did what , you know, ten thousand firefighters, 220 different aircraft, you know so many miles of fire line you know, couldn’t do that put a halt to the eighty-eight fires. A quarter of an inch of snow.
ROY REKIN - but what people don't realize is that these fires, just like the sun comes up in the day and the moon comes up at night, western forests burn.
Narrator - By the end of the ’88 fire season nearly 800,000 acres in Yellowstone had burned. One third of the entire Park. That much area burning in a protected ecosystem created a unique place to study the effects of big fires on the landscape. Scientists noted a series of benefits to that ecosystem after the 88 fires, demonstrating a value to letting naturally-caused fires burn. Chief amongst them, the pattern of areas burned in different years created a mosaic of forest ages with a diversity of plants present. And this diversity of habitats was really good for most animals. Also, since there was less fuel where previous fires burned through, the mosaic of past fires helped provide a really great boundary to stop new forest fires from becoming large.
Narrator - Which brings us back to the Maple Fire starting in 2016 and the decision John Cataldo had to make… to let the Maple Fire burn or to put it out.
JOHN CATALDO - Well, fire is the lifeblood of the Yellowstone ecosystem, so if we exclude fire, essentially this ecosystem as we know it dies. It would grow decadent and expire. Fire here is essentially the ecological reset button, and our job is to keep as much of it on the landscape as we can safely do, but it's complicated.
JOHN CATALDO - we're just facilitating the conversation between fire and humans essentially. This park will never have a fire problem. Essentially what it has is 2000 structures and four million visitors that we need to work our tails off during fire season to keep separated from the fire that we need on the landscape, and that's the challenge. It's 2000 structures and four million visitors.
Narrator - And so here was this new fire, the Maple Fire, started by a lightning strike in the middle of a big area that had burned in 1988. And since 1988, due to that mosaic of forest ages, fires starting in the 88 burn area hadn’t really gone anywhere. And so John and his team decided to let the fire burn thinking it would just kind of sputter out.
JOHN CATALDO - The eyes were wide open as that fire persisted and became two acres, and then five, and then maybe a week or so into the fire being on the landscape it was in the hundreds and we knew that we were going to have a substantial fire until the snow flew.
Narrator - And for everyone who studies fire in Yellowstone, this fact, a fire growing large in the 88 burn scar, was something odd.
JOHN CATALDO – Generally speaking, up to that point, the ’88 fire scar in a lot of ways was almost viewed as asbestos. It was a great natural barrier to fire spread so for a lot of our fires since ’88 we were using that fire scar as a boundary.
Narrator - But not anymore.
Narrator - A tall column of smoke formed as the fire grew. A huge plume that could be seen from far away. Just six miles away in West Yellowstone, residents started to get nervous about their proximity to the growing fire.
JOHN CATALDO - Things were tense in West Yellowstone, particularly in the beginning of the life of the Maple Fire. I joke about it now, but some of those first public meetings were 200 pitchforks and tiki torches out there in the crowd.
Narrator - A dozen fire public information officers were brought in to organize daily public meetings to make sure the most current information and management plan was getting out. In total over 400 firefighters were assigned to manage the blaze.
JOHN CATALDO - To be honest, the strategy that was eventually employed by the incident management team was something we'd sketched out on a cocktail napkin on about the third day of that fire burning.
Narrator - The main plan was to control the fire’s edge near West Yellowstone and let the fire keep burning slowly, like lava, eastward. To do so, firefighters would allow the fire to chew it’s way toward the the Madison River on the west side. Then, using the river as a boundary, they’d employ a tactic called a backfire—starting a new fire on the edge of the river—and as the Maple Fire sucked in air to feed its flames, it would pull the fire-fighter ignited burn eastward. The two fires would then join leaving no more fuel on the western flank for the Maple Fire to carry into. And it worked, but managers were still surprised that the fire was burning in the ’88 burn scar at all.
JOHN CATALDO - We suspect it was the extreme dryness of the large logs that were dead and downed and underneath. For a lot of the Maple Fire area, the fire wasn't carrying through the tops of the vegetation. It was actually first burning underneath through the heavy woody debris, and it would scorch and dry out things enough above it that they would eventually become consumed after the main fire had passed.
Narrator - But other than burning in the ’88 burn scar the Maple Fire did what many people thought it would do. For the most part it kept slowly burning east while firefighters watched over it. And eventually, much like the ‘88 fire season, snow and rain in September put the Maple fire out. All of which was what fire managers had planned for.
JOHN CATALDO - Now the community of West Yellowstone has a 45,000 acre fire scar on one side of it that is going to insulate it from any fires that we may want to control and can't that originate in that part of the park.
Narrator - And both John and Roy say that warmer overall temperatures associated with climate change are likely to complicate fire on the landscape. With predictions of fire becoming more likely in the park, the overall makeup of forests will likely change too. Some tree species, such as lodgepole pine are expected to decline, while others like Douglas fir become more prevalent. And this changing environment in Yellowstone poses new challenges that have fire managers like John looking toward the future.
JOHN CATALDO - Essentially from where I'm sitting, because I'm one of the ones making the decision whether a fire should be encouraged to be on the landscape or suppressed, is I just keep defaulting to fire is what this ecosystem needs. Ultimately if climate change dictates that the ecosystem looks differently or functions differently, it's going to be with fire in it. We're not going to start going backwards and putting out fires out of fear of climate change.
Narrator - And John says that seeing the big picture is the main reason not to go backwards.
Like the expression goes, "You trust the process." What we're doing is managing processes. We're not managing species. We're not even just managing plant communities. We're managing entire processes that we don't completely, and nor will ever completely understand all of the interrelationships of what fire brings to that. So trusting the process.
Narrator - For Yellowstone National Park, I’m Scott Christy.
The Value of One Wolf
Wolf researcher Kira Cassidy likes to say that when Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book in 1894 and included the famous line “For the strength of the Wolf is the Pack and the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,” he would have had no idea that over a century later, scientific research would back up his poetic phrase. In this episode, Kira takes us inside the world of the wolf and pulls back the curtain on what it means to be the leader of the pack.
For Yellowstone National Park and the Acoustic Atlas at Montana State University, this is "Telemetry."
(sounds of spring bird calls)
Narrator: There’s nothing like this time of year in Yellowstone. (sounds of spring birds)
Narrator: And while most creatures in Yellowstone are busily singing their hearts out this time of year, there’s one animal that actually gets a little quieter in the spring and summer.
(sounds of wolf howls)
Narrator: And that’s the wolf. You see, there’s a seasonal cycle to wolf howling. Howling ramps up through the fall and peaks in late winter as wolves enter the breeding season. Then, come springtime,
(wolf howls out)
Kira: Howling abruptly drops off. This is caused by the female choosing a place to den that they really want to keep secret if at all possible.
Narrator: That’s Kira Cassidy, research associate with the Yellowstone Wolf Project.
Kira: Choosing a den site is extremely important for a wolf pack. It's going to be their hub for the entire summer. It's the house of the entire next generation ... and it has to be protected of course because the tiny helpless pups are going to be there for several months. We've had cases where a pack has attacked another wolves' den and even killed the pups in some cases. They don't really want to let other packs know where they are and what they're doing…and in order to avoid that they keep quiet.
Narrator: It’s not only the frequency of howling that changes throughout the year, but the type of howling shifts, too.
Kira: Wolves howl for a couple of different reasons. Some of that would be within the pack so to keep track of each other, say if they’ve been separated.
Narrator: Even though they’re doing a lot less of it, this is the kind of howling that tends to dominate in the spring and summer: Wolves communicating with their own packmates.
Kira: They also howl to let other packs know where they are and to establish a territory.
Narrator: Wolves will often have these howling bouts with other packs. The two packs will howl back and forth as if to say this is our turf—our territory. And it’s that howling for territoriality—--that grows in the months leading up to the winter breeding season.
Kira: Howling really tracks the hormones as the wolves are getting ready for the breeding season.
(wolf howls)
The testosterone will start to spike and howling starts to increase. It's a stressful time in some ways. They do a lot of howling during the breeding season.
(wolf howls)
Kira: I think they use howling as a way to advertise the number of wolves they have in the pack, the type of wolves they have in the pack. If they have a lot of big male fighters, that's going to come across in a howling bout with another pack.
And in some ways, wolves may be able to use it to avoid a fight with another pack too. They can create that space between each other…They can do that and let the other pack know where they are but also let them know who they are.
Narrator: Kira’s specialty is looking at territoriality in wolves and inter-pack aggression, basically when two rival packs come into contact with each other and fight. Sometimes wolves fight until one pack or one animal displaces another. Sometimes they fight to the death.
Kira: This stuff , this running into other packs is so vastly important to a wolf pack. Of all the wolves that live in Yellowstone that we’ve radiocollared. By the time they live their entire lives, some of them disperse outside of Yellowstone of course, but if they live their whole life in Yellowstone, two thirds of them end up being killed by other wolves.
(music)
Kira: I really became interested in territoriality when I saw a couple of these things play out… I saw a handful of times the Druid Peak pack ran into some of their neighbors. It was pretty fascinating the way it happened. They were intruding in other pack's territories. They were sometimes outnumbered but still winning…. I wanted to know why they’re winning or who’s winning.
(music)
Kira: So when two packs run into each other, we always like to think of it as team one versus team two and in some cases that works, but that's really kind of a human way looking at it. A pack of wolves is made up of--it's often a family--but it's made up of all of these different individuals who are driven by different things going on in their life, and some of those things we can measure.
Kira: Of all the packs we measured, one of the things that was most important was just being in a larger pack. Which wasn’t really surprising. It was kind of cool to figure out the value of one wolf. Just having one wolf more than your rival ups your chances of winning quite a bit.
(music)
Kira: Yeah so, If you live in a pack of say six wolves and you run into a pack of five, your odds of winning…are a 2.4 to 1. The value of just having one extra wolf is extremely important.
Narrator: And if you live in a pack with more males? That also ups your chances of a win during inter-pack aggression--by about 65% Kira: But the most important factor was having a single old wolf in your pack.
(music)
Kira: If you live in a pack of, say, five and one of your pack mates is old, you're better off living in that pack than just having another sixth wolf, that old wolf is more important than having the numbers. And that shocked me at first because I really thought that these prime aged animals would be best…. If there is any age that mattered at all, then it would be the big fighters that are strong. But the old wolves have years and years of experience. The older wolves have been through these aggressive interactions before. They've probably seen pack mates die. They may have participated in killing a rival or at least chasing and attacking a rival. They know what to do. They don't panic.
Kira: After learning that, it really drove home this connection back to other animals but also humans. There's an oldest animal in the pack that's bringing leadership and knowledge and experience to the group that once they die is gone.
Narrator: “old” for Kira’s research is six years old. That’s the median age of death for wolves in Yellowstone.
Kira: We've had wolves live up to 12 and a half. That was our oldest. We've had only a handful--eight or so--live to be more than 10 years old. Three of them are still alive. The Canyon alpha pair is a great example: We know that the alpha male was born in 2006. We know that the alpha female was born in 2005 and we followed them throughout their entire lives. Not only are they both pretty old for wolves, two of the oldest that we've been able to follow, but they've been a pair now together for nine years which is pretty special. I don't know if anyone has recorded a pair living so long together.
(music)
Narrator: So, Kira and I first talked back in April 2017. And a few days after we did this interview, the Canyon alpha female was mortally wounded. But not by other wolves. She had been shot.
(music)
Hikers found her near a trail on the north side of the park and, due to the severity of her injuries, park staff had to euthanize her.
(music)
Kira: So, after the canyon alpha female was poached, it got me really thinking about what was going on with the rest of her pack and certainly the loss of her was a pretty big blow to them. And also, what a lot of people don’t know is that her mate disappeared. We’re not sure if he left to go find another mate now that she was gone or if he died for some other different reason around that same time. …and so with the loss of the two of them together, they had over two decades worth of knowledge--on how to avoid other packs, how to find food in this ecosystem, how to pick an appropriate den site and raise their pups--and so that knowledge that they had accumulated over all this time was gone. Now hopefully, the rest of the pack--and we think there may be three, four, maybe five of them left--hopefully they’ve been taught well enough.
(wolf howls and music)
Narrator: But Kira says it’s important to remember that for wolves, life goes on. That these animals have a sovereignty and self-determination that can’t be stripped away. That hopefully, the Canyon wolves will take this challenge, like they take all challenges, in long, steady stride.
(wolf howls and music)
Narrator: For Yellowstone National Park, I’m Jennifer Jerrett. This podcast is supported in part by Yellowstone Forever and the "Eyes on Yellowstone" program. "Eyes on Yellowstone" is made possible by Canon, USA. This program represents the largest corporate donation for wildlife conservation in the park. This is "Telemetry." Thanks for listening.
What Lies Below
People travel from all over the world to see Yellowstone's famous geysers, colorful hot springs, burbling mud pots, and hissing fumaroles. The force that drives these amazing thermal features—a giant volcano—lies below much of the park. In this episode, we talk with scientists who monitor the volcano about misconceptions surrounding Yellowstone's volcanic past, present, and future.
Music by Chad Crouch, Victrola Dog/Podington Bear Music
SCOTT CHRISTY: Imagine that you’re standing on a boardwalk in Yellowstone National Park. It is a sunny day in the height of summer.
(SOUND OF CROWD)
People around you look at their watches, and then back up, waiting for something to happen. And right then this starts…
(SOUND OF OLD FAITHFUL WITH CROWDS)
SCOTT CHRISTY: A stream of water shoots four or five feet out of a hole in the ground. It pulses up and down a few times and then jets over a hundred feet into the air.
(SOUND OF CLOSE OLD FAITHFUL)
SCOTT CHRISTY: And it continues to do this for a few minutes. This would be Old Faithful erupting next to you. The most famous of Yellowstone’s features. It does that all the time, with similar blasts coming from the ground at least every two hours.
MIKE POLAND – I don't know, I get caught up just like anyone else. When I am vising Old Faithful, I stop and I watch the eruptions.
SCOTT CHRISTY: That’s Mike Poland, the Scientist-in Charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
MIKE POLAND - Doesn't matter how many times you see it. It's no less spectacular to me than the first time I saw it. And the more you know about what's driving this, I think the more spectacular it becomes. It's this heat engine that's beneath our feet that's made this possible. You're seeing the upper expression of this heat engine right at the surface. And I think it's a magical sort of thought to have as you're watching these geysers go off.
SCOTT CHRISTY: While there are geysers all over the world, Mike says that Yellowstone is famous for holding the greatest concentration of geysers anywhere.
MIKE POLAND: in order to get a geyser to really go, you need heat, you need water and heat. And of course we have plenty of water around here. The heat is supplied by a magma body that's underneath Yellowstone.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Which is basically a bunch of molten rock from the earth’s mantle rising up into the earth’s crust.
MIKE POLAND: The magma body is sometimes referred to as a supervolcano, or the Yellowstone system is called a supervolcano. It gets that name because it can be the source of some truly humongous eruptions. JAKE LOWENSTERN: Yeah, this is kind of a funny jargon sorts of stuff. SCOTT CHRISTY: That's Jake Lowenstern. He was Mike’s predecessor as the head of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. Jake says that what defines a volcano as a super volcano is a past super eruption. And that such eruptions are really, really big. JAKE LOWENSTERN: Super eruption is a meaningful term and that's when you have more than a thousand cubic kilometers of material that comes out in a single event. Let's kind of visualize that. A thousand cubic kilometers if you took the state of Texas and you buried it five feet deep in material.
SCOTT CHRISTY: These super-eruptions are much bigger than the largest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, like Mt. St. Helens or Pinatubo. So much bigger that the amount of ash they put into the sky can change the climate of the entire earth. The closest we’ve come to one in modern history was in 1815, when an eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia threw so much ash in the atmosphere that it was known as the ‘Year Without a Summer’. The eruption and following climate change caused crops to fail in both Europe and New England and even prompted Lord Byron to write a poem about that summer titled “Darkness.” And Tambora’s 1815 eruption? It is dwarfed in size by Yellowstone’s pre-historic super-eruptions— at least ten times smaller.
(MUSIC) There are a number of volcanos other than Yellowstone that have produced a super-eruption in the past, but Jake says that in the earth’s history these big super-eruptions are pretty rare, with one going off every 100,000 years or so on average. And, much like Yellowstone, these other super-volcanoes are not usually the cone-shaped mountains we often associate with volcanoes—not that big triangle you might have drawn in grade school. Instead these super-volcanoes are essentially giant sink holes, surrounded by mountains. These sink holes or calderas, are what’s left after devastatingly large super eruptions take place, blowing up everything that used to be there. Just like with Yellowstone’s caldera—a caldera about the size of Rhode Island.
JAKE LOWENSTERN: It's had three very, very large volcanic eruptions. The most recent one was 640,000 years old so that seems incredibly old, and it is, but that was one of the largest eruptions in the last 20 million years in the United States and it's one of the big eruptions on earth that's well-recorded in a geologic record. And, um, Yellowstone is capable of doing that.
(MUSIC)
JAKE LOWENSTERN: So you have a lot of different things that happen here, yet because everybody has in their mind this one kind of big bad eruption, everybody assumes that if there is an eruption, it has to be the worse case scenario and that everybody is doomed. That's just wrong. SCOTT CHRISTY: According to Jake, the kind of eruption most likely at Yellowstone would have a more regional impact. A small scale eruption that could come in a few forms. A giant belch of superheated gas and water from Yellowstone’s underground plumbing system or oozing lava flows like the ones in Hawaii.
JAKE LOWENSTERN: It'll affect the people in the park and it'll affect the park if something like that happens. There will be forest fires, when you bring lava out in the ground, it's hot. There is going to be road closures. You might dam up some rivers but it's not going to be a national event and that's the most likely kind of thing that can happen and even that, it's not very likely. One hasn't happened for 70,000 years.
SCOTT CHRISTY: You can still see evidence of pre-historic lava-flows throughout the park. Flows that birthed the main plateaus of rock across Yellowstone. But again Jake really isn’t too worried about new lava flows or other events popping up any time soon.
JAKE LOWENSTERN: if I were offered a job here and if I were at the right time of life, I would certainly live here in a second.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Learning more about the Yellowstone volcano’s past and paying attention to its present is what scientists like Mike and Jake do as members of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. Scientists at the observatory come from groups like the United States Geological Survey, the National Park Service, and Universities of the states surrounding the park. Again, Mike Poland,
MIKE POLAND: Some of us are geophysicists. Some of us are geochemists. Some of us specialize in gas emissions or rock compositions. Other people specialize in locating earthquakes. It's a unique group of scientists. And it's all really getting at ways of better understanding the current activity and the processes that are happening now beneath our feet.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Research trying to understand the volcano can lead scientists in unexpected directions. Mike and fellow researcher Elske de Zeeuw-van Dalfsen are standing in the middle of a lodgepole pine forest as heavy wind whips the trees back and forth.
MIKE POLAND: My goodness. I know they're designed to do this but it's a little unnerving to be, okay.
SCOTT CHRISTY: As Mike and Elska deploy a sensitive piece of equipment to measure gravity at the site. A pine maybe 30 feet tall breaks and falls to the ground while the rest of the trees continue to crack and whine.
MIKE POLAND: That would be an interesting manifestation in the gravity record if we had it running when that tree fell. Because we’d detect the vibrations from that.
MIKE POLAND: We're doing a gravity survey throughout the park right now and the idea is that gravity actually isn't a constant. It varies depending on what's beneath your feet. It will especially vary over time if there's an influx in mass beneath the ground, say or water or magma. If there's more or water or magma beneath the ground, gravity actually pulls a little stronger and we can record that with these instruments.
SCOTT CHRISTY: These measurements of gravity could provide a better understanding of changes in the magma chamber below the park, and are one example of ongoing research at the Observatory. Scientists are also studying the age of gases released by geysers and fumaroles to understand how old the molten rocks below the surface are, and where in the earth’s crust they are being melted from. Other researchers are measuring recent ground deformation, which means the changing shape of the earth’s surface caused from below. In 2014, in the park near Norris,
MIKE POLAND: the ground began to uplift by several centimeters a year, which is extraordinary by geologic standards. This is something that of course you wouldn't notice, but measuring with GPS and with radar satellites we could see this uplift.
MIKE POLAND: Then there was an earthquake.
MIKE POLAND: And right after this magnitude 4 or so earthquake, the ground started to subside by about the same rate, several centimeters a year.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Researchers think that earthquake was caused by pressure releasing. Heated water accumulating behind a seal and the seal breaking. Afterwards the ground started falling as the water drained out from behind the barrier. And while all this research helps scientists better understand whats going on under the park, Yellowstone’s past of large eruptions can add a dramatic flair to current events surrounding the volcano. In 2017 thousands of earthquakes were detected occurring in just over three months near West Yellowstone. Major news outlets often covered the story of the earthquake swarms and were quick to cite the potential for disaster.
MIKE POLAND: It seems that whenever there's an earthquake swarm at Yellowstone this idea that the volcano is about to erupt comes up. And there are swarms all the time. If it were true that Yellowstone swarms were indicating an eruption was imminent, then eruption is likely to be imminent every year. So this is just the way Yellowstone works. Yellowstone releases seismic energy in swarms. Some swarms are big. Some swarms are small.
MIKE POLAND: It's what Yellowstone does. So they're not anything to get worried about. In my opinion, they're more something to get interested by. MIKE POLAND: the rocks that are around tell a heck of a story. There are lava flows all over the interior of the caldera. Outside the caldera there are tufts, welded ash deposits, thick ash deposits from the large eruptions that have occurred over the last two million years. MIKE POLAND: Obsidians and ash flows and basalt lava flows all mingled together to tell this story. MIKE POLAND: So there's a story recorded in the rocks, which tells the geologic history of Yellowstone, and it's an interesting story. (MUSIC)
SCOTT CHRISTY: And this story, the story of the volcano, can be seen everywhere in Yellowstone. It’s one of the things that makes Yellowstone so unique. The shapes of land, the courses of the rivers, and all of the amazing thermal features. They are all dictated by the volcano. Even plant and animal habitats in the park are defined by volcanic rock types. The volcano isn’t just written across the landscape, it is the landscape. And this is something special to see, even for a scientist studying it.
MIKE POLAND: Not only is there a lot of activity to measure, a lot of things to observe, but it's a spectacular place. Period. (SOUND OF OLD FAITHFUL COMING BACK IN FADED IN UNDER)
MIKE POLAND: There's a reason that there are millions of people a year that come to visit. It's really a privilege to work in such a spectacular place, not just geologically and vulcanologically, but also in terms of its ecology, in terms of its landscapes. It's a real wonderland.
GEYSER GOING BIGGER SOUND
MIKE POLAND: So come to Yellowstone and look at the landscape and explore the geology.
SCOTT CHRISTY: For Yellowstone National Park, I’m Scott Christy
MUSIC FADE AND OLD FAITHFUL OUTRO
Vital Signs
"Vital signs," like blood pressure and pulse rate, are used in medicine to track human health. Paying attention to the little things can often help us better understand what's going on in the big picture. Scientists can monitor ecological "vital signs," too. In this episode, biologist Andrew Ray shows us that a little creature can tell us a lot about the Yellowstone ecosystem.
Music by Chad Crouch, Victrola Dog/Podington Bear Music
FIELD SOUNDS FADING IN, CREW TALKING TO EACH OTHER ANDREW RAY: So you’re brand new so I'll just, lets. KACI FITZGIBBON: I do have one. ANDREW RAY: Oh you do have one? KACI FITZGIBBON: Yeah. ANDREW RAY: Okay well I'll take an extra, we'll have an extra. KACI FITZGIBBON: Okay. Awesome. ANDREW RAY: So you've used it before? FIELD SOUNDS FADING UNDER
SCOTT CHRISTY: I'm standing on the side of the Loop Road in Northern Yellowstone with biologist Andrew Ray and his intern Kaci Fitzgibbon Before we hike away from the road Andrew is explaining how to deploy bear spray in case we have a close encounter with a bear. He holds the eight-inch canister of pepper spray in one hand and puts his thumb on the plastic safety.
ANDREW RAY: But if somethings coming, we're all gonna sort of stand abreast, we're gonna face it, we're gonna talk to it, but we're gonna have this at the ready and part of having this at the ready is having your safety off. 'cause otherwise you're just pushing down on the safety. KACI FITZGIBBON: Yeah. ANDREW RAY: Sound good. KACI FITZGIBBON: Yeah.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Andrew spreads out a map across the tailgate of his truck and points to a spot in the mountains above us. ANDREW RAY: So just to give you guys a quick orientation. So we're here on loop road and you know big Blacktail Ponds. Anyway we're over here, we're gonna hike up and our goal is to hit site number two, there. ANDREW RAY: So it's a nice little pond sitting on the top of the hill—fantastic views. And it's a great spot for of chorus frogs and tiger salamanders.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Andrew is a biologist with the National Park Service’s Inventory and Monitoring Division.
ANDREW RAY: Yeah, I get to spend my summer knee-deep in these habitats that most people don't take time to wade into. And I get to explore them.
SCOTT CHRISTY: It’s May and snow is still melting off the higher elevations in the park. Hiking up the hill far above the road we bump into seven or eight elk moving off into the trees. We start talking about how the haunting sounds of elk bugling in the fall are one of the signature sounds of the Rocky Mountains.
ANDREW RAY: Yeah, so just as much of that leaves an impression that rich, real, authentic sound of wildlife, that's what chorus frogs are. That's the sound of a marsh. If marshes make sound, that's the sound of a marsh.
SCOTT CHRISTY: And Andrew says we’ll know the frogs when we hear them. They sing, sometimes a few at a time and sometimes a full chorus of many frogs. Moving over the hill, we see a small pond below us. There’s a wet grassy area leading into it. We think we hear a few chorus frogs, but they quiet down as we approach.
ANDREW RAY: Yeah, but that's the really cool thing about frogs is once you sit there and you sit still, they'll resume what they were doing. They'll suspend calling for a little bit and go into that cover, duck and cover mode but once you sit there and they realize you're not a threat, they'll resume what they're doing so they'll go right back to calling.
SCOTT CHRISTY: We sit quietly for a few minutes, and then, one by one, they start singing again.
ANDREW RAY: It's pretty fun to try to break it down. It sounded like two individuals are down there for a while then a third chimed and there was at least one here. And they're actually really rapid calls so it's just a second or two and it's like you're running your thumb down the tines of a comb—that sound, right? And then they'll do maybe 20 of those, or 25 of those in a minute, so they're really blasting it out advertising where they are. You now hear one over there.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Okay yeah, so what are they doing right now?
ANDREW RAY: They're advertising their presence. They're ultimately trying to attract a mate, but they're letting other males know they're present, that they've got the spot of the pond and then they're letting a female know where they are. They're so small, the vocalizations can help bring in the female.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Sometimes, the frogs will chorus from April all the way into July. And when they really get going, the sound can be intense… like this…
CHORUS FROG RECORDING FROM ARCHIVES
SCOTT CHRISTY: But Andrew says their full sound isn’t even the most unusual part about chorus frogs. Later in the year as late fall comes to Yellowstone…
ANDREW RAY: They are looking for a place to go hibernate. ANDREW RAY: And then you start to see... well, we can't see it obviously, but people who have measured it have started to see changes in their blood chemistry. ANDREW RAY: Essentially, they're creating an antifreeze.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Yep, he said anti-freeze. It’s a pretty amazing adaptation allowing them to survive winter in Yellowstone. A winter that can last up to six months. The chorus frogs make their version of ‘anti-freeze’ by producing extra glucose in their blood.
ANDREW RAY: What happens is, upwards of two thirds of their body is frozen. Completely frozen with a heart that has stopped, altogether, limbs that don't move, and lungs that don't function.
SCOTT CHRISTY: And the glucose in their blood protects their cells from collapsing while frozen.
ANDREW RAY: They're in that state as long as it's snowy.
ANDREW RAY: But it's absolutely remarkable to me that they over winter just inches below the surface.
SCOTT CHRISTY: And as crazy as that is, freezing just below the surface turns out to have a big benefit as winter comes to a close.
ANDREW RAY: When temperatures start to warm in the spring, the exact opposite happens, right? You start to get a little bit of heart and lung function. And, eventually, their extremities start to move. And the cool part about that is, when you're really close to the surface, and you get some warm, early, warm spring days, you're the first to respond. If the other species of amphibians are a meter down below the frost line, and deep into burrows, the temperatures aren't changing as rapidly as they are at the surface. So, these frogs are the first to get into ponds, as soon as the ice and snow is off the surface. And, so they're in the ponds earliest, because they are the closest to the surface.
SCOTT CHRISTY: This gives the chorus frogs a potential advantage over other amphibians and more time to take advantage of seasonal wetlands that may dry up later in the summer.
MUSIC TRANSITION
SCOTT CHRISTY: Yellowstone is home to four other species of amphibians including western tiger salamanders, Columbia spotted frogs, western toads, and plains spadefoot toads. There is one kind of environment they all need – shallow-water habitats. Biologists are concerned about how much of this habitat will be available in the future. As temperatures in the earth’s climate rise, these shallow-water habitats could dry up.
ANDREW RAY: One of the consequences of a warmer climate is less snow and less water to fill places like this. So the sounds that we hear, that are unique to this place, and the organisms that are present in these habitats, they don't have the ability to escape that. They don't have the ability to move away from that. There will most certainly be water and snow in Yellowstone long into the future. But a river with fish or a deep lake with fish is very different than this place that's before us. And so I guess the thing I want people to think about is there are biodiversity and physical consequences to a warming temperature. And these special habitats that are so biologically rich, they're the most threatened by a changing climate.
SCOTT CHRISTY: In one warm, dry year during the monitoring study, the shallow-water habitat shrunk by 40%. This led to a 50% reduction in breeding pairs of Boreal chorus frogs. Andrew thinks it’s likely we’ll see more of that in the future. And the potential for shrinking amphibian habitat isn’t just in Yellowstone.
ANDREW RAY: I mean, these are a group of organisms that were here before dinosaurs were here. So they're going to be here probably after humans are gone. But I think we can expect a future that has fewer amphibian species than were here, historically. And when I say here, I don't necessarily mean Yellowstone, but I mean on earth. And there are places where there really is a crisis, where amphibians are blinking out.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Andrew says the Northern Leopard frog, which used to be present just south of Yellowstone in Grand Teton National Park, hasn’t been seen in decades. Understanding what is going on with the remaining amphibians in Yellowstone depends on the data Andrew and others are collecting.
ANDREW RAY: So we study 31 watersheds around Yellowstone and Grand Teton, spread all around the park or all around both parks. And they represent just, what, one percent? I think there's 3,370 watersheds and we study just 31 of them. But we revisit those watersheds every year and we survey all of the ponds in those watersheds and it’s our hope that in one decade or in two decades we’ll have a data set that really does allow us to talk about long term change.
ANDREW RAY: So, while a warm year now may be followed by a cool, wet year, our future in this place looks drier. Which I think our data suggests means fewer ponds that support breeding chorus frogs, but also fewer ponds that support breeding Columbia spotted frogs, tiger salamanders, and western toads. While those are our vital signs, there's lots of other wetland dependent species. Beavers, trumpeter swans, moose, bats. Some bats are specialists to wetlands. If you have fewer wetlands on the landscape, you have fewer opportunities for those individuals to access water. While we're studying frogs, we like to remind people that they serve as just a proxy for other species that are dependent on wetlands. SCOTT CHRISTY: We are standing near the small pond when the weather starts to shift. Darker clouds move in off the horizon and Andrew, Casey, and I decide to pack up and head back toward the trucks. As we’re getting ready to go I asked Andrew why they chose boreal chorus frogs to monitor in the first place.
ANDREW RAY: We know that amphibians don't occupy every wetland in Yellowstone. We'd be naïve to think that they do. But we know species like boreal chorus frogs, from our monitoring, they occur in a third of the wetland habitats throughout Yellowstone and Grand Teton. That's high elevation, that's low elevation, that's near a river, that's far away from a river, they can use shallow, isolated habitats. And using something that's common and widespread is valuable. If those things become imperiled, the things that we know historically were common, then that should give us pause. That should make us think about what might be driving that change.
SCOTT CHRISTY: Biologists view amphibians as a kind of litmus test for big-picture changes in the environment – and the overall health of the environment. But Andrew thinks amphibians have value beyond being a vital sign for the park.
ANDREW RAY: I think it's relatable because a lot of us have had experiences with amphibians and we can still have those today. ANDREW RAY: But amphibians, like so many organisms, are experiencing declines. It's an opportunity to discuss our impacts, societal impacts on biology, but it's also a place to talk about discovery and to talk about biodiversity and to talk about climate change and to talk about the value of parks and protected places. CHORUS FROG SOUNDS SLOWLY FADING IN MUSIC FADING UNDER
ANDREW RAY: So to me, why do we care, because Yellowstone is a place that's still intact. And in terms of the lower 48, it's a really special place because it has its full complement of species. So it's important that we look not only at grizzly bears and wolves and bison, but it's important that we also look at frogs and fish and micro-organisms. ANDREW RAY: The most basic and fundamental part is that it is a part of Yellowstone’s biodiversity.
CHORUS FROGS MUSIC
SCOTT CHRISTY: For Yellowstone National Park, I’m Scott Christy. MUSIC FADING OUT CHORUS FROGS OUTRO
Tigers of Yellowstone
Did you know there are tigers in Yellowstone? It just takes a keen eye to observe them. These creatures--and countless others like them--live in a world that's not always obvious, but the role they play in Yellowstone is huge.
Music by Chad Crouch, Victrola Dog/Podington Bear Music
Telemetry: Episode 8 Narrator: Kelly Willemssens is leaning forward. Scanning with her binoculars. She lands her sights on an animal covered with spots and undulating stripes. KW: A lot of people like photographing them because they’re pretty charismatic. Narrator: Kelly records her field notes into a digital recorder. She doesn’t take her eyes of the creature. It’s an ambush predator. It crouches, stock-still. Then explodes into a run. Narrator: It’s one of the fastest land animals on earth… Narrator: …but it would fit on your thumbnail with room to spare. Narrator: This is Cicindela haemorrhagica. That’s the Latin name for one of Yellowstone’s resident species of tiger beetle. The wetsalts tiger beetle. Kelly is studying these insects as part of her PhD project with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Kelly: So the first thing we do is observational work. KW: It’s kind of repetitive as you may have heard. It’s “Run. Stop. Run. Stop. Run. Stop.” KW: Continuous focal sampling is what it’s called. Jen (off mic): What do you guys call it? KW: Watching one beetle for 10 minutes (laughs). Narrator: Several rounds of watching one beetle for 10 minutes marks the first step toward understanding the behavior of Cicindela haemorrhagica. Not much is known about this wee, little beetle. KW: So we want to know: where do they go? What do they eat? Do they drink? What temperatures are they at? Do they use different behaviors to cope with heat? Narrator: How tiger beetles respond to heat is actually a big focus of Kelly’s project. Tiger beetles have a cosmopolitan distribution. They’re found all over the world. And the wetsalts tiger beetle, as its name implies, is almost always found near water… KW: …But we’ve never ever documented a beetle before near the thermal springs. Narrator: And this is the thing that sets these tiger beetles apart. Here in Yellowstone, the wetsalts species is associated—exclusively—with thermal springs. KW: So we’re talking about water that’s 65 degrees Celsius. Some of the water we’ve seen here is 2.2 pH, which is extremely acidic. Narrator: Basically, that’s like lemon juice. 150 degree lemon juice. KW: …it has arsenic, it has heavy metals, it’s full of toxins. So the fact that these beetles are here and are thriving is absolutely unique and kind of a mystery. Narrator: So in addition to studying the different behaviors of Yellowstone’s tiger beetles, Kelly will be analyzing their physiology, too. KW: These beetles live at extreme temperatures, extreme environments, I want to figure out how they do it. What kind of mechanisms do they use and can we use those mechanisms for other purposes? KW: For instance there’s something called a heat-shock protein. Everyone has it. Humans, we have it too. If our cells get into too hot of an environment, our DNA will denature. So it will unravel and open up. Narrator: That’s not good. We don’t want our DNA to unravel and open up. KW: These heat-shock proteins will attach to the DNA and will recoil it. So they will bind it once again. Different species… can stay in warmer environments. It’d be really cool to figure out what kinds of heat-shock proteins these beetles use…So potentially…maybe someone in the medical field can use this knowledge. Narrator: Kelly says it’s a pretty far stretch, but investigations like hers could lead to those sorts of advancements someday. KW: Our environment is getting a lot more extreme, and by studying these extremists—these extremophiles, maybe we can come up with ways to cope with a changing world like that. Narrator: It’s hard to imagine that something smaller than a thumbnail could have so much to teach us. But Kelly says these teeny-tiny predators in Yellowstone are just the beginning of the mostly unknown world of insects. KW: I’m just focusing on this one tiger beetle, but there’s so much more left out there to discover and explore. < footsteps and field sounds of Erik Oberg cross-fading up >
Narrator: On the other side of the park, National Park Service biologist Erik Oberg agrees. Erik Oberg: Pretty much all of the vertebrates and birds and mammals here in Yellowstone have been described. We know about them, we know their home ranges, we know a lot about their life histories and ecologies…insects is wide open… Erik Oberg: This is the ‘Wild, Wild West’ of biological discovery out here. All you have to do to find new species or new discoveries is come out here and look for them Narrator: Like Kelly, Erik Oberg studies beetles, too. But Erik’s study takes a wider view of insect populations in the park. EO: Altogether we're tracking nine different orders, So, beetles plus eight additional orders of insects are all being sorted and preserved for this project. Narrator: Erik likes to say that his project is powered by citizen scientists. He and his team of volunteers spend their summers trapping insects across a variety of habitats in Yellowstone. And their winters identifying what they caught. EO: And it's it's an unassuming little scientific study. It's basically an eight inch by eight inch white square piece of plastic staked into the ground … Narrator: Erik removes the white, square cover to reveal what’s called a pitfall trap. It’s a plastic deli cup. Like the kind you’d get potato salad in. It sits down in a shallow hole and it’s filled with about an inch or two of clear liquid. Preservative fluid for the dozens of insects that have fallen in and are now floating in it. EO: We have a nice sample here. It's actually pretty clean. So just kind of an assortment—a smorgasbord—of insects if you will. EO: And so now we are going to take a second cup, and a very sophisticated scientific tool—a pasta strainer—and a piece of organza fabric which is available in any fabric store and or at any local wedding…. EO: And the mesh of that organza is small enough that it will catch even the smallest insect. So smaller than a millimeter biodiversity is going to be captured by this project. EO: Yeah. This this is quintessentially small game hunting. EO: Oh and look at this right here… Narrator: Erik holds up the deli cup. It looks like a tiny serving of soup covered with skin of ground pepper. EO: …You can barely see through to the bottom of the liquid because the entire surface is covered with springtails. Jen (in field): Remind the listeners what a springtail is EO: Springtails are in a group called Collembola. They’re the most numerous six-legged insect on the planet. And they are responsible for nothing short of creating the soil we are standing on. EO: So their whole life is all about eating dead plants, digesting it, and turning it into soil with nutrients that are able to be taken up by plants to repeat the whole cycle again. EO: Bison need springtails. Elk need springtails. People need springtails. It’s just that most people don’t know it...(laughing) We think we’re really important—way up at the tippy top of that food pyramid—but it’s a food pyramid of cards if we’re not careful. Narrator: I looked down at the tiny specks then out across the impossibly wide landscape. Springtails…Landscape…Springtails…Landscape… Mind. Absolutely. Blown. EO: I mean it's really easy to be fascinated by a beautiful butterfly or a dragonfly that might you know perched next to you on your on your picnic here in the park. But we're really just starting to understand how incredibly dependent on all of these organisms we are and how important they are to the fabric of the landscape and all of its interdependencies that are playing out here in Yellowstone. EO: And they're also just really cool looking. So we'll show you some under the microscope later on… Narrator As we pack up to leave, Erik checks in with one of his recruits. EO: How many steps on your Fitbit today? Jenny: Nineteen thousand six hundred and five. EO: So by the time we get back to the car that'll be twenty thousand steps…That's about a ten mile day in quarter mile increments from one pitfall to the next… Narrator: Erik’s pitfall sites move upslope from low elevation to high elevation. Erik will be able to record findings across a gradient spanning more than a vertical mile. What’s more, his project ties into nation-wide network of monitoring sites designed to understand how our ecosystems are changing over time. Erik will be able to compare what he sees here in Yellowstone to the results of the National Ecological Observatory Network. Narrator: In Erik’s office, two microscopes sit on a table tucked under a shelf lined with books. This is his insect processing laboratory. It’s where everything from basin to summit gets sorted and catalogued. EO: So we’re really establishing a baseline for what the current ecosystem looks like in Yellowstone from the Gardiner basin to the top of Mount Washburn. Narrator: Erik shows me a sampling of this season’s catch under the microscope. EO: If you adjust the black knob… Narrator: I finally figured that out EO: So this is a little time capsule of the biodiversity that happened to be crawling around under the sagebrush habitat here in Yellowstone. So for this tiny little two week window where we deployed our pitfall traps, this is what we found. These are all springtails. Jen: Oh my gosh! That’s Crazy! EO: Yeah. Narrator: To the naked eye, each springtail looks like a click or two of a mechanical pencil lead, but under the power of the microscope, they transform into extraordinary, shrimp-like beasts. EO: So, day in and day out, year in and year out, those little critters, those tiny, pale, translucent gems, those are things that make our soil. Narrator: Erik says that what’s really interesting is that they’re finding more springtails at sites that are heavily impacted by human activities and fewer springtails at sites that are considered more pristine. EO: I don’t know why that is. We would need to send these off to a taxonomist expert who might make some more informed speculations about this, but if your ecological niche is to make topsoil, it would make sense that you would be in a place where topsoil needed to be made… EO: So I don’t know what’s going on there, but those are clues that nature is telling us that something is going on that’s worth investigating. EO: Um, do you notice that it looks like they have kind of a long tail? Jen: Yeah I do, I see that EO: OK. That’s the furcula! Jen: (breaking up into laughter) Oh, well, of course! EO: (laughing) Of course, Jennifer! Clearly you can see the furcula. EO: The furcula is the modified abdominal segment that is the jumping, escape organ for the springtail… EO …So it folds that little lever under its abdomen and if anything frightens it or tries to grab it or eat it, it releases that furcular—that folded lever under its body—and launches itself 20 to 40 body lengths away from where it was. EO: Wouldn’t it be fun if you had the superpower of being able to launch yourself 20 to 40 body lengths away…that’s kind of a cool skill. Jen: We should look up what the world record is for long jump EO: I bet you springtails have got it hands down. EO: What you’re looking at is a piece of biological sculpture crafted over 350 million years. EO: So, I think we have a lot to learn from these little guys. EO: We know a tiny, tiny fraction of the life cycles of these different organisms that we’ve captured. Getting them into the lab where we can study them further is just the very first step in this process of discovery and exploration. Narrator: It’s discovery and exploration in miniature. But with huge impacts. What scientists like Erik and Kelly want us to remember is that it’s the little things. It’s often the things we can’t see that really drive ecosystems like Yellowstone. And without those little things in Yellowstone, Yellowstone as we know it might be a very different place.
Pivot Point
One family's dramatic encounter with a grizzly bear. Listener discretion is advised.
Music by Chad Crouch, Victrola Dog/Podington Bear Music
Narrator: Hi there, this is Jennifer Jerrett. I’m the host and a producer for Telemetry, the science and issues podcast for Yellowstone National Park. Thanks for joining us. A couple of notes on the story you’re about to hear: it describes an event when a family of four encountered a grizzly bear and it contains details that some people could find disturbing. If you have little ones, you might want to preview this episode before sharing it with them. Also, the family members who are generously sharing their story with us request that we all respect their privacy, so we will only be using first names and we won’t share any additional information about the family or the incident.
Eric: It’s not the kind of experience you expect to have in life…
Eric: ...but I can remember in that moment thinking, “This is a pivot point. And this could change our lives forever.”
Narrator: In the summer of 2018, Eric, his wife Emily, and their two sons Owen and Lincoln—both under the age of 16—visited Yellowstone National Park. It was their first time. And while planning for their trip, they learned about bear spray. Bear spray is an aerosol canister containing highly-concentrated hot pepper spray. It’s used to stop aggressive or charging bears. The idea is that if a bear is charging you—coming at you—you blast a big cloud of pepper spray toward the bear’s face. When bears go into that cloud, they typically make a beeline to get out of there.
Narrator: Eric says that his family isn’t super outdoorsy, but he describes themselves as “serious dabblers.” They love to get out and hike. The family decided to rent bear spray, but Eric says that honestly, he thought it was a little silly. None of them expected to use it. When you rent bear spray in Yellowstone, there’s a video that you watch. Eric says that—again—he was a little nonchalant about it. I mean, the idea of actually running into a bear just seems so unreal, right? But he watched anyway and went through the practice scenarios in his mind. He clipped and unclipped the safety a few times. The rest of the family waited in the car.
Narrator: Eric and his family headed out to a popular trailhead. And what happened next, well, we’ll let Eric tell you that in his own words. Here’s Eric.
Eric: It just seemed like a normal hike, right? We were just having fun…
Eric: We were talking. We definitely weren’t making any effort to be quiet and I don’t think we were very quiet. My younger son had gotten the new Pokemon game, so I’m sure it could very well have been like, “Oh, I’ve managed to get this Pokemon and he has these powers.” That kind of thing could easily have been what we were talking about. There was a good bit of that on the trip.
Eric: And so we went maybe a half-mile. And that’s really where it happened.
Eric: I think it all happened really fast. I mean, it was so fast. And that’s one of the things that nothing could have really prepared you for, because it wasn’t like “Oh, see it 100 yards away and get prepared,” this was totally different.
Eric: I heard a crash. I looked. The bear just crashed at full speed. Crashed out of some underbrush. The bear was vaulting out of the underbrush at us at a sprint…
…And it was already quite close. It was coming at us full speed at 25 yards away.
Eric: You know, you see animals in the zoo, or you see them on TV and you really don’t get at all how powerful they are.
Eric: That first second, everybody sort of reacts instinctively. My instinct was to stand my ground, right? That’s what I had been told. Don’t run from the bear, stand your ground. For Emily and Owen, the first response was to sort of jump back and I think they got behind trees. And Lincoln, our younger son, naturally enough just started running.
Eric: They tell us now with brain sciences, that you have all these separate systems that your consciousness sort of coordinates, but they’re all kind of running independently. And you could sort of see that happening because my brain was doing all kinds of different things at once without necessarily coordinating them. So I was at the same time pulling out bear spray, while trying to yell to Lincoln, “Don’t run! Don’t run!”, while analyzing the situation, while trying to move in the right direction.
Eric: Because Lincoln ran, the bear went after him. So very quickly the bear was past me and it’s tackling Lincoln.
Eric: And at that point…seeing…I mean, there’s a part of you that just instinctively responds as a parent. That says “Your child’s in danger!”
Eric: So I start running toward the bear.
Eric: Meanwhile I’m still trying to get out the bear spray and get it ready. I know I’m still yelling something. I don’t know what I’m yelling. Emily starts running toward him as well and she doesn’t have a weapon. There’s nothing really that we can do to a bear, but you have to try. And the bear’s on top of Lincoln. And the size difference and the power of the bear…You know, things could get really bad really quickly.
Eric: So we’re both running toward the bear. It’s on top of Lincoln. I’m running over and I’m getting close. The bear turned toward me…
…and, I don’t know, I didn’t hear a noise, but maybe it groweled, I don’t know, but it had its mouth open like it was going to come for me next.
Eric: And honestly, at that point, I think my mind was in a place where if it was going to keep coming and get me instead of Lincoln, that’s better.
Eric: But yeah, then it turned toward me and started coming.
Eric: …And I was very close to both of them at that point.
Eric: The bear was about two to three feet away. So I had three feet. And that’s when I managed to fire the spray off.
Eric: But there was one moment, less than a second—just a beat—where it seemed like that might not stop the bear because it was still coming. And I thought, “Oh, it’s too enraged. It’s too late. It’s too close.”
Eric: But then it
took a breath and just recoiled.
It just recoiled visibly back and ran off.
Eric: So Lincoln got up and he had been clawed in the back, and I guess it went into the muscle and it wasn’t bleeding a whole lot. Which was good because that’s what I was worried about. So Lincoln started stumbling down the trail, and I was behind trying to have the spray ready because I still had half of it left. but Lincoln really couldn’t walk. His legs were too weak from the adrenaline. It was just too much. And so he kept wanting to stop and we were like “No! We cannot stop. We need to keep going.” So I ended up carrying him and so yeah we just kind of beat a very hasty retreat down the hill as fast as we could.
Eric: We got back down to the car and we could see that he had some punctures, some bleeding. But overall, it seemed like he was in pretty good shape, but of course, obviously we needed to get medical care. And they checked him out and you know, he knew he was okay, and being taken care of properly. And so, yeah, I think it was a few hours for him to kind of get over that initial catharsis, but then he felt a lot better already by that afternoon.
Eric: He was really brave…I mean, this is one of the scariest things that can happen, right? This goes back to kind of the primal human dangers that we would have faced in the plains of Africa or whatever, right? And so he faced down that danger and came out of it okay mentally, came out of it okay physically. I think that’s really impressive.
Eric: We all know that there’s lots of ways that life can deal you bad fortune, but this was not one of the ones we had ever anticipated, right?
Eric: It’s trite I guess, but it does remind you to appreciate your family in a more tangible and real way. That we need to realize that things are fleeting. But honestly, I mean, was it traumatic? Yes. But on the other hand how fortunate do we feel? There’s so many ways that things could have gone wrong, so you have to feel really blessed, right? That we had the right equipment we needed and we were able to use it.
Eric: And that’s a nice feeling to have, really. To appreciate how lucky you are.
Eric: Take seriously when they say you really ought to have some bear spray with you, is the number one takeaway. Yes it seems like: “It’s crazy,” “It’s not necessary” “I’m just out there for a little while,” but like I said, we were less than a half-mile up the trail, so we weren’t in some distant backcountry, you know. You don’t know where it could happen. You don’t know when it could happen, so just go ahead and get the spray, take the video seriously.
Eric: You don’t have to obsess about it. It doesn’t need to become a fear, but think a little bit about what you’ll do if the unexpected happens. Practice taking the safety on and off a little bit. Put it in a place where you can get to it because, yeah, I had so little time that looking back on it, I am kind of surprised that it all came off.
Eric: The whole situation was probably eight seconds long from beginning to finish.
(the following is cut to start and finish in eight seconds)
…the bear coming out of the brush…
…then the bear on top of Lincoln
…and then the bear turning and coming at me very close
…and using the spray.
Eric: Things could have gone worse in so many different ways…We could have forgotten it in the car, I could have dropped it, fumbled it, somehow not been able to get the safety off or shot it the wrong way or something. It’s like my mind wasn’t even focused on that and yet it was happening kind of automatically, so it was surprising. And I think mentally stepping through it a little ahead of time probably really helped a lot in being able to do that.
Eric: And I should say one of the rangers said, “You know, that was much better than if you had had a gun, because if you had a gun, you’d have to shoot just right or the bear would be wounded and even more angry. Whereas the spray is pretty effective, it’s a big cloud, you can’t really miss.”
Eric: …I mean, we were rare. But my gosh, to have something you can do to save your loved one? So yeah, why not have that little bit of insurance so that if the worst happens you can do something about it. Because how helpless we would have been otherwise. We didn’t think we’d need it but we’re just so grateful that we had it.
Eric: I should mention that the rangers found that there was a cub, which kind of explains why the bear attacked. Defensive, you know, defending its child. The thing we didn’t think about was that this is a wild park and the animals are living their own lives. And that’s something that we love and appreciate about the national parks, but you do have to approach it with a certain degree of respect so that you can stay safe, but you can do that in way that this remains a really natural and wild space and not like a zoo. And that’s something that we learned from this whole incident.
Narrator: While the likelihood of experiencing a bear attack in Yellowstone is very low, the park recommends that people take precautions. Hike in groups of 3 or more. Make noise. And by noise, I don’t mean little jingle bells tied to your backpack. I mean noise, like yelling or calling out to alert any bears to your presence. The classic one a lot of us around here use is “heeeeeey beeeeaaar!” For real. I know—it feels dumb. Do it anyway. Especially while hiking through thick brush or forest regrowth. And when hiking over hills or in other blind spots along the trail. If you do encounter a bear, don’t run. Stay in a group and stand your ground. Finally, take bear spray with you every time. And know how to use it. For more information on how to stay safe in bear country, visit go.nps.gov/yellbearsafety.
Home On The Range
Bison have lived on the Yellowstone landscape for millennia, but the history of bison conservation has been fraught with challenges. In 2019, federal, state, and tribal partners came together to make history: charting a new path for this American icon and assuring a place for wild bison on the broader landscape.
Music:
Walking Together by L-Ray Music
Hail and Sleet by Harpo Marks
Touches by Max Brodie
Seek My Fortune by L-Ray Music
Stephens Creek Worker: “OK. We’re ready for the first one”
Narrator: It’s not yet dawn when someone gives the signal. Dark figures in puffy jackets are up on a scaffold. They move into place against the pale sky. It’s quiet. Weirdly quiet for the number of people here and what’s about to happen. Everyone braces. It’s like there’s this giant, collective inhale.
(sounds of pulleys)
Narrator: At the Stephens Creek facility inside Yellowstone National Park, the staff works a system of ropes and pulleys.
(sounds of gate opening)
Narrator: A corral gate opens. And then a single bison rushes through a curved passage toward what’s called the “squeeze chute.”
(sounds of gate closing)
Narrator: The gate closes behind.
(sounds of squeeze chute)
Narrator: Inside the squeeze chute, mechanical walls close in on the animal’s flanks.
(sounds of scientists logging the animal’s I.D. number)
Narrator: His ID number is quickly logged.
(sounds of chute door opening)
Narrator: Then the chute opens. And this 3-year-old bison—a wild, American plains bison—escapes down a constricted alley in the only direction he can…
(sounds of bison running past and into the trailer)
Narrator: …and into a livestock trailer.
(sounds of loading fade)
Narrator: Many winters, hundreds of Yellowstone bison are loaded on trailers—trailers just like this one—to be slaughtered. They’re shipped to slaughter facilities to reduce the number of bison migrating outside the park and into the State of Montana. Because in the state of Montana, there is limited tolerance for wild bison on the landscape.
(sounds of truck starting)
Narrator: But these bison are not being shipped to slaughter.
(music, then sounds of truck driving away)
Narrator: These bison are going to a wide prairie on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.
(music with sounds of truck fading out)
Narrator: Today on Telemetry, we’re talking about the rehoming of wild bison from Yellowstone National Park to the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. That rehoming is part of a program called “Quarantine.” The program is one of the only alternatives to shipping wild bison to slaughter. And it’s history in the making.
(music fades out, field sounds fade up: Chris Geremia talking about the biting flies at Stephens Creek )
Chris Geremia: Let’s go down to the facility.
Narrator: Doctor Chris Geremia is a wildlife biologist at Yellowstone National Park. He manages Yellowstone’s bison program.
Chris Geremia: Just be careful, sometimes there are rattlesnakes.
Narrator: Chris and I are walking around the Stephens Creek facility. It’s midsummer. Weeks before any bison will go to Fort Peck. The ground is threadbare: dead grass and dirt. The flies are pretty bad today. Stephens Creek is the epicenter of bison conservation. Bison are migratory and the states surrounding Yellowstone National Park treat bison differently than other migratory wildlife. And after a court-mediated settlement, Stephens Creek was built in the late 1990s to manage bison migrating out of the park. Today, Stephens Creek is where migrating bison are captured and either shipped to slaughter or held until they can be transferred outside of the park as part of quarantine.
Narrator: Chris says the story of quarantine is a story of success. It’s the result of decades of collaboration between a legion of federal, state, and Tribal stakeholders.
Chris Geremia: There’s so many people that want us to find another solution to sending bison to slaughter. They want us to find a way to get live bison out. We’re really just trying to show people how you can do it. That we can move live bison out of Yellowstone. We can reconnect Tribes and bison, and hopefully, in the fullness of time, reconnect bison with public lands.
Narrator: But like most stories of bison conservation, Chris says it’s also shot through with complexity and compromise.
Chris Geremia: You know, I kind of see it as you're standing in Hayden Valley—which is a huge valley in the middle of the park. And you’re waist-deep in snow. And bison conservation is like postholing across that valley. You just don’t go anywhere quickly and it’s an awful lot of hard work. Chris Geremia: Let’s go to the original sorting pen, which we call the bullpen
(sounds of walking up metal stairs)
Narrator: We climb up onto the scaffold that overlooks the facility. This is my first time up here and I’ll be honest. The view is a little...unsettling. I’m used to seeing wild bison out in the big, green valleys of the park. Rivers and trout streams running through.
Narrator: But here, I see 55 male bison. Inside an ordinary pen. (music)
Narrator: And I’m thinking: how did we get here?
(music fades under)
Rick Wallen: One hundred or more years ago many wildlife species -- most wildlife species -- were harvested to sustain the pioneering way of people exploring the west.
Narrator: That’s Rick Wallen back in 2014. Rick used to lead Yellowstone’s bison program before retiring in 2018.
Rick Wallen: And elk, deer, pronghorn, all the large animals were of very low abundance after we colonized western United States.
Narrator: But with bison, the situation was even more troubling. It’s estimated that somewhere between 30 and 70 million bison roamed this land before European colonization. As settlers moved west, the extermination of the American bison began. Many saw bison as both a marketable commodity and a means to suppress the Tribes—Tribes who revered and depended on bison. And so within just a few decades, the bison were all but annihilated.
(music fades)
Rick Wallen: In fact, at the turn of the last century the only known wild bison were in Yellowstone National Park. There were only a couple of dozen.
Narrator: From tens of millions to a couple of dozen; A couple of dozen animals hunkered down deep in the interior of Yellowstone National Park. The only wild, free-ranging bison in the area remaining from the original great herds. It’s hard to grasp: such willful decimation. But national debate over that near-extinction of the American bison would go on to inspire one of the country’s first conservation achievements.
Rick Wallen: It was phenomenal that our forefathers had the insight to preserve Yellowstone National Park and I think they did it partly because they saw what was happening to wild bison across the country and partly to preserve the unique landscape and geological features of the landscape. So this is it. This is the location that preserved wild bison into eternity.
Narrator: In addition to the couple of dozen animals in Yellowstone, there were an estimated 300 or so bison that survived in privately-owned herds across North America. In fact, a few animals from those private herds were brought to Yellowstone to start a breeding program. And after decades of protection and restoration efforts, the number of bison in Yellowstone grew from a couple of dozen animals to a few thousand.
(music) Rick Wallen: That's a very successful program. With all of that success comes the propensity for them to wander and roam and now they want to roam well beyond the preserve we've set up here as Yellowstone National Park.
Narrator: And roaming beyond the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park has led to one of the most complex cross-boundary wildlife issues of our time.
(music) Narrator: Three states surround Yellowstone National Park—Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. Very few bison migrate outside the park into areas of Idaho and Wyoming. Most of the bison that migrate outside Yellowstone wander into the State of Montana where there’s limited tolerance for bison.
Rick Wallen: Bison are big. They scare people. They break things. Encountering a buffalo at 70 mph isn't very comforting sight.
Narrator: But there are also fears that bison could transmit a disease called brucellosis to cattle. Brucellosis is a bacterial disease that can cause miscarriages in animals like bison, elk, and domestic cattle. Domestic cattle introduced the disease to wildlife before the 1930s. Now wildlife in the Greater Yellowstone Area—including elk and bison—can give it back to cattle.
Rick Wallen: The concern about brucellosis is that if wildlife—let me back up—In the agriculture industry once an animal tests positive it has to be removed from the herd. So it's an economic loss for the rancher.
Rick Wallen: The concern really is that the livestock industry has worked really hard for many decades to eliminate the disease in livestock. So their concern is legitimate. They've worked hard, cleaned up their industry, and they'd like to see this additional threat eliminated.
Narrator: In an effort to try to eliminate or at least mitigate conflicts between humans and bison in the State of Montana, the State and the federal government reached a court-mediated settlement on how to manage Yellowstone bison. The idea was to limit the number of bison in Yellowstone and reduce the risk of bison migrating out of the park and transmitting brucellosis to cattle.
Rick Wallen: So in order to prevent dispersal beyond our established conservation area, there are years where the agencies need to get together and develop a management strategy to cull bison. Narrator: Until Quarantine, there were really only two main options for culling—or removing—bison: Hunting outside park boundaries or shipping animals to slaughter. Hunting only removes a limited number of animals. So shipping to slaughter has been the primary method of culling wild bison. Narrator: But here’s one of the tricky things about managing bison when it comes to brucellosis. It’s elk, not bison, that have re-infected domestic cattle. Elk have reinfected cattle almost 30 times over the last several decades. And elk are not managed the same way as bison. Elk are not shipped to slaughter. In fact, elk roam free outside the boundaries of the park, where they frequently come into contact with cattle.
Narrator: Because of this, many experts argue that the risk of brucellosis transmission between bison and cattle is not a scientifically credible reason for the differential treatment of bison compared to elk. Narrator: So until there is more support for wild bison living outside of Yellowstone National Park, hundreds of Yellowstone bison will continue to be culled in many years. Some bison are removed through hunting outside the park, some undergo quarantine, and some are sent to slaughter, Rick Wallen: So that is a very controversial side of bison management. Many people don't like to see the animals sent to slaughter. The National Park Service would prefer not to send the animals to slaughter. But it is a mitigation measure to allow us to have the acceptance for bison outside the park that we do have.
(Sounds of Stephens Creek fade up)
Narrator: I’m back at the Stephens Creek facility with Chris Geremia. We’re still looking out over the facility. At the 55 male bison inside their ordinary pen. At the 55 bison who are about to complete part of the quarantine process.
Chris Geremia: So quarantine is a three step process and probably the biggest challenge to quarantine is trying to figure out where and how we do these three phases.
Narrator: Chris is talking about the protocols for males. The steps for quarantine are different for males and females. But for males, the process goes like this: Phase One is a screening phase during which all animals in the group have to test negative for brucellosis during two consecutive months, which takes about 200 days. Animals that pass Phase One move on to Phase Two. In Phase Two, they must test negative two more times over the course of one year. And Phase Three is what’s called “assurance testing;” it’s kind of a fail-safe. Phase Three includes two more tests over another year. So for males, that means 200 days, plus one year, plus one year.
Chris Geremia: So when we originally built this pen, the thought was that only that first phase would happen in Yellowstone. Because we’ve never documented an animal having brucellosis after those first 200 days—that screening phase—we thought that would be sufficient. And Fort Peck would be the place where they’d undergo that Phase Two Quarantine and Phase Three Assurance Testing. We didn’t think they’d be here that long. We thought they’d be here for 200 days.
Narrator: The Tribes thought that way too. They built their facility with managing the full quarantine process in mind.
Chris Geremia: The facilities up at Fort Peck are much more capable of handling large numbers of animals than what we have here. It has all of the infrastructure, it has all of the land, and it’s much larger than any of the structures within Yellowstone National Park. It’s a great place to do quarantine. And on top of it all of the costs associated with caring for and feeding animals would not be incurred by the Federal government.
Narrator: But disease-management protocols dictate that it’s only after an animal passes Phase Two that a state veterinarian can certify it as brucellosis-free. And according to Montana state law, only brucellosis-free animals can be transported outside the designated surveillance area for brucellosis, which surrounds Yellowstone.
Chris Geremia: So we were stuck at this impasse. So I think we got to the point where maybe it makes sense to try and reach the common ground we all have and start getting operational quarantine started.
Narrator: And for now, that means Phases One and Two happen inside the designated surveillance area for brucellosis which surroundsYellowstone National Park and only Phase Three happens at Ft. Peck.
Chris Geremia: And something we’ve had to learn now is can these bison actually live in an old weed field?
(sounds of truck)
Narrator: I spend the later part of the day on a flatbed truck with Chris and a couple of the Stephens Creek wranglers.
Narrator: They fill the truck with bales of hay. Then, Chris drives around the pen in a wide arc.
(sounds of truck driving and feeding)
Narrator: The wranglers flake bales off the back of the truck. The bison file in behind to feed. They follow the contour of hay in plodding steps. Almost two years of this.
(sounds of truck driving and feeding fade out, field sounds fade up)
Chris Geremia: It keeps you up at night at times. Never at any point in my life would I envision that I would be trying to help come up with strategies for wildlife conservation that just don’t feel like wildlife conservation because it’s very complex. But I would definitely do it again in a heartbeat.
Chris Geremia: You know seeing these animals with those trailers heading north to Ft. Peck, I think that makes all the rest worthwhile. It’s gonna be a good day.
(Sounds of trailers driving into Fort Peck, Rick Wallen saying “how’s that for some space!”) Narrator: On August 19 2019, seven trailers full of bison pull in to the quarantine facility at the Ft. Peck Indian Reservation. The Fort Peck reservation lies beyond a stretch of northern Montana called the Hi-Line. I’ve heard people describe it as “God’s Country,” and now I see why. Rolling hills of late-summer grass and wheat draw an endless line under a wash of blue. These bison traveled 500 miles to get here. They’re the first of that larger group of bison to be transferred to the Tribes: 55 in all.
(sounds of preparing for animal release)
Narrator: The trailers line up side-by-side.
(sounds of preparing for animal release)
Narrator: Workers unlock the trailers.
(sounds of doors opening)
Narrator: Then, one by one, they open the doors.
(sounds of bison running out of trailers and out into the pasture)
Narrator: Nineteen wild bison barrel out of the trailers and into the prairie beyond. The start of a new fate for Yellowstone bison captured at Stephens Creek.
(sounds of wind blowing in the grass, Fort Peck Tribes welcome song) Chairman Azure: The bison that we just released out here is an awesome event.
Narrator: That’s Floyd Azure, chairman of the Fort Peck Tribes.
Chairman Azure: It’s a feeling I can’t express. I mean it's something that—I don’t know—I think you have to be Native American to understand what it is.
(sounds of wind blowing in grass)
Narrator: Chairman Azure is looking out past the fences. Past the fences at the group of bison that are noses to the ground, nibbling on bites of grass.
Chairman Azure: That’s beautiful. I mean, you don’t see anything more beautiful than that. And my ancestors seen that every day and they realized what they had. And now I understand. That’s why they were very protective of the bison. It was their everyday survival and that’s what I feel today—just that, I understand.
Narrator: Bison hold great value—cultural and spiritual value—for many Tribes. And Yellowstone bison are special because they’re seen as some of the only genetically-pure descendants of the ancestral herds that once roamed across North America. Many Tribes view the treatment of bison as a grave injustice and see the restoration of bison as a source of healing.
Chairman Azure: I want to get back to where we were back then. Where we took care of ourselves. Where we didn’t have to depend on any government or anybody. We took care of each other. We took care of nature to make sure that we had food for the next day.
(sounds of wind blowing in grass)
Chairman Azure: We’ve had a lot of ups and downs since then, we had to prove ourselves numerous times. And finally I think we got it across that we can do this and we will do this.
Narrator: Chairman Azure says that trust has been an issue among the inter-agency partners that manage quarantine, and that sometimes the Tribes have felt left out of the decision-making process.
Chairman Azure: It’s the stereotypical picture of the Native American that we can’t do anything. No we can. I mean, it’s just like anybody else: you get the right people in place you get the right attitude it gets done.
Narrator: And Chariman Azure says the Ft. Peck Tribes have the right attitude and the right people.
Robbie Magnan: Today was a very historical day, I feel
Narrator: Robbie Magnan is the director of the Ft. Peck Tribes Fish and Wildlife Department. He runs the buffalo program for the Tribes.
Robbie Magnan: Personally I feel that we accomplished something finally. We wanted to see these animals come out alive. Our whole goal is to get buffalo restored to other places in the United States.
Narrator: Once bison complete their last phase of quarantine at Fort Peck, they can be released on the reservation or go to other Tribes and organizations that want to establish conservation herds. In fact, the Ft. Peck Tribes have already transferred some of their earlier quarantine graduates to the Bronx Zoo and some to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. And the Fort Peck Tribes are actively exploring more possibilities like these with the InterTribal Buffalo Council—a coalition of 69 federally-recognized Tribes committed to restoring buffalo to Indian Country. Robbie Magnan says it’s time for Tribes to reconnect with the buffalo.
Robbie Magnan: Buffalo have always been part of Native Americans’ economy. We left the buffalo they didn’t leave us. We need to get back to the buffalo and learn from them again. To keep watching these guys keep learning from these guys is my only hope right now.
Narrator: Hope. Chairman Azure says that’s the overriding feeling here today. Hope for a future with bison. Hope for a future with more collaboration.
Chairman Azure: I hope we don’t have any more fights over this. I hope that we can work together on more projects than this.
Chairman Azure: Working together solves problems. No one is any different than anybody else. God created us all equal. The problems can be solved by working together not by separating each other.
(sound of wind in grass cross-fades with crickets)
Narrator: That night, Chris and the rest of the group from Yellowstone’s bison management office make camp outside the fenced pasture. The sky turns orange, then starry, and the crickets start to sing. Rick Wallen is there, too. He’s come to help and, not for nothing, to see the years of work before retirement bear out.
Rick Wallen: Well, you know, Yellowstone Bison for many decades have had a frightful ending when they leave the national park. The conservation of Yellowstone bison should never be about, you know, fright. They’re not a pest on the landscape.
(music) Rick Wallen: Yellowstone bison are a cultural resource and a legacy type of a species. They’re a noble, native, wildlife species on the landscape and deserve some sort of an honorable ending. And for these animals that want to migrate out of the national park they find that there’s no place for them to go. We spent a decade trying to find a place for them to go and that place right now is a trailer trip to Ft. Peck Indian Reservation. And the Tribes here at Ft. Peck honor them—more than most of the world.
(music)
Rick Wallen: So until we can find more space for wild bison in the Greater Yellowstone area, this becomes an alternative to a death trap and a shipment to slaughter and we’re happy. We’re happy to see them find tall grass and beautiful sunsets on the prairie, where their ancestors lived by the millions. May they long live a happy life.
Narrator: The next morning, we make the trip back to Yellowstone. Back to Stephens Creek. Back to get ready for two more transfers of bison. In thirty-six hours we’ve driven a thousand miles. And there are two thousand more to go.
(sounds of crickets and music fade out) (Sounds of walking at Stephens Creek fade up)
Chris Geremia: Last night when we were up at Ft. Peck, you asked me, you know, what was I thinking about seeing those first bison get released up at Ft. Peck. You know today, we’re back at Stephens Creek; here we are again (starts to laugh) at Stephens Creek. Ten years ago I never would have thought that Quarantine was a possibility. And you know, it was a compromise. Everybody had to give something to reach that goal. And each partner has to do exactly what they need to do for this to be successful. You know, we need to trust each other. We can only go as far as we can go together.
Chris Geremia: My goal with these 55 bison is to show people how to do quarantine. So we need other people to learn from what we just showed is possible. And take up doing quarantine. I think what we need to say is that we opened the door, but we also need to pass the torch on doing quarantine. And these 55 bison, they’ll be teachers to us all.
Narrator: Chris and I get in his car. He sticks the key in the ignition then takes it out. In the silence we can hear sounds of staff working at Stephens Creek. It’s only a few months until winter when culling could begin, but also the next opportunity to bring new animals into quarantine. Through the dusty windshield we can see the pen holding rest of the bison that will go to Ft. Peck. Chris looks out past the fences, past the bison, past the line of cottonwoods that marks the park boundary in the distance. It’s been a long road. But I think Chris is the kind of guy who’s OK with playing the long game.
Chris Geremia: I’ve spent a lot of time with bison in this park and I’ve seen some of the most amazing things whether it’s the natural behavior of bison or watching a young kid go out to watch bison carrying his little bison stuffed animal just so excited to see Yellowstone bison and I’ve seen some of the hardest things that I’ve had to do which is to send these animals to slaughter and I just see a place for quarantine. It can reconnect Tribes with bison it can help protect the genome of bison and it has the potential to reconnect bison with public lands.
(Sounds of truck starting and old fan belt squealing, then background dialogue: Tell me about your truck. It’s a 1997 Tacoma. How many miles? 271,000. (laughing) Maybe it’s time to replace the fanbelt…)
(music)
Narrator: As Chris and I drive back to his office, we pass under the Roosevelt Arch. It’s is a 50-foot stone arch with the inscription “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” That’s a phrase from the 1872 legislation that established Yellowstone National Park. “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” And not just some of the people. All of the people. Just that one phrase. It holds so much. How simple things might have been if Yellowstone had been established solely with the preservation of nature in mind. But it wasn’t. And that tension—that balance—between managing for our ecological values, our cultural values, and our political values is what makes our decisions so hard...and so worthwhile. Make no mistake. We have tough choices ahead. But even Theodore Roosevelt knew that nothing worth having comes easy.
