Flora & Fauna

Yellowstone National Park Lodges will offer “Lodging & Learning” packages this winter in Yellowstone National Park. The park’s winter season begins Dec. 18, 2009 with the opening of the Old Faithful Snow Lodge. The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel opens Dec. 21, 2009. The lodges provide the only wintertime accommodations within the park. Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel will close for the season March 8, 2010, and Old Faithful Snow Lodge will close March 7, 2010. 

A hike through the wilds of Rocky Mountain National Park or the Comanche Peak Wilderness yields the sound of rustling leaves or the calming white noise of a swift stream — sounds the National Park Service views as natural resources to be protected.

Leaders of a national park in the Kansas Flint Hills are close to completing a project to obtain a herd of wild bison for visitors of the park to see.A team from the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Strong City this week is observing a buffalo roundup on the 44-square-mile Wind Cave National Park site in the Black Hills region of South Dakota.

Monday’s start of a feral horse roundup in Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s South Unit went smoothly, but some outsiders are concerned with the horse’s heritage.Projected to last through Wednesday, park officials and animal experts will attempt to round up all park horses, totaling about 165 with plans to reduce the herd to about 70 to 75 animals.“We had about half the horses in the park in before lunch time,” said Valerie Naylor, park superintendent. “Our goal is to keep them as calm as possible.”

The Desert Institute at Joshua Tree National Park will have a two-day field class on edible plants of the desert from 9 a.m. to evening Oct. 31 and 9 a.m. to noon Nov. 1 at the Black Rock Visitor Center, 9800 Black Rock Canyon, Yucca Valley.William Pink, a Luiseno-Cupeno native skills teacher, will share his knowledge about the plants historically harvested by the native peoples of the Mojave and Colorado deserts and then show participants how to turn wild edibles into a gourmet meal using traditional cooking techniques.

Nineteen elk calves were born this year in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and 16 survived. Park officials said it's been one of the best years yet for increasing the herd. There are now about 110 elk in the park, divided about evenly among males and females. Additionally, officials said the bulls this year have impressive antlers, which may mean that there is good forage available for the elk.

Wild horses are being rounded up this week at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota.The three-day roundup is expected to last through Wednesday. It is closed to the public.The park uses the roundups to control the herd size. About 90 of the horses will be sold at public auction in Dickinson on Friday.Read more...

 As wildlife advocates mourned the plane-crash death of Gordon Haber, the biologist who spent 40 years documenting the lives and societies of Denali's wolves, his pilot was recovering Friday in a burn center in Seattle after hiking 20 miles back to civilization.Details of the crash and rescue operation in the heart of Denali National Park emerged Friday, two days after the Cessna 185 used by Haber crashed in spruce trees near the East Fork of the Toklat River, the locale of one of the wolf packs Haber was studying.

Map out your next autumn road trip or get a jump-start on your summer vacation planning using the newly-launched Go Camping America website.  

Just in time for Halloween, learn about creepy, crawly creatures in Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-feeding Creatures by zoologist Bll Schutt. Recently released in paperback, the book is fascinating, but is not for the faint of heart!