Buckle up! It’s going to be a big year for GYC and the lands, waters, and wildlife of Greater Yellowstone.

In the first week of the new year, 10 buffalo were welcomed home to the Eastern Shoshone Tribal Buffalo Herd on the Wind River Indian Reservation. These 10 new buffalo – descendants of Yellowstone buffalo – bring the Eastern Shoshone Tribal Herd to 99 strong.

In late 2023, the Wind River Indian Reservation, the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes, and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition received a $619,500 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and through its America the Beautiful Challenge.

Join us for a journey down memory lane and let’s celebrate all we did together for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Over two brilliant fall days in October, almost 100 people came together in Jackson, Wyoming for the Jackson Hole InterTribal Gathering – a follow up to the Wind River Inter-Tribal Gathering GYC co-hosted with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes in 2022. More than 14 Tribal Nations met with a host of federal agencies and non-governmental organizations to bring further discussion to the management of federal lands and how Indigenous values and beliefs can merge into stewardship of lands that were once aboriginal homelands to many Tribes and Bands.

For three days in September, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, in collaboration with several partners, hosted a land-based Indigenous Youth Climate and Culture Camp in Morton, Wyoming, at the Eastern Shoshone Buffalo Herd pasture. In total, over 100 students from Wyoming Indian Elementary, Middle, and High Schools arrived amongst the buffalo and traipsed through knee-high sagebrush to lessons facilitated by cultural knowledge-keepers, scientists, educators, and others.

On a Wednesday this October, Jackson Hole Public Art's newest Pathways mural, Yeneini3i’ 3o3outei’i  |  Four Hills of Life, a collaboration with Arapahoe School students co-facilitated by Northern Arapaho artist and GYC’s Wind River Conservation Organizer Colleen Friday, was unveiled in the Garaman underpass in Jackson, Wyoming.

Learn some of the Apsáalooke place names of beloved rivers, mountains, and other natural areas throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

One year ago, the Inter-Tribal Gathering brought together people to elevate native voices throughout Greater Yellowstone and build better government-to-government relationships between Tribes and America’s federal public lands managers. Since the event, GYC has made big strides in protecting and restoring Native conservation priorities.

GYC is working alongside the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes to ask the Department of Interior to repatriate three land parcels that make up the 111,000-acre “Muddy Ridge” request in support of Treaty Rights and Tribal Sovereignty. 

Guest blogger Darren Calhoun writes on the devastating effects of Diversion Dam on the Big Wind River and what can be done to help this river heal.

Learn some of the Apsáalooke place names of beloved rivers, mountains, and other natural areas throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.