In the depths of winter, we offer recommendations to try while the snow is flying and others that we hope will inspire your summer schemes! Plan your own geocaching adventure anywhere in the ecosystem or a backcountry expedition in Grand Teton National Park, read a hopeful story about climate change, and let us introduce you to a couple of four-legged adventure buddies in this GYC Staff Picks Blog.

Yellowstone National Park’s Bison Conservation Transfer Program continues to make history. In early February, Yellowstone relocated the largest number of live Yellowstone bison to American Indian Tribes to date. One hundred and sixteen healthy bison were loaded onto secure trucks and moved from Yellowstone National Park nearly 500 miles north to the Fork Peck Indian Reservation where they will complete their final year of testing before being transferred on to Tribes across North America.

On Friday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found a petition by some conservation groups to add Northern Rockies wolves back to the Endangered Species Act was not necessary, identified Western States wolves as a distinct population, and committed to initiating a process to develop a new national recovery plan for wolves.

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.

During the summer of 2023, GYC assisted with a study using trail cameras to better understand grizzly bear and livestock interactions in the Gravelly Range of southwest Montana. After snapping images for almost five months, the trail cameras were collected in October and GYC staff discovered the incredible range of wildlife that call these mountains home.

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.

In October 2023, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) released a draft Montana Gray Wolf Conservation and Management Plan (wolf plan) and accompanying draft Environmental Impact Statement (draft EIS), which are currently open for public comment.

The Montana Headwaters Legacy Act (MHLA) is back in U.S. Senate. We need you to help make it law.