At least 457 bison were killed this winter, a total that falls shy of a removal goal as most hunting seasons and capture-for-slaughter operations end.

Of those, 347 were shipped to slaughter after being caught in Yellowstone’s Stephens Creek Capture Facility and 106 were killed by hunters, according to a report from the park. The number taken by tribal hunters will likely increase because final harvest totals for several tribes haven’t been reported yet.

The report was compiled late last week as park officials shuttered the trap for the year. Park officials don’t capture bison beyond the end of March because of the approach of calving season for the animals, park spokeswoman Linda Veress said.

If 457 is the final number, it would be the lowest total since 2016, when managers culled fewer than 600. The past two years were among the highest in a decade, both topping 1,100.

It would also be short of bison managers’ goal of culling between 600 and 900, agreed to last fall to either slightly reduce the population of roughly 4,500 or keep it stable.

Culling bison depends heavily on the animals’ willingness to migrate north out of the park, something they didn’t really do until late this winter.

Many bison hunters got skunked early on while the animals remained inside the park even as snow grew deep and temperatures dropped. Large numbers of bison weren’t observed north of the park border until mid-March, according to the report.

The report’s tally of bison killed by hunters puts their take at 106, with another three bison killed by park staff after being wounded and wandering back into the park. But the report doesn’t have a complete accounting of which hunters took the bison, listing the lion’s share of the total as “unattributed harvests.”

Of the 85 hunters licensed through the state of Montana, only one was successful, said Mark Deleray, regional supervisor for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes took two bison.

Deleray said hunters from the Nez Perce Tribe harvested a total of 53 and hunters from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation took 11.

The migration that benefited hunters also gave park officials a chance to open the gates of the trap. A total of 348 were captured. One died in the corrals. The other 347 were sent to slaughter, and the meat will go to Native American tribes.

More than 300 bison have been culled from the Yellowstone National Park population so far this year, according to a report from park officials.

As of March 22, 305 bison had been removed between hunting and capture-for-slaughter operations, a total that may climb this week as hunts continue.

So far, hunters licensed through seven tribal nations have taken 96 bison, according to the park’s report.

The park’s Stephens Creek Capture Facility has trapped and consigned 208 bison to slaughter. One bison died in the facility.

That total is still short of bison managers’ goal of removing between 600 and 900 bison this winter. Managers try to control the population’s number with hunting and slaughter each year when the animals migrate out of the park.

Last summer, biologists estimated there were about 4,500 bison in the population. The removal goal is meant to keep that number stable or slightly decrease it.

This winter has been slow. Bison largely stayed inside the park’s interior — where they can’t be hunted or trapped — for the first few months of winter.

Migration northward began en masse in late February. Over the first few weeks of March, there were consistently more than 200 bison north of Mammoth Hot Springs, according to the report.

Park officials are still holding roughly 80 bison for a quarantine program.

Grizzly bears are waking up in Yellowstone National Park. 

Visitors spotted a large grizzly last Friday between Canyon Village and Fishing Bridge, Yellowstone officials announced in a news release. Tracks were also seen between Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Junction. 

It’s that time of year, as male grizzlies usually come out of hibernation in mid-to-late March. Females with cubs leave the dens in April and early May. 

Bears leaving hibernation look for food and often feed on elk and bison that died over the winter, the release said. The release added that bears sometimes react aggressively while consuming a carcass.

Yellowstone’s release said all of the park is bear country, and that visitors should take precautions like hiking or skiing in groups, making noise and carrying bear spray. Restrictions began in some bear management areas on Sunday, including the Firehole area, Mary Mountain Trail, Richard’s Pond and Gneiss Creek, among others.

The National Park Service will tap visitor fees to pay for basic visitor services at some parks as the government shutdown extends into its third week.

P. Daniel Smith, acting director of the National Park Service, said in a statement Sunday that parks can now access visitor fees in order to “provide immediate assistance and services to highly visited parks during the lapse in appropriations.” The available funds would include entrance, camping and parking fees collected from visitors that are usually reserved for other projects.

“We are taking this extraordinary step to ensure that parks are protected and that visitors can continue to access parks with limited basic services,” Smith said.

The statement said the agency would begin using the funds in the coming days to clean up trash, maintain restrooms and bring on additional law enforcement rangers at parks across the country. Top officials at individual parks will submit cost estimates to the director’s office for review before they can bring more employees on, according to a memo outlining the agency’s shutdown plan, first obtained by the Washington Post.

It’s unclear what that will mean for Yellowstone National Park. Jody Lyle, a Yellowstone spokeswoman, said in an email that officials are “reviewing the updated contingency plan and are determining the appropriate next steps for Yellowstone.”

Many national parks have remained at least partially open during the shutdown, and people across the country have raised concerns about overflowing trashcans, dirty bathrooms and people damaging fragile areas. In Yellowstone, the road from Mammoth Hot Springs to Cooke City is open to cars and private companies running snowmobile and snowcoach tours into the park’s interior — though nobody’s around to collect entrance fees. Volunteers and tour guides have taken it upon themselves to clean some places and ensure outhouses have toilet paper.

Fees are collected at 115 of the park service’s 418 parks. About 80 percent of the fees collected stay within a park, while the other 20 percent is directed to parks that don’t collect fees. In fiscal year 2017, about a quarter of Yellowstone’s budget — $17.1 million — consisted of park fees.

Federal law says the money should be used for maintenance, habitat restoration, enhancing visitor experience and a few other items separate from the park’s day-to-day operations. Many critics of the agency’s Sunday announcement worry that diverting that money will rob those other projects of money and harm the agency’s financial stability.

“If they use that money to deal with normal operations, then that money is no longer available to address let’s say the (maintenance) backlog,” said Emily Douce, director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Association. “ … We don’t know what the implications will be.”

But some praise the plan, saying it would provide for important services while the shutdown rolls on. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana, sent a letter to Interior Secretary David Berhardt on Saturday urging him to find a way to provide some services, such as trash collection or bathroom maintenance. On Sunday, Daines released a statement praising the department’s announcement about the fee money shuffling, saying he was glad the Interior department “will fund these critical programs while the government is shut down, supporting Montana’s gateway communities and protecting our national parks.”

The idea is also backed by the Property and Environment Research Center, a Bozeman think tank that prides itself on practicing “free-market environmentalism.” Shawn Regan, a fellow at PERC, said in an email that using those funds is “eminently sensible.”

“With the government shutdown entering its third week, the National Park Service is right to search for creative ways to get our nation’s most popular parks back up and running,” Regan said.

Using the money to fund some park operations during a shutdown would be a first. Steve Iobst, former deputy superintendent of Yellowstone, spent more than 40 years with the park service, retiring in 2016. He said the idea had never come up during the various shutdowns he worked through — he guessed he went through nine.

“It’s baffling to me,” Iobst said.

This shutdown is different because many parks are open, which wasn’t the case during the ones Iobst worked. Still, Iobst said fee money is viewed as separate from the park’s appropriated budget, and that it’s not supposed to pay for routine operations. Instead, it’s often used in multi-year spending plans, earmarked for certain maintenance or research projects. Recently, he said, much of it has been directed at the agency’s $11.6 billion deferred maintenance backlog.

“You’re dipping into a fund that is already pretty much committed for one-year or multi-year programs,” Iobst said.

For now, volunteers and private companies are trying to help out in Yellowstone. Groups of volunteers swept through the northern portion of the park on Saturday and Sunday, picking up trash and cleaning up bathrooms.

Meanwhile, Xanterra and 13 other companies are paying for plowing and grooming. Rick Hoeninghausen, Xanterra’s director of sales and marketing, said that costs about $7,500 a day, about half of which is paid by Xanterra. He wasn’t sure how long they could sustain that.

“Everybody wants the shutdown to end soon,” he said. “This isn’t something we’re hoping to have to do indefinitely.”

CAMERON — If there’s anything better than seeing a bighorn ram, horns fully curled, it’s seeing 12.

The number seemed to keep growing on a recent morning in southwest Montana, the tan bodies of wild sheep standing out against the steep white slope at the southern end of the Madison Range.

Ewes and lambs were grouped up. Rams were interspersed throughout, and some wandered around alone, looking every bit majestic. And, every time it seemed they’d been counted, Julie Cunningham, a biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, spotted another.

“They just keep popping out of the sagebrush,” said Cunningham, grinning.

Cunningham, who has worked for FWP for 12 years, is the person in charge of this sheep herd that lives near Quake Lake, known as the Taylor-Hilgards herd. It’s a small part of her job. She’s the area biologist for the Bridger, Gallatin and Madison mountain ranges. Elk, deer, bison and pronghorn compete for her time alongside these sheep.

The herd numbers about 200, and it’s the source of one of her recent successes. She organized a series of transplants over the last few years, starting with 52 animals in 2015 and adding more with transplants in 2016 and 2018. They released the sheep in the Wolf Creek drainage, just a few miles north and in the mountain range’s western foothills.

She hoped the sheep would explore some new country, maybe find new winter range in historic but unoccupied sheep habitat. Maybe they’d go interesting places. She didn’t know.

So she was excited when she spotted one of them on the side of U.S. Highway 191, on the other side of the mountains.

She and a colleague were in the Gallatin Canyon to euthanize a moose. On the way back, she spotted an orange ear tag among a group of sheep, members of the Madison Range’s other sheep population, known as the Spanish Peaks herd. She had attached orange tags to the sheep she moved in 2016. They turned around and had a closer look.

It was indeed Orange Ear Tag No. 11, one of the 2016 transplant animals. Somehow, it zipped over the Madison Range and had started hanging out with the Spanish Peaks sheep. Its adventure connected two native sheep herds previously separated by miles of rugged, sheep-free country.

The connection is double-edged for Cunningham, both anxiety and triumph. In the short-term, she’ll watch closely to see if the connection has any negative effects, such as the transmission of disease from one herd to the other.

But it’s also the closest the range’s sheep populations have been since the mass decline of the species, and Cunningham can imagine a future where the animals are more widespread in the Madison Range.

“In the long run, seeing sheep use the whole mountain range could mean great things for sheep conservation,” she said.

The story of wild sheep is not unique. There were many and then there weren’t, due to a combination of westward expansion, overhunting and disease.

There still aren’t very many. In Montana, there are a little more than 6,000 total. Surprises like one sheep crossing a mountain range and making new friends are welcomed by conservation advocates and wildlife managers alike, as recovering the species has proven challenging both biologically and politically.

Challenges

Bob Garrott, an ecology professor at Montana State University, said the low point was somewhere between the turn of the 20th century and the Dust Bowl. But, while there have been some successes, conservation efforts haven’t brought the animal back in the same way they did for some other species.

Garrott said that can be attributed to differences between sheep and other species. For one thing, they don’t tend to redistribute themselves when they’re doing well, often ending up in large numbers in small areas.

“That’s an inherent behavioral trait,” Garrott said. “In conjunction with that is the exotic pathogens that have been introduced to bighorns from domestic livestock.”

Respiratory disease outbreaks caused by those pathogens have decimated several bighorn herds. It’s happened to both herds in the Madison Range within the last 30 years, according to FWP’s 2010 Sheep Conservation Strategy. Some herds recover well, like those two. Others didn’t.

The danger of domestic sheep introducing new diseases to their wild cousins holds enormous sway in the management of bighorns. As a result, managers focus on keeping the wild and the domestic completely separate to keep bighorns from contracting sheep-killing pathogens from their domestic cousins. That need for separation can also make it tough to restore sheep.

“A challenge we’ve had in bighorn restoration is finding safe places to put sheep,” said Gray Thornton, of the Wild Sheep Foundation.

Thornton is careful to say that the foundation doesn’t want to harm the domestic sheep industry, but he acknowledges they are part of the reason it’s hard to find places for wild herds. His organization tries to work with landowners on restoration, and he wants the industry’s help in restoring the animal.

And, he said, some ranchers are all for it.

“I’ve spoken to some of the sheep producers that get it,” Thornton said. “They want more bighorns on the landscape. We want more bighorns on the landscape. We don’t want to put the domestic sheep off the landscape.”

The movement of sheep in the Madison Valley didn’t present any major conflicts with the domestic sheep industry, with no large herds in sight. The conflict did surface in an area west of there, with an early 2000s reintroduction in the Greenhorn Mountains.

The Greenhorns are on the northwest side of the Gravelly Range, a largely remote set of mountains southwest of Ennis. John Helle, a third-generation sheep rancher from Dillon, trails sheep into the Gravellies each year from their ranch in the Beaverhead Valley. His operation is one of the largest in the state, and it also produces the wool behind the clothing brand Duckworth, which has offices in downtown Bozeman.

When Helle first heard about the Greenhorn reintroduction, he was opposed. He said he worried it could invite litigation against his operation and his federal grazing leases, which are just one piece of the ranch’s 100,000-acre grazing system.

But he also believed he might be able to work with FWP and conservationists to find ways to protect both domestic and wild — like keeping them separate.

“We can argue about the science all day long. But we can come together and say right now, ‘I think separation is a good thing,’” Helle said. “We don’t have a problem with bighorn sheep.”

They worked it out, and, in 2003 and 2004, FWP moved a total of 69 sheep into the range.

In Helle’s eyes, it’s gone well. He’s been in regular contact with the FWP area biologist, and he was happy to see the state offer a hunting tag for the herd this year.

But, at the same time, a wildlife group in Bozeman has said the herd isn’t doing well enough. The Gallatin Wildlife Association sued over Helle’s grazing leases in 2015, arguing the public land grazing is a threat to bighorns and grizzly bears. The group also argued against the hunting proposal for the Greenhorn herd, arguing that the herd has declined — the last count was just over 40 — and is too small to support hunting.

“I can not believe more people aren’t waving red flags,” said Glenn Hockett, the group’s president.

Hockett also argues the state has ignored the best science in its management strategy, which defines a “minimum viable population” of bighorns as 125 individuals. He points to research suggesting that herds need more than 1,000 animals to have a chance of long-term survival. The association filed a petition with the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission raising that issue and calling for a repeal of the hunt.

The Wild Sheep Foundation isn’t on Hockett’s side. One of the foundation’s biologists wrote a letter to the Fish and Wildlife Commission opposing Gallatin Wildlife Association’s petition. The foundation also disagrees with the group’s attempts to end grazing in the Gravellies, arguing that the Greenhorn reintroduction has been a success.

Hockett sees the Wild Sheep Foundation’s rebuke as an attempt to marginalize him.

“They’re marginalizing people who want the law followed and the science applied,” Hockett said. “That’s what we want.”

Helle, on the other side, thinks Hockett’s approach is “too divisive,” and won’t succeed in accomplishing anything. He also wonders whether the noise around the Greenhorns discourages other ranchers from working toward wild sheep conservation.

“It’s a mess,” Helle said. “No one’s going to want to sign up for this.”

Surprises

The two herds in the Madison Range have been there forever. Though FWP has augmented both at times, they were never fully extirpated. Even disease couldn’t knock them out.

Harry Liss hasn’t been here forever. He lives along the Madison River near Raynolds Pass, in the area that’s frequented by the Taylor-Hilgards sheep. He’s been there since 1994. He also owns a piece of property above the highway, too — one of the places Cunningham used for a trap site for the sheep transplants.

Liss remembers the die-off of 1997. He recalls counting 84 sheep around there. The state’s sheep plan said the herd was between 20 and 30 animals after the die-off. But Liss wasn’t worried.

“I knew they were gonna come back,” Liss said.

That’s what they did. The population has since ballooned to its current size, leaving enough for the transplant project.

People would like to see the transplant here duplicated elsewhere, though there’s nowhere that’s perfectly analogous. It wasn’t complicated by any large domestic sheep operations, though there are some small “hobby herds” in the area. And, Cunningham did have to gain support from area landowners before anything could happen.

Still, Garrott, the MSU professor, thinks it’s only a matter of cooperation between everyone involved.

“There’s no reason we can’t do that,” Garrott said.

Cunningham is content letting others worry whether that’s possible. In the meantime, she’s still enjoying watching what her sheep do. She saw Orange Ear Tag No. 11 twice in October. Using other tools, she can track other trends, like the sheep that have moved into the creek drainages that neighbor Wolf Creek.

Surprises abound, like the pair from the same transplant group that went opposite directions, according to her data.

“They were in the same trailer, they were under the same net. They could have been sisters. I don’t know,” she said. “One of them ran up to the Wedge, which is a 10,000 foot peak, and lived on windblown slopes for the rest of the winter. The other one hung out outside a guy’s house on his porch.”

After waking mysteriously for the first time in four years, the world’s tallest active geyser never went back to sleep.

Another major eruption of Steamboat Geyser was recorded in Yellowstone National Park at about 1:07 a.m., Saturday, according to seismogram data. It was the 30th eruption since March, setting a new record for total eruptions recorded in one calendar year. The next-highest total was 29 in 1964.

Jeff Hungerford, the park geologist, said he’s hoping for a few more eruptions before the year ends.

“It’s just exciting,” Hungerford said. “Steamboat being the largest eruption we know about, it’s a pretty fantastic event.”

Located in the Norris Geyser Basin, Steamboat is the tallest active geyser in the world. While minor eruptions of between 10 and 40 feet are common, the geyser’s major eruptions can reach heights between 300 and 400 feet, drenching the boardwalk around it and sometimes even the cars in the parking lot.

Park officials have recorded nearly 200 major eruptions of Steamboat since 1878. There have been long droughts in that time, including one that lasted 50 years. There have also been busy periods, including consecutive years with a dozen or more eruptions. Each year from 1963 to 1965 surpassed 20 eruptions.

“This activity is unusual, but it’s not unprecedented,” Hungerford said. “We’ve had activity like this in the early 1960s and the early 1980s.”

Prior to this year, the last known major eruption was in 2014. The first of this year was reported in March. By mid-May, five had been recorded, and they just kept coming.

Many of this year’s eruptions were separated by a week or less. A few were separated by two or three weeks. The longest break this year has been 35 days.

Hungerford and other geologists have been watching Steamboat closely throughout the summer. Early on, they put out seismic nodes to record activity just before and right after an eruption. Thermal sensors and cameras have also been placed near Steamboat.

They’re also examining precipitation data and the movement of the ground in the geyser basin, where uplift and deformation are normal.

The state of Wyoming has filed a notice of appeal on a federal judge’s decision earlier this year to restore federal protections for the population of grizzly bears that lives in and around Yellowstone National Park.

The three-page notice of appeal was filed a little more than two months after U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service erred in removing Endangered Species Act protections from the Yellowstone bears in 2017, siding with the environmental groups and Native American tribes that challenged the decision. The move blocked planned grizzly hunts in Wyoming and Idaho.

Wyoming is an intervenor in the case. An appeal would take it to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A spokesman for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department was not immediately available for comment. A Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman referred questions to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The groups who fought to restore protections for the animals are ready to fight the appeal, said Andrea Santarsiere, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

“Wyoming’s appeal of the court’s decision to restore protections for Yellowstone’s beloved bears is just wrong,” Santarsiere said in an emailed statement.

“We’ll fight to ensure these amazing bears retain the safeguards they need to fully recover.”

Grizzly bears in the Lower 48 states were first listed as threatened in 1975. At the time, the number of bears in Yellowstone was estimated at fewer than 150. Now, the population is estimated at approximately 700.

Federal and state officials argued that improvement represented a full recovery, and that it was enough to justify delisting and allowing hunts. Wyoming and Idaho both planned hunting seasons that would have allowed the take of up to 23 bears this year. Montana did not plan a hunt.

But delisting opponents argued the bears still faced threats from climate change and changing food sources. They also argued that the Fish and Wildlife Service erred in delisting one portion of the Lower 48 grizzly bear population without seeing full recovery of the others.

Price hikes have come to three of Yellowstone National Park’s most iconic hotels as park and concession officials experiment with allowing room prices to rise and fall with demand.

As part of a pilot project, Xanterra is charging market-based room rates at Old Faithful Inn, the Lake Yellowstone Hotel and Canyon Village. The experiment began with rooms reserved for this year and will continue through at least 2022.

The change loosened price controls on the three hotels, where rates are typically held at levels similar to room prices outside of the park. Instead, prices will rise and fall with demand, though they’ll still be capped at 33 percent higher than comparable rates outside the park.

Zach Allely, Yellowstone’s director of business and commercial services, said the idea was driven by a nationwide change in the National Park Service’s rate setting policies that allowed more market-based pricing.

It will give park officials a chance to see how visitors react to increased prices for its marquee properties and to see how the concession company responds to having slightly more pricing freedom.

“We want to see if we see improvements in visitor services,” Allely said.

If it went well, the change would bring in more money for both Xanterra and Yellowstone, which collects franchise fees from the concession company. Last year, the park collected about $6.5 million in franchise fees from the company, Allely said.

The experiment is occurring alongside a need for more cash, though Allely dismissed any talk of a direct connection. An amendment to Yellowstone’s contract with Xanterra increased by nearly $40 million the company’s spending authority for facilities improvements around the park.

A 2013 contract between Yellowstone and Xanterra underestimated the amount of money needed for a suite of projects around the park, including upgrades to the historic hotels and employee housing. The original contract gave Xanterra authority to spend up to $134.5 million — the amendment boosts it to $173.8 million.

Allely said the advent of market-based pricing for rooms was not directly an effort to fund the rest of that program, saying how Xanterra spends its money is up to Xanterra. Xanterra did not provide an answer before deadline.

The construction projects are part of the Concessions Facilities Improvement Program, which was agreed to in the 2013 contract with Xanterra. It directed the company to work on about a dozen projects, including upgrades to hotels and employee housing.

Several of the projects ended up costing significantly more than park officials expected, quickly erasing Xanterra’s spending authority. Redevelopment at the Canyon Area cost more than $96.3 million — well beyond the 2013 estimate of $70.5 million. Upgrades to employee housing at Old Faithful cost nearly $9 million more than expected.

Work on the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel cost about $1 million more than expected. The work included some remodeling and seismic reinforcements. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced Wednesday that the Interior Department was granting Yellowstone another $21.2 million for work on the hotel.

Allely said there are just two projects in the program that are unfinished — the rehabilitation of cabins at the Lake Lodge and the redevelopment of the Fishing Bridge RV Park.

BOZEMAN, Montana — A recent report says visitors to Yellowstone National Park spent nearly $500 million last year in neighboring towns to the wilderness recreation area.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports a visitor spending analysis by economists with the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey says the figure was about $499 million, a fraction of the $18.2 billion spent nationwide near national parks in 2017.

The report estimates the $499 million supported about 7,350 jobs in towns on the park’s outskirts in Montana and Wyoming.

The figure marks a decline from 2016, when the agency estimated the park’s visitor spending at $524 million.

The report says Montana received $556 million in visitor spending in 2017, good enough for 12th in the nation. That is an increase from 2016, when visitor spending was estimated at $548 million.

The top official at Yellowstone National Park is among seven high-ranking National Park Service officials who could be assigned to new jobs in a potential management shakeup.

The proposal, which was first reported by the Washington Post, would send Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk to Washington, D.C., to oversee the National Capital Region of the Park Service. The director of the Park Service’s Midwest Region would replace Wenk.

The transfers are not official and have not been confirmed publicly by the Park Service or the Interior Department. Heather Swift, an Interior spokeswoman, said in an email Monday that they have “no announcements on new personnel at this time.”

News of the potential moves came as a surprise to conservationists and others in the region around Yellowstone, where Wenk has worked since 2011.

“It did come as a shock,” said Scott Christensen, conservation director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. “It kind of follows this pattern that we’ve been seeing at the Department of Interior of these very arbitrary and not very well thought out reassignments.”

The department was criticized last year for the reassignment of 35 senior employees to new jobs, a move critics claimed was politically motivated. The department’s Office of Inspector General released a report earlier this month that said agency leaders had failed to document the reasoning behind the changes.

This latest proposal also involves senior employees, members of what’s formally known as the Senior Executive Service. Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), said the previous round of reassignments hadn’t involved officials within the National Park Service.

He said it’s “now the Park Service’s turn in the barrel.”

Ruch said PEER believes acting National Park Service Director Danny Smith called the six people involved and informed them of the impending transfers. Ruch added that the employees must either accept such transfers or be removed from federal service.

“There doesn’t appear to be any efficiency of service,” Ruch said. “Second, we would expect most of these people would retire rather than accept new positions.”

Before taking over at Yellowstone, Wenk was the National Park Service’s deputy director of operations in Washington, D.C. His career started in Yellowstone in the 1970s, when he was working as a landscape architect. He was also the superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Monument.

Christensen said Wenk has been “a strong leader” on a variety of issues during his seven years in Yellowstone, including the management of bison and grizzly bears and the restoration of native trout.

“If the rumors prove true, those of us who worked on protecting the park will certainly have lost an important leader,” Christensen said. “Not just for conservation in Yellowstone, but in the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.”

The other employees rumored to be on the move are Alaska Region Director Herbert Frost; Lake Mead National Recreation Area Superintendent Lizette Richardson; Biscayne National Park Superintendent Margaret Goodro; National Capital Region Director Robert Vogel; Intermountain Region Director Sue Masica; and Midwest Region Director Cameron Sholly.

Should the realignment happen, Sholly would be the one expected to take the helm at Yellowstone. Alexandra Picavet, a Midwest Region spokeswoman, said Sholly has been the Midwest Region director since 2015. He was previously the chief ranger at Yosemite National Park and superintendent of Natchez Trace Parkway, headquartered in Mississippi.

Sholly’s first job with the Park Service was as a seasonal maintenance worker in Yellowstone.