Visiting Yellowstone National Park and a number of other sites around the country will cost more this summer — but not as much as federal officials proposed last fall.

The National Park Service announced a nationwide fee increase Thursday that will bump prices at most fee-charging parks by $5 beginning June 1. Starting then, a weeklong pass to Yellowstone will cost $35 per car.

The National Park Service said it’s part of an effort to deal with its $11.6 billion deferred maintenance backlog. The agency estimates raising fees will boost annual revenue by roughly $60 million.

The announcement is starkly different from the agency’s proposal last fall, which recommended charging $70 during peak visitation months at Yellowstone and 16 other highly trafficked sites. Conservation groups and thousands of public commenters argued the increase was too steep, apparently convincing the department to change course.

In a news release, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said this increase is modest. He also said it’s one component of his plans to deal with the agency’s deferred maintenance backlog.

“This is just one of the ways we are carrying out our commitment to ensure that national parks remain world class destinations that provide an excellent value for families from all income levels,” Zinke said.

Montana’s two U.S. Senators applauded the decision. Republican Sen. Steve Daines said the state’s national parks “must remain affordable and accessible to all visitors.” Democratic Sen. Jon Tester said the previous increase proposal would have “undercut our state’s thriving outdoor economy.”

Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association and a critic of the original proposal, said in an emailed statement that the smaller fee increase is a “welcomed move.”

“Fees do have a role to play in our parks, and the administration’s move to abandon its original proposal in favor of more measured fee increases will put additional funds into enhancing park experiences without threatening visitation or local economies,” Pierno said.

Pierno also said Congress should put more money toward parks in future spending bills.

Holly Fretwell, a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, said in an emailed statement that the increase will help park managers prioritize park-specific maintenance needs.

“Park users should help protect our most treasured public lands and ensure they are available for the enjoyment of future generations,” Fretwell said.

The fee increase will affect all 117 of the National Park Service’s fee-charging sites — including Glacier and Grand Teton National Parks. Annual passes will cost more, too — $70 at Yellowstone. All-parks passes will remain $80.

Fees at Grand Teton will look identical to Yellowstone’s, but the fate of the two parks’ joint weekly pass is uncertain. Yellowstone spokeswoman Linda Veress said no decision has been made on whether to change the fee.

Park fees were last increased in 2015. That was the same year Grand Teton and Yellowstone stopped selling a joint annual pass.

Montana officials want to limit fishing outfitter use on the Madison River in an effort to reduce crowding and social conflicts between anglers.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks released a draft Madison River recreation plan Tuesday that includes capping the number of outfitters, banning commercial guiding on the river’s lowermost stretch and prohibiting commercial guides from certain stretches on certain days.

The plan would not go into effect until 2019. FWP will propose the plan to the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission next week. Initial approval would open public comment.

FWP said in a news release that data shows recreational use on the Madison is increasing, and that fishing pressure bumps by about 15 percent every two years. Since 2008, commercial outfitter use has increased by 72 percent, FWP said.

The proposal caps the number commercial outfitters at 2017 levels and would restrict use by reach of river. One reach each day would be designated for non-commercial use, meaning guide trips couldn’t use it.

The plan would ban guiding from Greycliff Fishing Access Site to the Madison’s confluence with the Jefferson River, near Three Forks. FWP’s release said that’s meant to preserve the “primitive nature of this unique reach.”

It also seeks to ban boat and float tube use by anglers on the uppermost stretches of the river where they are restricted to wading. In the past, some anglers have used boats to access prime wading spots.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyoming — Three bison slaughter protesters who were arrested here earlier this month will be banned from Yellowstone National Park for five years after pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges Monday.

Hannah Ponder, Cody Cyson and Thomas Brown appeared in U.S. District Court at Mammoth Hot Springs after nearly a week in jail following their arrest near the park’s Stephens Creek Capture Facility, where bison are trapped and readied for slaughter. The area around the facility is closed to the public.

Ponder, 22, pleaded guilty to entering a closed area of the park. Cyson, 25, and Brown, 36, pleaded guilty to entering a closed area and interfering with an agency function.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Carman ordered Ponder to pay fines and fees totaling $1,040. Carman ordered Brown and Cyson to pay $1,050 each. All three will be placed on unsupervised probation for five years and will be barred from entering the park until the end of their probation. They were released around noon on Monday.

During the hearing, Carman said the three people had a lot of passion but that he felt it was misdirected. He said the incident was “a case to make a point” but that it didn’t further their goals.

“It doesn’t stop what’s happening at Stephens Creek,” Carman said. “It doesn’t save any of the bison.”

Ponder said Yellowstone’s bison are managed with a population cap that intends to keep their number well below the biological carrying capacity of the park, which she feels is unjust. Population reduction efforts include capture-for-slaughter.

“The Stephens Creek Facility is a tool of gross mismanagement,” Ponder said.

Park law enforcement arrested the three protesters at Stephens Creek last week when they were protesting the slaughter of bison. According to charging documents, a ranger found Brown and Cyson chained to the squeeze chute there early on March 6. They were apparently trying to block the shipment of bison to slaughter, which was scheduled for later that morning.

A few hours later, rangers arrested Ponder for being inside the closure area. U.S. District Attorney Lee Pico said Monday that Ponder appeared to be “acting as something of a lookout.”

They appeared in court the next day. Carman ordered that they stay in jail until Monday’s hearing.

Chris Lundberg, an attorney representing all three, said the jail stay was quite long for people without a criminal history of violence or property damage.

“I think the government has gotten the point across,” Lundberg said.

The three protesters are with a group called Wild Buffalo Defense, which describes itself as a collective focused on ending the slaughter of wild bison and protecting the treaty rights of Native Americans. Cyson, an Ojibwe man from Minnesota, was arrested twice last year for protesting the construction of oil pipelines in Wisconsin.

Wild Buffalo Defense is raising money online to pay the protesters’ court fines.

Bison are killed annually by hunters and through capture-for-slaughter because a multi-agency management plan calls for a bison population around 3,000. Yellowstone biologists estimated the population at about 4,800 last fall.

As of last week, more than 550 had been culled. At least 328 of those had been shipped to slaughter. Meat from slaughtered bison goes to Native American tribes.

There are many critics of the slaughter program. A group of them attended Monday’s hearing, filling about half the seats in the small courtroom.

“I think that it’s a shame that these people are being punished for their actions rather than celebrated,” said Stephany Seay, of the Buffalo Field Campaign.

Seay and the others waited outside after the hearing. Shortly after noon, Brown, Cyson and Ponder walked out, greeted by hugs and smiles.

Three activists were arrested Tuesday in Yellowstone National Park for attempting to block the slaughter of Yellowstone bison.

Two people locked themselves inside the squeeze chute at the park’s Stephens Creek corrals early Tuesday morning. The chute is where bison are readied for slaughter. Other protesters were also there, holding signs signaling their opposition to the annual cull of Yellowstone bison.

Park spokeswoman Vicki Regula said in an email that park rangers saw the two people at 5:30 a.m., and that the two were arrested at 12:30 p.m., for entering the area around the corrals. The area is closed to the public. No damage was done to the facility, Regula said.

A third person has also been arrested. It’s not clear why.

The three activists are connected to a group called Wild Buffalo Defense. On its Facebook page, the group calls itself a “collective of indigenous and non-native organizers dedicated to seeing wild buffalo roam free on the plains.”

The group has identified the three people who were arrested as Cody Cyson, Thomas Brown and Hannah Ponder. A clerk at the U.S. District Court in Yellowstone confirmed that three people were in custody and said initial appearances were scheduled for Wednesday.

In a phone interview, Adam Luke, a spokesman for Wild Buffalo Defense, declined to say how many people are involved in the group or how long it had been active. He described it as an “autonomous grassroots group” and said they wanted to intervene in the annual slaughter of bison “directly and nonviolently.”

“The main point of this action was to draw attention to the fact that there’s really minimal numbers of wild buffalo being kept in the park,” Luke said.

Yellowstone National Park had not issued a statement on the issue, and park staff had not returned a request for more information before deadline Tuesday.

Yellowstone works with other federal, tribal and state government agencies to reduce its bison population each year. A management plan calls for a population of about 3,000. Last August, Yellowstone biologists estimated the population at about 4,800 animals.

The reduction comes through slaughter and hunting. Last year, more than 1,200 bison were culled. This past winter, managers agreed to try to remove between 600 and 900 bison.

According to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, hunters have taken an estimated 200 bison so far. The park had captured at least 350 bison as of late February. A park spokeswoman declined to offer detail Monday on how many of those bison had been shipped to slaughter.

The Buffalo Field Campaign, an advocacy group that watches bison management closely, estimates that the park has captured more than 500 bison so far this year and that more than 150 have been shipped to slaughter. The park did not respond to a question about the accuracy of those numbers before deadline Tuesday.

In a press release, the Buffalo Field Campaign signaled solidarity with Tuesday’s protest. One of those arrested — Thomas Brown — was a former field campaign volunteer.

Stephany Seay, a spokeswoman for the field campaign, said in the release that they applaud “these courageous souls for sacrificing their freedom to free wild buffalo and to draw more attention to this atrocious trap.”

“This action should send another strong message to Yellowstone National Park that there are many people who strongly oppose the current mismanagement of this American icon,” Seay said.

Tuesday’s arrests come after two previous break-ins at the facility this year. In those instances, someone cut fences to let bison walk free. Separate criminal investigations into each incident are ongoing.

There have been other attempts to block the slaughter of bison. A man was arrested in 2014 for chaining himself to a barrel to prevent trucks from taking bison to slaughter. After several hours, he and the barrel were removed and the trucks hauled bison away.

Two cases of broken fences and bison walking free from Yellowstone National Park’s bison trap this winter have been a disruption of the status quo.

The first incident, when 52 bull bison escaped through two layers of broken fence in January, erased the possibility that those bison might eventually be transferred to a tribal reservation, which officials say was likely to happen sometime this year.

But the second illegal release of Yellowstone bison, which came sometime late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, was quickly nullified, as many of the bison returned to the corrals and park staff captured hundreds more shortly after the fence was repaired.

Separate criminal investigations into each are ongoing, but the two incidents have raised questions about the security of the Stephens Creek Capture Facility, and the park’s top official said they’re trying to shore it up.

In an interview Friday, Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk declined to offer specific details on the extra measures park officials are taking but said they are providing a higher level of security. He also said it appears they’ll have to do so into the future.

“It has just pointed out to us that we have to put a lot more funding and manpower behind securing that facility and operating that facility,” Wenk said. “And that’s what we’ll do.”

The facility, which consists of several corrals, a squeeze chute and a loading dock for cattle trailers, has been the starting point for the slaughter of bison for two decades. Last year, it became the starting point for an alternative to slaughter, one that could be used to send live bison to tribal or private lands where they can be used to start new conservation herds or join existing ones.

The alternative, quarantine, certifies bison as free of the disease brucellosis, which can cause animals to abort. About half of Yellowstone’s bison are believed to have been exposed to the disease. It’s feared by the livestock industry, and those fears limit where Yellowstone bison are allowed.

Becoming brucellosis free requires bison to live in isolation in a specific kind of corral for a certain amount of time. Once the brucellosis free status is gained, the animals can be moved more freely. They could join conservation bison herds on tribal reservations or on private lands.

In 2016, Yellowstone proposed establishing a quarantine program at the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and held onto some bison to start the program. But legal and political barriers prevented that plan and, last year, Yellowstone upgraded two corrals at Stephens Creek for quarantine. The idea was to send the bison to Fort Peck after gaining disease-free status.

Several months after the upgrades, final approval for the facility has yet to come from state and federal livestock officials. Montana state veterinarian Marty Zaluski said it’s likely to come in the next week.

Even without final approval, the January release of bison killed the nearest possibility of sending bison to Fort Peck. Yellowstone was holding 52 bulls inside the quarantine corrals for eventual transfer to Fort Peck. Despite the lack of final approval, Zaluski said those bulls “were really within about six months of being given a clean bill of health.”

Releasing them was an “irrevocable setback,” Zaluski said, because they’ve now been re-exposed to brucellosis in the eyes of livestock officials. Even if they were recaptured, they couldn’t be considered disease free.

The second release doesn’t have the same bite, but Zaluski is worried it will continue happening.

“My concern is now that it’s been done twice, potentially this is a new front for opposition to this type of conservation effort,” he said.

While many bison advocates support the idea of quarantine, some see it as the unnecessary domestication of wild animals. They also hope for a broader solution to end the slaughter of bison.

But Stephanie Adams, of the National Parks Conservation Association, said the releases “keep us stuck in this cycle of shipping all of the bison to slaughter each winter rather than looking at other alternatives.”

“If these setbacks continue to occur, we’re continuing to reduce the potential that Yellowstone bison could be used for broader conservation,” she said.

A park spokeswoman said Friday that at least 350 bison were in the trap, meaning there’s still a chance for a new cohort this year. Wenk still sees quarantine as part of the future of bison management, and he’s confident that there’s plenty of support for the idea.

“The bottom line is I think most people would like to see bison on a larger landscape,” he said. “Most people would like to see a successful program.”

Robbie Magnan, the bison program manager for the Fort Peck Tribes, said the releases have been disappointing, but it’s far from the only setback their program has faced. Despite the setbacks, he’s still confident they’ll eventually get some bison.

“I know we’re going to get them,” Magnan said. “But when is what I can’t figure out.”

If you were to imagine someone who traps grizzly bears for a living, you’d imagine someone like Chad Dickinson. Large, bearded, deep-voiced. The kind of guy who would much rather be deep in the woods than in an office talking to a newspaper reporter.

His love of being out there is part of the reason Dickinson is slated for his 24th consecutive summer of trapping grizzlies.

“I still love to catch bears,” Dickinson said earlier this month. “For me personally, it’s just seeing them and being up close and getting your hands on them, and treating them the proper way.”

Dickinson’s official title is biological service technician, but he serves as the leader of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team’s field crew. The crew, an arm of the U.S. Geological Survey, goes out each summer and sets culvert traps for grizzlies around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Once a bear is trapped, Dickinson and his team gather data that inform studies and fuel arguments about the management of the animals — like whether they should be protected under the Endangered Species Act or not.

Endangered Species Act protections were removed from the bears in 2017. Multiple lawsuits have challenged the decision, but delisting critics and supporters alike turn to data that begins with biologists setting a bear trap.

“Other scientists have disagreed with some of the findings, but in general we’re very supportive of (IGBST’s) work,” said Zack Strong, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Debate is a good thing, and the more information we have to use in our debates the better.”

Delisting has ceded management responsibility to the states, but the IGBST is still largely responsible for monitoring and studying the population, meaning Dickinson still needs to go out and trap bears.

That’s all right with him. He has always liked bears. He grew up on a dairy in Ohio and hunted and trapped as a kid. Moving west was always something he wanted to do, so that’s where he looked when it came time to look for colleges.

“I kind of looked at the areas that had grizzly bears, basically,” he said.

After two years at a community college in Ohio, he landed at Montana State University. Shortly after graduation, he took a seasonal trapping job with the study team, beginning in 1994. He became a permanent employee in the early 2000s, which means his winters consist of data entry and that he oversees two other trappers each summer.

By now, he’s used to the hitch schedule (10 days on, four off), knows all the trap site safety protocols (truck always pointed toward the way out, the doors always wide open in case you need a quick getaway), and can stand the smell of bear bait (mostly roadkill). He’s used to horseback rides into Yellowstone’s backcountry, long drives up rough forest roads and bear encounters don’t scare him as much as the average person — he called it a “controlled fear.”

Usually, they set four or five traps in the same area. Once a telemetry device tells he and the other crew members when one of the trap’s doors has dropped, they head to the site as soon as possible.

If it’s a black bear, they let it go. If it’s a grizzly, the work has only just begun. They tranquilize it and lay it on a tarp. They check the pulse, temperature and respiration. If it’s a new bear, they pull a tooth, tattoo its lip and attach an ear tag.

Ear tags are often how they know they’ve caught a bear for the second time, Dickinson said. It happens once in a while, so there are a few bears he knows well, including one that was euthanized last fall that had been with him from the start.

“He was probably the second or third bear I captured, or helped capture, in 1994,” Dickinson said.

The first capture was in the western part of Yellowstone National Park. About a decade later, the bear turned up in the Gardiner area, on the north side of the park.

Then, this past fall, the bear was caught breaking into buildings and pilfering food in the West Yellowstone area. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks caught it and killed it, deciding its habit of breaking into buildings was too dangerous. It was 27 years old.

Dickinson, now 46, said it was interesting how the bear had reappeared throughout his career.

“We caught him as a sub-adult. He was probably a 2- or 3-year-old. And then to live that long on the landscape, making a living,” he said. “It was interesting to see him kind of move back where he came from.”

The elk herd that resides in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park and the southern end of Montana’s Paradise Valley is growing, according to a new count conducted by state and park biologists.

During aerial surveys earlier this month, biologists from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and Yellowstone National Park counted 7,579 elk in what’s known as the northern range, an area stretching from the Lamar Valley north to Six Mile Creek. The total is 42 percent higher than 2017’s count of 5,349.

Karen Loveless, a biologist with FWP, said the significant jump likely means they missed counting some elk last year, but they still believe the population is healthy and growing. It’s the fourth consecutive year that the number has increased.

“I feel confident in saying that numbers are increasing,” Loveless said.

The number is still below the long-term average of roughly 10,000 for the area, but it’s much closer than it’s been in more than a decade. The last time the count surpassed 7,500 was 2005, when 9,545 elk were counted.

Increasing numbers have coincided with the trend of more elk migrating north from the park and into Montana. More than three-quarters of the herd was spotted north of Yellowstone this year, a percentage that’s been fairly consistent in each count since 2013. Prior to 2006, less than half the herd regularly migrated north.

That migration has pushed hunting districts in that area past their elk population objectives, and Loveless said that part of the state is “at capacity” when it comes to hosting elk.

“We’re maxed out,” she said. “If the herd is going to continue to grow, it would have to be elk staying in the park over the winter.”

Loveless said FWP will propose that the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission increase antlerless elk hunting opportunities there to ease some of the conflicts with landowners and take a bite out of the numbers. The proposal wasn’t part of the state’s original hunting season package but was crafted after a public comment period.

Hunting there has been controversial in recent years. In 2016, the commission approved a significant reduction in bull elk hunting opportunity in hunting district 313, which is known for trophy bulls. The change was based on a decline in the number of mature bull elk there.

Loveless said they didn’t try to quantify the number of mature bulls in the population during this month’s survey. They’ll do that during a survey later this winter.

Environmental groups and tribal governments are asking a federal judge to rule immediately in their favor and invalidate the federal government’s decision to lift protections for the Yellowstone grizzly bears.

The various groups, represented by Earthjustice, requested summary judgment from the U.S. District Court in Missoula in their lawsuit over the removal of Endangered Species Act protections from the Yellowstone grizzly bears. The request, filed Monday, came on the last day of a public comment period on how an appeals court decision regarding the delisting of wolves in the Great Lakes should affect the Yellowstone grizzlies’ final delisting rule.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opened that comment period months after the bears were delisted, a move opponents say was meant to cover up legal flaws in the rule removing protections for the bears.

In a press release announcing the request, the groups argue that the comment period is “evidence the government did not complete its homework” before delisting the bears.

“The time for taking public comment and considering all issues surrounding the removal of federal protections for Yellowstone grizzlies was before those protections were removed, not after the decision was finalized,” said Tim Preso, an Earthjustice attorney, in the release.

Earthjustice filed the request on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, plaintiffs in one of five lawsuits over the delisting that have been combined by a judge in Missoula.

A USFWS spokesman declined to comment on the request.

The Yellowstone grizzly bears had been listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act for more than 40 years when the protections were lifted in summer 2017. Removing the protections ceded management responsibility to the states of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana and opened the door for potential hunts. None have been planned.

Shortly after the protections were removed, environmental groups and tribal governments sued over the decision. In the lawsuits, delisting opponents raised concerns over the population’s status as a distinct population segment, which is the issue raised in the request for summary judgement.

USFWS considers the Yellowstone bears a distinct population segment from other grizzly populations in the lower 48, which allows them to delist the Yellowstone bears while leaving the other populations — like the bears in and around Glacier National Park — on the threatened list.

USFWS used the same rationale in a 2011 attempt to delist the Western Great Lakes gray wolf. But a Humane Society lawsuit has blocked that delisting.

This fall, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., sided with the Humane Society, saying the agency failed to consider the impact delisting that subset of wolves would have on the legal status of wolves elsewhere.

In December, USFWS announced a 30-day public comment period on how that decision affects the Yellowstone grizzly delisting, which remains in effect. Delisting opponents have described the comment period as an attempt to cover up legal flaws in the rule. David Mattson, a scientist and prominent grizzly advocate, wrote on the Grizzly Times blog Sunday that the comment period “was a cynical attempt to retrospectively develop a paper trail to remedy a patently deficient and overly hasty decision process” and flush out arguments delisting opponents might make in court.

The comment period closed Monday night. As of Monday afternoon, more than 2,700 comments had been received through the federal government’s online portal.

The agency plans to review the comments and issue a report detailing its conclusions by the end of March.

Yellowstone National Park saw a slower September than it has in three years, a fact the park blames on snow-caused road closures.

In a news release sent out early Wednesday morning, the park blames the slight dip on early winter weather. Snow closed some roads intermittently throughout mid-September. Part of the Beartooth Highway was also closed for nearly half the month.

Yellowstone National Park saw a slower September than it has in three years, a fact the park blames on snow-caused road closures.

In a news release sent out early Wednesday morning, the park blames the slight dip on early winter weather. Snow closed some roads intermittently throughout mid-September. Part of the Beartooth Highway was also closed for nearly half the month.