Yellowstone National Park

Re "Gun ban in national parks may be eased," Feb. 23 My husband and I were hoping to take our children to Yellowstone National Park this summer. Where can we find child-size Kevlar suits? Seriously, this is insanity. Why would anyone need to carry loaded weapons into a national park? The lifting of this ban defies all reasoning. Shannon Barber Glendale -- How wonderful -- first snowmobiles and now guns. Where in the world do we go for safety and quiet? Why does a gun need to be brought into a park?

The bison death toll continues to climb for Yellowstone National Park, as park officials say they plan to slaughter an estimated 180 animals captured Monday to prevent the spread of disease. The bison were captured on the north end of the park near the town of Gardiner -- not far from Yellowstone's famed Roosevelt Arch.

Re "Snowmobile limits set for Yellowstone," Nov. 21 What in the world is wrong with the National Park Service? I thought it was supposed to be a steward of one of the most beautiful places in our country. Instead, it decided in its wisdom to allow 540 snowmobiles a day to tear up Yellowstone National Park. The head of the service said the decision was "right for Yellowstone."

The National Park Service will allow as many as 540 snowmobiles a day to enter Yellowstone National Park -- a compromise that leaves neither environmentalists nor winter recreation advocates happy. The proposed cap is less than the current limit of 720 but nearly twice the number that have been entering the park in the last four years, and would reverse a trend of cleaner air and less noise, environmentalists and former park employees said.

Yellowstone National Park, once the site of a giant volcano, has begun swelling, possibly because molten rock is accumulating beneath the surface, scientists report. But "there is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption," said geophysicist Robert B. Smith. Smith and colleagues report in the journal Science that the flow of the ancient Yellowstone crater has been moving upward almost 3 inches per year for the last three years.

Re "Mining claims seen as threat," Oct. 16 The threats posed to national parks in California should not be disregarded. About 10 years ago, Yellowstone National Park was threatened by the New World gold mine, which would have been built at the park's doorstep. If not for the progressive measures taken by our federal agencies, which ended up having to fund a $65-million buyout package, the Yellowstone River and the entire park would have been exposed to pollution from myriad toxic substances.

A 32-year-old woman from the Los Angeles area died in a fall off a cliff at Yellowstone National Park, park officials said. The fall happened Friday evening in the Calcite Springs area, just north of Tower Falls. Her body was recovered in the morning. Her name is being withheld until relatives are notified.

Rain and cooler weather slowed the advance of a fire that threatened a century-old hunting lodge built by Buffalo Bill Cody outside Yellowstone National Park. The fire has burned 29 square miles since it began Aug. 9 after a lightning strike.

A nature photographer mauled last week by a sow grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park had no time to use pepper spray against the animal, a friend said Sunday. Jim Cole "does remember trying to grab his bear spray," Michael Sanders said. "He said that that he assumed that he startled the bear and the bear startled him."

After more than 30 years of strict federal protection, the Yellowstone population of grizzly bears is being removed from the endangered species list by the Bush administration. Formidable remnants of the wild frontier, the Yellowstone grizzlies, living in and around the national park, have rebounded from fewer than 200 animals in 1975, when they were listed as a threatened species, to about 600 today.