Editor's Note
There was a time when I naively thought that national parks didn’t need advocates, that they would remain wild just by the fact that they were designated national parks. But when Lucky Minerals proposed a gold mine near the North Entrance of Yellowstone, I was shocked. A gold mine near Yellowstone? In fact, there were two mines proposed by two different companies, one on Crevice Mountain on Yellowstone’s border, the other in Emigrant Gulch 18 miles down the road from the park. Early this year, Congress put an end to gold mining on 30,000 acres near the park when it passed the bipartisan landmark Yellowstone Gateway Protection Act. It was reassuring that 147 years after Congress created the world’s first national park it's still willing to protect it. I don’t think any of…