Editor’s Note
When Yellowstone became a national park on March 1, 1872, it was the first of its kind in the world. The notion of setting aside wild land to protect it from development was alien to a lot of Americans back then. At the time, progress was often measured by how many towns and cities we could carve out of the land, land that was more often than not already occupied by Native American tribes and thousands of species of animals. In the name of progress, the park’s wolf, bison and grizzly bear populations dwindled over time. By 1916, the nation’s last 23 wild bison remained in Yellowstone’s Pelican Valley, and wolves were nonexistent. Yet, some of the nation’s first species recovery efforts began in Yellowstone, and today, you’re highly likely to…