Yellowstone National Park in a Changing Climate
to
Bozeman Public Library, Community Room 626 East Main Street
Free and Open to the Public - Seating on a first come first serve basis
Keynote Speaker: Gary Ferguson
Presentation Overview
For well over a century it's been center stage for the grizzly picnics. Some twenty thousand acres of whitebark pine nuts, floating on a high line of granite ridges above the southeastern edge of Yellowstone. Here was one of the last big meals before the bears slipped off to sleep in dens at Thorofare, on the flank of Bunsen Peak, at Dunraven Pass and Eagle Creek. But now the picnics are coming to an end, as changes in Yellowstone's climate weaken and kill the great whitebark forests. By 2020, ninety percent of the groves will be gone. Even more worrisome, given the warming temperatures in Yellowstone, whitebark is unlikely to ever return.
And that's just the beginning - one tale in a flurry of change that's remaking the face and heart of the world's first national park. Your guide to this fast-changing world is seasoned naturalist and National Geographic author Gary Ferguson, offering an hour-long program rich with stirring images and riveting stories.
Bio
Ferguson draws on more than twenty years being neck deep in greater Yellowstone, both as an instructor for the celebrated Yellowstone Institute, as well as through his close ties to the scientists now struggling to understand what's happening to this beloved landscape. Since 1992 Gary has written four books on the region; Hawks Rest (National Geographic) was the first work in history to be chosen best nonfiction book of the year by both the Pacific Northwest and Mountains and Plains booksellers, while Decade of the Wolf (Globe Pequot), written with Yellowstone Wolf Project Director Doug Smith, was the 2005 Montana book of the Year.
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