Vol 3, #57

   Friday, June 4, 1999

YELLOWSTONE
WEATHER
Highs 60s, Lows 30s
Scattered Showers
 

Yellowstone Net Home Page
Vacation Reservations

ROAD REPORT
All entrances
are now open.
 

WASHINGTON, D.C. (DOI) -- Interested in fishing in Montana?  Wonder where you can go hiking in New York State?  Wish you could make campground reservations online?  The one-stop internet site for information about recreation on federal lands, www.recreation.gov, has just been re-designed and released to the public, now providing more information than ever in an easy-to-use format.

"Recreation.gov is a great example of working together in partnership to provide better service to the public," said Department of the Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.  "These lands are owned by every American.  Serving the visiting public is exactly why Recreation.gov was created."

Recreation.gov provides a single point of access to information about more than 1,900 recreation sites managed by eight different agencies.  The areas included in Recreation.gov include National Parks, National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges, lakes, rivers, historic sites, and more. The system also provides links to on-line reservations for more than 50,000 campsites and other facilities nationwide.

The site, which debuted last year to outstanding reviews, was rated one of the top 15 web sites in the federal government ("Best Feds on the Web") by Government Executive magazine in May 1998, and also received Vice President Gore's prestigious "Hammer Award" for innovative federal projects.

The newly improved Recreation.gov is more user-friendly, provides better search capabilities, includes more recreation sites, offers easy Internet links to national reservation systems and the federal agencies involved, and more.

Visitors to Recreation.gov can plan their summer vacation or weekend getaway by selecting the types of recreation and states or regions that interest them.  The site displays a list of federal lands in those areas that offer the kinds of recreation specified.  A "click" on any recreation site provides additional, more detailed information. Recreation opportunities include hiking, boating, biking, driving tours, camping, and much more.  The system also provides users with links to weather forecasts, digital maps, and other helpful travel information.

Recreation.gov is a joint project of the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service; the Department of the Interior's National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and Bureau of Reclamation; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; the Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration; and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS AND COLUMNISTS

Ralph Maughan
Kim Steinbacher
Kevin Sanders
Steve Brashear
Clint Wilkes
Tim Gourley
Hon. Bob Gammage
Ruth Colter-Frick
Lee Whittlesey
Tom Mazzarisi
Russ Finley
David Monteith
Denise Elmer
Dr. Bob Bara

The Yellowstone Net Email Newsletter, reaching over 3000 subscribers weekly, is now available on America Online in the National Parks Forum.  Each month, AOL highlights a national park in the Parks section, and this month's featured park is Yellowstone National Park.

To go to the National Parks forum, you must have Americal Online software.  The keyword is "Parks."

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Although the wolves and bison of Yellowstone are getting most of the attention from environmentalists and wildlife advocates these days, the grizzly bear is also listed as an endangered species, and its long-term survival in the Yellowstone ecosystem is not certain at this point.

The Sierra Club recently pointed out its concern that the ongoing commercial and residential development in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is threatening to the long-term survival of the grizzly.  Indeed, the larger Yellowstone area is currently experiencing a more rapid pace of development than ever before.   The growth is primarily in the form of residential development.  The problem is that grizzlies need large amounts of wilderness to survive:  the new developments are stripping away more and more of the unbroken wilderness areas that the bears need for their population to continue to grow.

Currently, some 250 grizzlies live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

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Fishing Season is now open in Yellowstone.  However, only certain waterways (such as the Firehole River) will be open to fishermen for the month of June.  Others will open following spawning season.  At this point, the snowmelt is causing the rivers to be too high and muddy for good fishing.  These unfavorable conditions will probably persist for at least another week.