Denali Worker Told to Remove U.S. Flag, Rare WHITE BISON Born, Grizzly Has Quintuplets | National Park News

First up, a ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park died from injuries sustained after tripping and falling while on duty. Around 11.30 p.m. on Friday, June 7th, park ranger Tom Lorig was working with park visitors at Bryce Canyon's annual Astronomy Festival. while directing a visitor to a shuttle bus. Ranger Lorig fell and struck his head on a large rock.

Finding him unresponsive, the visitor quickly notified a nearby law enforcement ranger. National Park rangers, medically trained bystanders, and local EMS personnel cooperated to provide initial life-saving care, but were unsuccessful in reviving Ranger Lorig. He was 78 years old. Quote, Tom Lorig served Bryce Canyon, the National Park Service, and the public as an interpretive park ranger, forging connections between the world and the special places that he loved, said Park Superintendent Jim Ireland. As our community processes and grieves this terrible loss, we extend our deepest condolences to all of Ranger Lorig's family and friends.

Ranger Lorig began his work with the National Park Service at Carlsbad Caverns in June of 1968. In the decades that followed, he would serve at 14 national park sites, including Badlands, Bryce, Carlsbad, Olympic, Saguaro, Yosemite, Zion, and Dinosaur National Monument, of which he was especially fond. A landslide has taken out an entire section of Highway on Teton Pass, which connects Jackson, Wyoming, the southern gateway community for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, with the Idaho Falls area. The collapse forces a long-term closure to a highway that is a main artery for many of the people that work in Jackson, serving the local community and millions of tourists. Many workers can't afford to live in Jackson, which has some of the most expensive real estate in the country, and what little rental housing there is is now lodging.

Instead, many live in Idaho and take the pass. A lot of tourists take the pass as well. Residents of Idaho and visitors can still get to Jackson via Swan Valley and Alpine, which adds about an hour or 63 miles onto the trip from Victor, Idaho. This is going to really throw a damper on the community of Jackson for a while. A temporary detour should be open to the public within a few weeks.

They're going to have to use a lot of fill dirt to make a bypass of the slide. The detour will have weight and width restrictions. We don't know what those will be yet, but probably best to not plan on taking the Teton Pass at all over the next year in a large vehicle like an RV, possibly longer. On June 1st, Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, announced the designation of four new National Recreation Trails in four states, adding 33.5 miles to the National Trail System. The newly designated trails join a network of more than 1,300 existing National Recreation Trails, which can be found in every U.S.

state, as well as D.

C. and Puerto Rico. National Recreation Trails are jointly coordinated and administered by the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service in conjunction with a number of federal nonprofit partners. A National Recreation Trail can be designated by either the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Agriculture on an existing local or regional trail.

The new ones are Oregon's Banks-Vernonia State Trail, a 21-mile paved rail-to-trail route through the foothills of Oregon's lush coastal mountain range. Texas' Comal River Water Trail, flowing through the heart of New Braunfels. The Comal River Water Trail is 1.5 miles along one of the best tubing rivers in Texas. Utah's 9.7-mile Hell's Revenge Trail, which is the most popular off-highway vehicle trail near Moab within the BLM Sand Flats Recreation Area. The trail consists of long stretches of slick rock with outstanding views of Arches and Canyonlands, National Parks.

And West Virginia's Sweet Springs Turnpike Trail. At just over 1 mile, the Sweet Springs Turnpike Trail is a multi-use, gentle grade, scenic trail that transitions from open pastures to dense forest. It boasts magnificent views of Sweet Springs Valley and the Andrew S. Rowan Memorial Farm. More in a moment, but first, this episode is brought to you by RV Share.

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all on the RV Share blog. Check out RVShare.com to find out more and use promo code PARKS30 for $30 off a $500 or more booking. A grizzly litter of five is the largest ever observed in Yellowstone National Park, according to Cowboy State Daily, at least from 1959 on, the period of the park's history, where we have good records. In Alaska, there have been rare instances of grizzlies with five cubs, and even one with a litter of six, but this is the largest known in the greater Yellowstone area. There's no way to know for sure, but there's a chance.

the Yellowstone grizzly mom of five adopted some of the cubs, which isn't uncommon. In Yellowstone, the average litter size for grizzly bears is two cubs, and only about 49% survive their first year. Also, in Yellowstone, a rare white bison calf has been born and was spotted in the Lamar Valley on June 4th. Nobody tracks white bison birth, so it's not really known how rare of an occurrence it is, but this is the only known white bison of the 400,000 or so in the U.S. It's not an albino bison, born without pigment.

It still has a black nose and its eyes are not pink, which makes it truly a white bison. White bison are culturally significant to the Lakota people, who believe their birth prophesizes both a blessing for better times and warning to protect the creatures. And on that front, the National Park Service has released the final environmental impact statement for a bison management plan at Yellowstone. The herd size at Yellowstone is managed to maintain an ecologically sustainable population of wild and migratory bison, while continuing to work with partners to address issues related to brucellosis, disease transmission, human safety, property damage, and to fulfill tribal trust responsibilities. The statement puts forth three alternatives to managing bison, one of which would maintain the population range similar to the last two decades, 3,500 to 5,000 bison after calving.

The other two options would bring the high end of that range up to 6,000 or 7,000 animals in the park. Denali National Park and Preserve rescue personnel evacuated one of two Malaysian climbers stranded at 19,600 feet on Denali at approximately 7 a.m. on Friday, May 31.. According to the surviving climber, his partner had died in their snow cave about two days prior. A third member of the three-person Malaysian team was evacuated from a lower elevation a few days earlier, on Tuesday, May 28..

A combination of clouds and high winds on the upper mountain had kept both a ground rescue team and aviation resources in standby mode throughout most of Wednesday and Thursday. At 10.30 p.m. Thursday night, the park's high-altitude helicopter pilot was able to drop a duffel bag of survival gear near the two climbers' snow cave. The pilot observed one climber waving at him at the time of the airdrop. However, winds were still too strong to safely conduct a short-haul basket extraction.

With improvement in weather conditions, the park's helicopter pilot and one ranger returned for a reconnaissance flight at 6 a.

m. on Friday. Wind conditions allowed for the pilot to return with a short-haul rescue basket. At the end of a rope line, the surviving mountaineer climbed into the basket and was flown down to the 7,200-foot base camp, then evacuated to the Talkeetna State Airport for transfer to LifeMed Air Ambulance. The body of the deceased climber has now been recovered as well.

And a bit of a dust-up over the American flag. at Denali. First, social media rumors swirled that a contractor working on the Park Road bridge project was forced by the Park Service to remove an American flag from his truck. The Park Road and the area surrounding it are one of the most protected areas in the U.S. One hundred feet on either side of the road is designated wilderness.

Cars are not allowed on most of the road, only licensed tour buses. There are sheep crossings where the buses and other vehicles have to stop every few miles at a certain point in the hour to allow for safe animal passage across the road. Contractors are working on a bridge that will link the front half of the park back up with the back half that has been cut off since a landslide in August of 2021.. The Park Service denied the incident while looking into it, saying, quote, Reports that a National Park Service official ordered the removal of an American flag from a Denali bridge construction worker's vehicle at Denali National Park are false. At no time did an NPS official seek to ban the American flag from the project site or associated vehicles.

The NPS neither administers the bridge project contract nor has the authority to enforce terms or policies related to the contract or contractors performing the work. The American flag can be seen at various locations within Denali National Park, at park facilities and campsites, on public and private vehicles, and at employee residences, and we welcome its display this Memorial Day weekend and every day. But then they released a statement confirming that a Denali National Park employee notified the Federal Highway Administration, who manages this project, about a visitor's complaint of a flag flapping on Denali Park Road and asked if there was an appropriate way to request it be detached from a contractor's vehicle to limit wildlife and visitor impacts. The employee contacted the Highway Administration without authorization and without the superintendent's knowledge, according to the release. Park officials have taken corrective actions to ensure future park and project communications follow proper procedures.

Finally, a few weeks ago, a coastal French community found a yellow can buoy washed up on their rocky coastline. Upon closer inspection, they discovered an identification tag on the buoy with the words Dry Tortugas National Park and a contact phone number which they used to report the missing buoy. The boundary marker buoy had broken loose from its moorings in Dry Tortugas and had traveled on ocean currents for an adventure of over 4,000 miles. The residents have adopted it and installed it at their miniature harbor, a tourist attraction with electric boats for children and families. The buoy now proudly displays both the American and Breton flags representing its origins and new home.

That's it for this month's National Parks News Roundup. Thanks a lot for being here and we'll see you next time.