Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Interview with a Yellowstone Park Ranger - Harlan Kredit - 48 years and counting

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Interview with a Yellowstone Park Ranger - Harlan Kredit - 48 years and counting · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to move.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, welcome to Planet Geo.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Today we are interviewing a really interesting person, a long-serving Yellowstone National Park ranger, Harlan Credit.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: But before we get into the full interview, we're gonna let him take it away with a quick story.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, so Harlan, I mean, uh, so what's what's the funniest thing you've like, you know, either found a visitor to the park doing or the most ridiculous thing?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, people ask the strangest questions.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm out at Mud Volcano, and there's a big group of bison that are coming through the parking lot, and one big bull is standing right on the middle of a trail, only 30 feet from the car.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I take a large sign and set it right through the beginning of the trail that says trail closed.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: A lady comes walking up to me, she's looking at the sign, she looks at me, the bison is 30 feet away, just 2,000-pound bull bison, and she says to me, Why is the trail closed?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like what a lady, can you not see?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you uh I I think they believe that those are rubber bisons, and if we pull their tails, they'll start to sing and dance or something, you know.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's the real thing.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that's a little bit.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: What state was she from, Harlan?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where this podcast is gonna go, so I've been saying that's all right, Harlan.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: Before we get into it, you are hands down the best teacher that I've ever seen work the craft.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: You are a nationally recognized teacher.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: You won the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science teaching, which is one of the highest honors that a teacher can have.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: You've taught high school biology and earth science for 58 years.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: You've been a Yellowstone Park Ranger for 48 years.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: Carlin, I still remember the days when you were uh riding around on that mint green moped in Yellowstone Parker.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes, yeah.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty valuable.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they're pretty valuable right now.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where it is, but oh yeah, I wish I had that one.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, from just a personal note, you know, I've been teaching that summer science program now for 20 years, and every year we go out to Yellowstone, and the highlight of our trip is to expose our kids to Harlem credit.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for your very kind interview.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, um, yeah, I love to talk to you about a little bit what's going on.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I did teach at Unity for 11 years, but finally moving back to my home state of Washington.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I love the mountains and the ocean, and that was just kind of my environment.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been there ever since, so well over 40 years, and still continuing to work in the high school coaching and teaching and things like that.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another big uh challenge at our school here we started about 35 years ago.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: We built a fish hatchery.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the salmon that used to be there in such huge numbers are had largely disappeared in the creek right behind our school.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have a fish-bearing stream right next to our school, actually right behind our football field.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we built a fish hatchery and we've been operating that for about 35 years.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: We raised about anywhere from 50 to 100,000 salmon, and just two weeks ago, right below our our uh hatchery, we 23 big coho salmon, which is what we raised, swam past right close to our hatchery.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of gratifying.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: So those were probably uh fish that you had released or a couple years ago, right?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's our class of three years ago.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a three-year cycle.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's a class 2018.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's very cool.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's pretty safe to say that there is no other human being walking that knows as much about Yellowstone National Park as you do.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's being that's being very kind.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've been around the block there a few times, and so I'm considered the old guy.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the old guy in the park, you know.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to just start by saying that I'm not speaking officially for Yellowstone National Park.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is a person who's worked there for the long length of time, but this is not official park policy.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh just a lot of people listening to this probably won't know.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, what what does an actual ranger do?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like what are your duties?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when you're there for this whole summer, can you kind of summarize you what you're doing on a day-to-day basis briefly?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very fair question.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, typically in an in a normal, normal day, I'll maybe work an hour or two in a visitor center.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I will take a guided walk or talk uh program somewhere.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'll spend some time in one of the thermal areas walking around and make sure people uh you can talk to them about what's happening and people are staying on boardwalks and are being safe and so on.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Often in the evening, I'll give an evening campfire program a couple days a week.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: We work a 40-hour week.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I'm interacting with visitors almost all of the time.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I take that very seriously as being a park employee, being very professional about it.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So our goal is to help educate people and have them enjoy the park safely.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're not in law enforcement.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: We help with that maybe a little bit by pointing out things, but we're not writing tickets.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Our division is the interpretive division, so we're interpreting the park features to the visitors.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's our role.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: So, Harlan, how long have you worked in Yellowstone?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: And what are some of the biggest changes that you've observed during that time?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I've actually worked there for 48 summers, and there are some very interesting changes.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the ethnicity changes are interesting in terms of visitor usage.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Starting about five or six years ago, we had a lot more Asian Pacific Rim visitors, not this summer because of the virus issue, but that's been a uh a very major change.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: The actual numbers of visitors have gone up too enormously.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this past summer in July and August, September was some of the highest numbers ever.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: In September, the highest number we've ever had in the history of the park.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: That was what what month was that?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: That was in September.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was just it was amazing uh with the changes there that have occurred there.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: I see it is amazing, Harlan, because we're in the middle of a pandemic, and it that's a really unexpected uh statistic, isn't it?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you were there in June, uh you could, you know, you could explode a bomb, it wouldn't hit anybody.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: We thought this is going to be terrible.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But in July, the people started coming, and August and September, they would come at 10 in the morning, they'd leave at 5 in the afternoon because they lived they came from the surrounding communities because you couldn't stay in the park, but the numbers were unbelievable.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: We would have parking lots were all jammed.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess if I've noticed a change, it would go along these kind of lines in the last fall.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's clear that the American population, the world population, is appreciating national parks.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so these public lands are incredibly important.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And as our population grows and the interest in them increases, we have to have more of them or manage them differently because that is one of the most difficult changes and challenges.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's just how are we going to handle this influx of visitors?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was it was phenomenal.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: So would you say that would would you say with the numbers right now, especially during COVID, that you're oversubscribed, that the park is filling to the brim and you're you're really having some major problems with uh capacity issues?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, clearly, Jesse.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Way over.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it's the parking lot at Old Faithful.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have two big ones, they're just not enough room to park, lots of trailheads.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I uh people would park on the grass all around the trailheads because the regular parking area was full.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen that kind of usage as long as I've been so.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: So Arlen, yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: So you you've been going to Yellowstone for 48 straight years.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's kept you there?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, ha have you had other opportunities to go to other national parks and and why why Yellowstone in particular?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: Can you give us short Okay?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's a very fair question.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I like that particular place?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh first place, I have visited almost all the national parks in this country.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've gone over to 200 national parks and national monuments.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: We do that other times of the year.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I've really spent a lot of time there.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: But Yellowstone, I'm the kind of person that once I see something and get involved in that and study it and learn about it, and it it the the longer you stay there, the more complicated the whole ecosystem becomes.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I just enjoy s staying in one place.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for instance, I've been asked a number of times to go to the old faithful area.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, no, I like the shore of Yellowstone Lake.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I like that inter interface between the water, the geology underneath, and so on, and the animals that come to the lake to to drink.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, cool.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I'm very content to stay in one place, but I travel a lot, and and uh it just kind of gets in your DNA.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's just kind of unique.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of parks, and what's so special about this one is like there's three national parks.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's a geology park, there's a a biology, a biology park, and there's uh the the thermal history of that thing.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, any one of those would be enough to make it a national park in its own right, but all three of those things kind of interface together.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: So, uh Harlan, I just want to say this.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: You are a living testament to why age is needs to be respected in our culture.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: You're just saying that because you're getting up there in years right now, aren't you?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: You better watch it for the future, aren't you?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, right away when I work in the visitor center and someone walks in and says, you know, I was a kid here and I came here when I was six years old back in 1975.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Hey, what can you tell me about the all turn to look all my co-workers turn to look at me and said, Talk to him, talk to him.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, yeah.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, Harlan, you addressed this a little bit, but you said this past September, which is September 2020, was the highest attendance on record.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: How has COVID-19 and the pandemic really changed the dynamic of the park?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's changed it enormously, it changed a lot of the timing.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, like I said, 10 o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the afternoon is the time that most of the visitors are there.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And because we have so many of them and our social media is so prevalent, if we have an incident like we just had the last week of August, we had a very large grizzly bear chase a bull elk out in the Hayden Valley, right out in the middle of the river, and they're swimming, and the bear is trying to catch the elk, finally caught it in the middle of the river.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's this big battle, the the bear wins and pulls the elk close to the shoreline of the river where all the visitors are, and because we had so many of them and so much social media, that event generated literally thousands of people parked along that road for miles wanting to see this.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the the the huge number of visitors concentrated during a pretty short period of time meant a lot of times the roads were just clogged when there were special events that people were looking at.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really interesting.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: You bring up the social media thing.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: I I I I would never have never guessed that, but so people are kind of you know tweeting about whatever there's a grizzly bear, you know, chasing an elk right now, and then people actually come because of they see this stuff and tweet uh you know on Instagram or on social media in some sense.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and if you were to talk to the rangers, the entrance stations, because this is what they said, is they come in there and pay their money to get in the park or show them their path.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, where's the bear thing?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the bear and the elk thing?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Where is that?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: That got so many people came in the park looking for that.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: They knew that before they even got there.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, so they just swung to those spots.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, oh yeah, without a doubt.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Cool, very cool.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: Hey Harlan, so can you tell us uh a little bit about the reintroduction of the wolves?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because I know that you played a special part in that.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, or at least you got to, I mean, had a pretty cool experience with the reintroduction of the wolves.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: So can you talk about that?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure, I'd love to talk about the wolves.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the history is a kind of a long, convoluted one, but we can make this relatively short.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, we killed them all from about 1900 to about 1930, and as you know, the elk population just soared.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: When I first came, there was well over 20,000 animals, and the northern range was grazed uh down very, very badly.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so there was a lot of talk about introducing wolves, and and eventually that happened.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: 1990 uh uh ninety-four we got uh let's see 14 of them, then a year later we got 17, and the year after that we got another 10.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: The first group came from Canada, the last group came from northwest Montana.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward to today, uh the elk population is doing very well, and the wolf population is pretty healthy.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: We have over a hundred animals, and in our particular instance today, to bring it very much up to date, we had one of the largest packs of all called a wapity pack, named after a little lake not too far from the Hayden Valley, which is a big wide open viewing platform about 10 miles long, big open valley.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: But this summer, that Whoppity Pack was so visible, and just talking about social media again, we have a group of people, we call them, and I this is not a negative comment at all, uh, you know, but we have these groupies, we call them wolf groupies and bear groupies, and this is a group of people, very nice people, who every year come to the park for a month or two, and they have their high-tech communications social media devices and their five thousand dollar lenses and etc.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they follow those wolves all over.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, this particular summer, that Wapity Pack, there was over 20 animals, they would sit out there by the day after day, and if the wolves were in one particular place, they'd all notify each other in their radios and phones, hey, here's where it is.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: They all throng over there, set their gear up.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's happened is that it as far as wolves are concerned, it's becoming a very loved part of a Yellowstone experience.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: We got actually got to see a wolf.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's and they know exactly there are four black ones, and there's two white ones, and the and the alpha female is such and such, and so it's the social media has generated a huge following among our wolf groupies, and then they that spreads to the general public.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's true.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: Our group, more often than not now, we will have a wolf sighting at some point during our Yellowstone trip.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's become so much more common.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: It used to be very rare.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: Harlan, what's another sort of major ecological or biological issue that faces Yellowstone National Park?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think one of the major ones right now involves invasive species, which is not just the lake trout, it's the zebra mussel and associated uh invasive species like the zebra mussel.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what's happened is that we have a very robust, a very, very vigorous program of trying to check every single boat and kayak and inner tube that ever goes in Yellowstone Lake.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if you looked on a map and see how those invasive species are getting closer to the park, we realized that we're almost kind of a little of an island there.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've got this gigantic lake, second biggest lake at this altitude in North America, 146 miles around at Yellowstone Lake, which we're trying to keep as clean as we possibly can.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a real concern that we have.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't have a little You don't have zebra bustles or or major issues at the moment, but you're actively playing defense against these things?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're playing we're playing defense.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now we do have a parasite called the New Zealand mud snail, which we found on the other side of the park, on the western side in the Madison Gibbon fire hole area, have not seen that on the eastern side, the drainage that we're talking about that's going to go to the Pacific Ocean.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we're all holding our breath.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I i i if you told me that the state of Wyoming, who does the water sampling, they sampled this past summer and said, guys, we actually found some.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't be terribly surprised.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: But most of our park visitors, when they come into their boats and sell they know the drill, and they have to get permission to go on Yellowstone Lake.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: This summer I worked in an office for quite a bit of the time, and that's what we did.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Inspected those boats to make sure that they were okay.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I wonder, I see this a lot also in the park just to yourself, the Tetons, and uh it's got to be a bigger challenge for them just because of the number of small lakes that people will bring small craft into, and it wouldn't occur to them that we have to get our kayaks checked.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Even people just say, like, even a float tube or something like that.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's wrong with the float tube?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, where did you float before?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we were on a river in a different no.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Those parasites can hide in that float tube.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not so much that how big it is, it's just where did it come from?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: How do you Yeah, so how do you like check for that?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like do you think that's pretty accurate?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Are you you you know it's it's not a hundred percent.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna check for everything, but they go through the boats very carefully, they inspect the holes and the the chambers that are inside, they ask where the boat was last.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we go through as best we possibly can.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but to say we're a hundred percent at no, I would never never say that.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: The other big other big uh issue I think coming down the road in the future here is also going to be has to do with climate change and related to fire policy.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: When I left the park in the in the middle of September, we had a pretty major fire burn in the old safe area slowly going out now.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we all know about the fires occurring in California and other places, Washington and so on.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: We we get that.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: But what effect does a subtle climate change of a degree or two have on that whole fire ecosystem?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a difficult, difficult qu uh scientific question.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second part of it is, and what do you do about it?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: One of our major trails that I take people on all the time and goes through an area that probably hasn't burned for at least two or three hundred years.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so when a lightning strike hits that, it's gonna burn very, very hot.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if the numbers of our parked visitors continue to go up as they are, at what point does the safety of the visitor play in trying to decide whether you're going to put a fire off or not?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: Because Yellowstone has kind of a hands-off uh policy, right, Harlan?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: As best we can, but it's determined by a whole group of federal agencies, and one of the things it's based on is what it's looking like for the rest of the West.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, if all the firefighters are already involved in other fires, we would tend to be more careful and put it out more quickly because if it really got big and endangered in the old Fay Falen and and uh energy corridors, power lines, etc., we wouldn't be able to put it out.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're really concerned about what the whole scope is uh is going on in the surrounding area.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: How many airplanes, how many helicopters, water tankers are available.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if if plenty of that's available, we have more of a hands-on a hands-off policy than let's say the uh Forest Service.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And also if it's a natural versus a man-made fire, right?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: I t my favorite line of people, folks, and you've got to understand.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: We know if you live in California, you don't want your home burned in a canyon, we get that.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: But in Yellowstone Park, fire was here a long time before CNN started filming it.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a part of the natural scene, has been for thousands of years.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's an important part of it, right?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, uh the fire is necessary to for the lodgepole pines to to regerminate, isn't it?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the the it's they are what we call a serotonous cone.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, it's a cone that's kind of covered with a wax or a resin.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And a typical fire, when it goes through any given area, let's say you had a certain tree that was marked, the hottest part would probably be around that tree for about 45 to 50 seconds.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just enough heat to melt off that resin and kick those seeds out.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that fire of 88, the real big one, and I was there then, that 700,000 acre fire, those millions of trees were all started naturally by those serotonous cones kicking out those speeds when the fire when the fire went through.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: So fire is just an important, it's always been that way.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, well that's really interesting.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so you know, this podcast, Harlow, as you may or may not know, is mostly about geoscience problems and geoscience questions, but you are a biology teacher.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I uh, you know, we want to ask you from your experience and your perspective, what's the most interesting point of intersection at Yelston National Park between biology and the geosciences?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: What's the what's the most exciting part for you about that intersection?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I I love that question.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I've been teaching earth science for about the last 45 years or so.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: So geology is an important part of what you're one of us.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: You're one of us then.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, hey, I'm I'm a general, I'm one of you.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: So here's here's the part that's kind of exciting.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were to go with me, let's say, on a typical walk at the mud volcano area, those two are so intertwined.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: The biology is determined by the geology.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, amen.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: The biology is determined by the geology.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, for sure.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: So in our thermal area, so you and I, you and I are gonna take a walk together.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: I got your students or whatever, and we're gonna talk, we're gonna start by saying, folks, is it hot here?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how do you know it's hot?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's bubbling.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, can you take a glass of cold lemonade and can you blow bubbles in a straw?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is yes.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: So just because there's bubbles doesn't mean it's hot, but it's got to be coming from somewhere.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then they look at steam and they see that the steam is coming out of the ground.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously that's hot.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we know there's something hot underneath it.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And how does that affect what's living in these pools?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, dependent on the amount of heat, that's the geology part from the volcanic hot spot.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: On the amount of heat produced is going to make a big difference on the biology of that particular pool.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's a connection.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Super hot water is going to have a certain kind of microbes.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not so hot water, a different one.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: In the Hayden Valley, that big wildlife viewing area.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that valley so such a great place?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because what happened there is that glaciers have carved this out, but basically there was a big lake impounded by a glacial dam.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It backed the water up, and you've got this gigantic lake, and sediment is collecting on the bottom, and sediment is a very, very fine grain.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when the ice melts and the lake bed is still there, you have like a piece of Visquein plastic on the bottom, and so the water can't get through, so it stays there, generating grass.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: So in the middle of the summer, when it's dry, the bison are there because the grass is there, because the bison are there, the wolves are there, the elk are there, the deer are there, the bears are there.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: So the geology story.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: I that the the you know how the geology of these glacially dammed lakes uh and and depositing this fine-grained sediment and preventing the trees then from getting a foothold in Hayden Valley is just awesome.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love that story.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's just awesome.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great and then about I'd say 35 years ago, uh, a guy came in from Denver, Colorado, who had the old original prints taken by William Jackson, the photographer, in 1871.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Big black and white glass plates he he used to expose it.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I want to go out here and identify and see if the trees have changed at all in that period of time.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the pictures were not labeled properly.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: So he said, so he said, Well, who's the oldest guy around here?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was pretty old with him at that time, so go talk to him.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I went out with him.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: We went out to the Hayden Valley, and he he's got this these big pictures, and we're looking at them, and these are 1871, and you compare to what was you know 100 years later, plus 100 years later, they're identical.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, the trees were not there then, the trees are not there now for the very same reason.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so that geology is the reason why we have thousands of people who are watching those animals out in that valley.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: If that had not been a lake, they wouldn't be there.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I I connect them.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: One other thing, in Yellowstone Lake, I'm very much involved in the research involved in the bottom of the lake, a lot of those thermal features and so on.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens there?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you go down to those thermal plumes, which is a geology part of court, and you take samples of bacteria and particularly some unusual bacteria, which people are never seeing, they're living down near the bottoms there.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: What are they what are they eating?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're eating so sulfur materials and iron materials and methane.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's biology connected with geology.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can't separate them.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's they're together.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so yeah.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, um, so Harlem, let's let's turn this around a little bit.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: Let's just turn uh the the scope a little bit.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you've already alluded to this, but what do you see as the biggest challenge that Yellowstone's gonna face in the future?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think I know what you're gonna say, but what do you think?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I enjoyed it uh that topic because it's such a fascinating one.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is how are we gonna handle the increased pressure from so many park visitors?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is an almost an insurmountable problem.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have big transportation issues, and some parks what they have done is they've they've invested in shuttles just as late as two weeks ago.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be doing some research on whether shuttles might work, let's say going in and out.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, one of the biggest challenges we have is a transportation thing.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing is we found out that the the campgrounds are just jammed with people.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, how many campgrounds do you build?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime you build a campground, you have an infrastructure of roads and utilities and services, which people don't think about.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: They just say, Well, there's a big metal.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you put a hundred tents in the middle?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but what are you going to do with the waste?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: What power supplies, where's that gonna come from?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the clean water gonna come from?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that balance between having more and more people, you have to be careful, you don't actually destroy the reason it's a national park and a wilderness park in the first place.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And who's ever smart enough to know what that decision is?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: So the decision today is there's a certain number of beds in the park.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you replace a hotel, you take out a hotel.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Certain number of beds, same thing with campgrounds.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's a certain number.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're not adding, we're not taking away.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: But as the pressure gets greater and greater, do we have to revisit that?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's a huge problem for future generations.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm not smart enough to know the answer.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: God, it puts a pit in my stomach.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Just a follow-up question on that.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Is it is is this a is the increased use of the park, is that a healthy thing for the economics of the of Yellowstone in particular?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, is it a a boon to the park to have this many visitors from a financial perspective?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Or or is it decoupled from the operation of the park?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a lot of it's decoupled from the operation, of course, because the more visitors that come, the more services you have to provide, the more often you have to pump the toilets out.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have more water supplies for them, and and etc.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, it and the other another big concern that I have is uh is the change in the demographics of who's coming.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh ethnicity.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: We need more people of of of color to visit the park.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see that uh I don't see as many family groups.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh people have so many other activities going on in the summertime, a lot of related technology that their kids uh can't come to Yellowstone because they have to uh they can't miss one of their summer camps or they won't make the team or something.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I always go out of my way.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I have a family group at one of my evening programs, I will call them out by name and say, thank you very much for coming to bringing to you kids, and you're the future of this of uh of Yellowstone Park and every other national park.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the challenge to get more kids involved, more racially diverse, and dealing with the a number of people, we have plenty of challenge.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so Harlan, on the aspect of visitors to the park and people coming, what is your um, I don't know, your recommendation or your favorite geologic feature in Yellowstone National Park?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: If somebody's, you know, if somebody listened to this podcast, one of our listeners out there has never been to Yellowstone, but they like geology or they like geoscience, where are you going to point them to first?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that they this is a can't miss feature.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, if they've never been there before, they've certainly got to understand the sheer number and size and scope of the thermal features.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: We are between five to ten thousand, depending on how big you have to call a thermal feature.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And to notice that there are two or three hundred geysers, the biggest concentration anywhere on our planet is something special.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: So certainly I'll want them to see some of the major geyser basins.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'll also say in the early in the morning, go to Grand Prismatic Spring.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll recommend that they go to a place called Grant Village, which is underused in a lot of ways but has some beautiful hot springs that you're close to.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: If I think they can walk or hike, I'll say climb Avalanche Peak, climb up on top of that volcanic plateau, uh, climb one of the elephant back lava flow and notice those black obsidian as you're walking along.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And think about that being oozing out of there like like black molasses and cooling.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Very cool.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'll point out, yeah, there's I got I mean, I can go on a long time on that question.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so so could I and so could Chris.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: So well, Jesse, thanks for asking.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, my favorite aspect.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just kidding.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's good.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: That's good stuff.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, well, kind of following along with that, uh, you know, in terms of what your favorite aspect is, Harlan, uh, what is it, if you could just summarize it, uh, you know, a brief summary of what is so special about Yellowstone to you.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot of family history involved.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my father went through there the first time in 1926 in the Model T Ford.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I went there and I was a very small boy.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, cool.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is in myself.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And now after being there for 48 summers, I will tell you that every year when I drive in there for the first time and drive along the shore of Yellowstone Lake and look out across that thing and realize all the experiences I've had, it touches me.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's an emotional reaction on my part.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just feels home.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I I love to talk about the Native Americans that used to live around there and how they were able to survive.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and it just it just grasps you.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of it's a it's a spiritual connection, it's a philosophical connection, it's a scientific connection, it's a social connection.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I just feel comfortable there and I love to explore.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Before we finish off here, Harlan, I just kind of want to know what are a couple outstanding stories or experiences that you have from your long history of being in Yellowstone National Park.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: Either funny things that people have done that you've stumbled upon, or or very, you know, cool intimate experiences you have with Yellowstone National Park.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, when people ask me that question, that's a very difficult one in a lot of ways, because I've had so many.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've probably 30 or 40 that are really unique as far as I'm concerned.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a couple that really stand out.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one of my most emotional experiences occurs every year when I work with the kids from what we call the Big Sky Group out of Bothman, Montana, which are children that have are suffering from cancer.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's an oncology-oriented group, and these people take them out in the park.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I've often gone out with them, that there's a teenage group and there's a younger group, to an uh a place called Eagle Bay on the far end of Yellowstone Lake.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And at night I'd go out there with them and we'd walk along the beach, and on a clear night there we'd sit down on that black obsidian sand beach, and the night it would get dark, and the night sky would be so clear that very little light pollution, up eight thousand feet, you can see forever.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you talk to kids about the about the night sky.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the difficult part always is is that you realize that uh hope you know is such an important part of what how we live.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what what are we going to do next?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: What do we what do we want to do when you grow up?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And to realize that for many of these young people, their days on this planet itself are very limited.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: So to make the most amount of that time and to make it important and impactful to them, and in other words, enjoy that moment, was always something I took very, very seriously, yeah, and was a real challenge.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I was always blessed more, I'm sure, than they were.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: But that's that was an ongoing kind of thing.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Harlan, Jesse and I thank you really from the bottom of our heart.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_03: This has been great.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um thank you so much, Harlan.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's been awesome.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks a ton, Harlan.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: We hope we hope you enjoyed it, and uh yeah, it's been amazing.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, best wishes to all of you and have a wonderful day.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: See you another time.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right, perfect.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: See you in Yellowstone.