Yellowstone Standoff

by Scott Graham

  “It’s been two years.”

  “Grizzlies cover a lot of ground—and there’s lots of ground out there for them to cover. Lamar Valley alone is forty miles long, almost all of it roadless. It’s not like civilization starts right up at the park boundary, either. At this point, everyone figures the griz is so deep in the Absaroka wilderness east of the park no one will ever see it again.”

  “That’d be fine with me.”

  Justin gave Chuck a calculating look. “I’ll bet. I hear your wife and kids are coming with us tomorrow.”

  “And my research assistant, my wife’s brother. My contract calls for a quick recon, a few days at the site. We were planning to backpack in on our own from the south, over Two Ocean Pass. Then Hancock told me about the research teams basing out of Turret Cabin this summer, everyone together.”

  “Grizzly people and the wolfies and geologists and meteorologists and the new canine-tracker guy and the Drone Team—and now you, too.” Justin’s mouth twisted. “Going to be a whole herd of us out there.”

  “The site I’ll be working, at the foot of Trident Peak, is only five miles from the cabin. The timing turned out to be perfect. I was glad to join in, to be honest.”

  “Sounds like a peachy little family vacation for you.” Justin lifted an eyebrow. “Assuming the killer griz is as long gone as everybody says it is.”

  3

  All of you will use Turret Patrol Cabin as your base of operations for the summer,” Chief Science Ranger Lex Hancock announced to the three dozen scientists seated on folding chairs in the Canyon meeting room.

  A collective groan rose from the researchers.

  Chuck sat in the back row beside Clarence, who’d slipped into the room behind Lex, just after eight. Justin sat a few rows ahead and to the left, with the other Grizzly Initiative team members.

  Clarence shoved a length of black hair behind his ear, revealing the thick silver stud set in his lobe. He cast a questioning glance at Chuck, who shrugged, waiting to see how the ranger would respond to his disgruntled audience.

  Lex stood at a podium at the front of the room, flanked by American and Wyoming flags, his appearance as crisp as Chuck remembered from the years they’d worked together during Lex’s climb up the ranger ranks at Grand Canyon National Park. Lex’s gray hair was combed back from his high forehead, his mustache neatly trimmed. Despite the jowly cheeks framing the sides of his wrinkled face, he stood erect, shoulders straight, aging body fit beneath his pressed, green and gray park service uniform, brass badge shining on his chest. As chief science ranger, Lex oversaw Yellowstone’s scientific research operations while his boss, Park Superintendent Cameron Samson, served as Yellowstone’s public face.

  Lex waved his hands for quiet. “Now, now. I know this comes as no surprise to any of you. And I don’t necessarily blame you for your complaints—which I’ve been reading online.” He furrowed his bushy eyebrows at his audience. “Rather than complaining, might I suggest you instead welcome the opportunity to work in the backcountry at all this summer?” The room grew still as the ranger went on. “As all of you are well aware, last year was a dark time for our research efforts here in the park. After the attack the previous fall, Superintendent Samson and I made the difficult but prudent decision to end all backcountry science operations and, instead, limit research to only roadside activities for the duration of the summer season.”

  Lex pointed at a young man and woman in the front row. The two wore black fleece jackets emblazoned with logo patches of various outdoor and high-tech gear manufacturers, including the bright red logo of a company called AeroDrone. The woman, petite with long, ebony hair, straightened in her chair. Even so, her head barely reached the shoulder of the man seated beside her. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and clean-shaven, his head enveloped in a fluffy cloud of red curls.

  “The fact of the matter is, if it weren’t for the work of our Drone Team, we’d have conducted no backcountry research at all last summer.” Lex inclined his head toward the two. “Thank you, Kaifong, Randall.”

  The woman looked at the floor while the puffy-haired man lifted a hand and turned to face the others with a broad smile.

  Lex addressed the room: “One of several new faces with us tonight I’d like to introduce is Keith Wilhelmsen.”

  A young man in jeans and a plaid shirt twisted in his second-row seat to acknowledge those around him. His thick, black beard was untrimmed, his wavy, shoulder-length hair corralled into a ponytail by a braided leather cord.

  “Keith is a Ph.D. candidate out of Cornell. He constitutes the human half of the park’s latest research addition, our Canine Team. He and the second member of his team—his tracking dog, Chance—will work out of Turret camp this summer. Like all of you in your specialties, Keith is a top dog in his field—pun intended.” Lex’s joke drew a handful of chuckles. “He’ll be conducting leading-edge work in a new field of inquiry: the use of service canines to track other mammals. I know it’s unusual to use a domesticated animal in the course of backcountry field work in the park. It’s unprecedented, in fact. But the potential to expand upon our abilities to track and survey predators in the backcountry makes this new option one we have deemed worth exploring this summer. Keith and Chance will provide us with a new and, dare I say, revolutionary tool as we continue to pursue the grizzly involved in the attack on the Wolf Initiative’s Territory Team.”

  A number of scientists seated ahead and to the right of Chuck—clearly the wolfies—shifted in their seats.

  “Please understand,” Lex said in response to the show of unease, “we have no indication the bear we’ve come to call Notch is anywhere in the vicinity of Turret Cabin. Keith will spend the coming weeks testing and refining Chance’s ability to track other grizzlies whose territories include the Thorofare region. The goal is for Keith and Chance to be prepared to help in the pursuit of Notch when the bear is spotted—something we are convinced will eventually happen.”

  A woman two rows ahead of Chuck raised her hand. Her hair was shaved close on both sides of her skull. Half a dozen hoop earrings dangled from piercings in each of her ears. A blond mohawk rose from the top of her head and swooped down the back of her neck to the collar of a vibrant pink down vest over a skin-tight top. The nylon top hugged her wide shoulders and muscled arms. She spoke before Lex acknowledged her. “All this talk about Notch, and the humiliation you put the Grizzly Initiative through last year. I, for one, am getting pretty tired of it.”

  The researchers seated around the woman nodded their approval. After a second’s hesitation, Justin followed suit.

  Lex crossed his arms, his face immobile, giving the woman the floor.

  She shifted in her seat. “I know you’re trying to do what’s best. But I lost an entire year on my whitebark pine nut ingestion study because of your decision to pull everyone out of the field last summer, and the twelve-month gap in my data set has forced me to recast my entire dissertation. At this point, I’m not even sure my thesis committee will accept the changes I’ve had to make. It’s not only me, either. Everyone who was here last year, and that’s just about all of us, is faced with the same kind of problems—research screwed up, theses delayed—because of what I would argue was an overreaction on your part.”

  Lex grasped the sides of the podium and leaned forward. “We pulled you and everyone else out of the field last year for good reason, Sarah. We lost two of our people the previous fall. A terrible, terrible tragedy. The entire Yellowstone research community was, and remains, devastated by what happened.”

  “Understood,” Sarah said. “Much as I continue to disagree with it, my point is not to rehash last year’s decision. Rather, I’m speaking up now because those of us on the Grizzly Initiative—” she looked to her right and left “—believe your forcing all the park’s backcountry science teams to work together out of Turret Cabin this summer will severely limit our opportunities to conduct decent research again this year, just like your roadside-only decision hur
t us so much last year.”

  Lex released the podium and folded his arms across his chest as Sarah continued.

  “Forty people working out of the same base camp? With that kind of crowd around, all of us involved in mammalian studies will have a tough time collecting meaningful data. The only team that’s sure to get any decent work done is the Archaeological Team. It’s not like anything they’re here to study will be going anywhere.”

  Clarence dug his elbow into Chuck’s side.

  “As for the Grizzly Initiative,” Sarah went on, “we’re studying real, live grizzly bears. We have to go deep into the backcountry on our own in small teams to assure our presence doesn’t alter the bears’ behavior patterns. We’re trying to study their natural movements and traits, free of human interference, not their response to the crowd you’ve got heading across the lake to the Thorofare region tomorrow.”

  Lex’s steel-gray eyes glinted behind his glasses. He touched his upper lip with the tip of his tongue before he spoke. “I’ve acknowledged the difficulties inherent in last year’s decision, Sarah. Moreover, while your concerns are duly noted, I stand by this year’s determination that all backcountry teams will do the best they can while performing their summer research out of, and spending every night at, Turret Cabin base camp—which, I might add, park staffers have spent the last two weeks working long and hard to set up on your behalf.”

  “It was a grizzly bear,” Sarah said. “A grizzly bear doing what grizzly bears do.” She turned in her seat to face the Wolf Initiative team members on the opposite side of the room. “I feel for you guys. I really do. I can only imagine how hard it’s been for you after what happened to your Territory Team. But you’ve got to understand. Our two teams are studying different creatures with different study protocols, different needs.”

  “Sarah,” Lex warned.

  She continued to face the wolf researchers. “I don’t think you people can really comprehend the risks those of us with the Grizzly Initiative take every single day we’re in the field. Remember, it was a grizzly that attacked your team, not a wolf. Do you know the last time a wolf attacked a human? I’ll tell you when: never. But grizzlies? They attack. It’s what they do. They defend their young, their food, their turf. Learning what we can about their natural behavior by studying them in the backcountry is the best way we have of determining how best to keep people safe around them—and keep what happened to your team from ever happening again.” She turned to Lex. “You already cost us a year of critical research, along with the knowledge advancement that would have come with it. Now, with this group-camp requirement of yours, you’re about to cost us another year of legitimate, backcountry-based research.”

  “That’s enough, Sarah,” a male voice said from among the wolf researchers.

  Sarah spun in her seat, her mohawk swinging with her. “What was that?”

  Silence.

  “Too chicken to show yourself?” she challenged.

  “No,” the voice came again.

  A head turned, revealing the profile of a man with a long, sloping ski jump of a nose. A brown beard hid his chin, and a thick mustache, big as a cigar, ran around his face, almost connecting with his long sideburns.

  “No, I’m not chicken,” the researcher said. “In case you didn’t hear me, what I said was, ‘That’s enough.’”

  “I’ll decide what’s enough, Toby,” Sarah replied, climbing atop her folding chair. Before Chuck realized what was happening, Sarah launched herself at the mustachioed man with her arms outstretched, her hands aimed at his throat.

  4

  Those are some fiery scientists you’ve got working for you.” Chuck sat across from Lex at one of the long tables in the bustling staff cafeteria. The segment of sky visible through the front window was a glowing rectangle of pre-dawn magenta. Janelle and the girls were still in bed, but the cavernous room was filled with uniformed rangers getting ready for their shifts, and with many of the researchers who’d attended last night’s meeting.

  Lex held up his white paper napkin like a bullfighter’s cape, fending off Chuck’s comment. “Just one, really. And there are extenuating circumstances involved. Besides, the scientists don’t work for me. If they work for anybody, they work for Martha—or, more specifically, for themselves. You saw as much last night. They’re focused on their personal research projects, as they should be, and on how the park’s decisions will affect their studies and dissertations. They’re a pretty hard-charging bunch of kids. All of them have been studying their butts off since kindergarten, making perfect grades every semester, getting their papers published in the most prestigious journals, attending the best grad schools. They’re top-notch young scientists, and, what you witnessed last night between Sarah and Toby notwithstanding, they get along well together. They support one another, go out of their way to help each other out.”

  “They definitely were unified in their dislike of sharing a camp this summer.”

  Lex wiped his mouth and set his napkin next to his plate of bacon and eggs. “Like I told them, they’re lucky to be going into the backcountry at all this summer.”

  “It has been two years, though.”

  “One year and eight months, to be exact.”

  “A long time—” Chuck hesitated “—even as bad as it was.”

  Lex pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Do tell.”

  “I saw the video last night,” Chuck admitted. “Martha forwarded it to one of the Grizzly Initiative rookies. He showed it to me on his phone.”

  “Then you know there’s lots of room for debate about what happened.”

  “It looked fairly straightforward to me. The grizzly acted like a grizzly would be expected to act when the wolfies didn’t announce their approach.”

  “What do you mean? The two of them were talking and laughing. They were making their presence known.”

  “They weren’t yelling out to let anything and everything know of their presence, even though they knew they were approaching a kill site. Everything I read over the winter told me grizzlies have to be shown who’s boss. The wolf researchers didn’t do that. They were thinking gray wolves when they should have been thinking brown bears, and they paid the ultimate price for their mistake.”

  “You’re really suggesting the attack was their fault?”

  “We both know I wouldn’t be headed into the backcountry with my wife and kids if I thought otherwise, nor would you be letting me take them. I’ve come to the same conclusion I suspect you and all your grizzly experts have. What happened to the Territory Team was avoidable, preventable. Seeing the video last night reinforced that conclusion in my mind.”

  “What that bear did was not normal behavior,” Lex said, his voice flat. “It went out of its way to attack.”

  “It was sleeping,” Chuck countered. “It woke up startled. It went with its first and most basic instinct.”

  Lex bent forward, dropping his chin so the fluorescent ceiling lights shadowed his face. “Surprise leading to attack is instinctive grizzly behavior, yes,” he said. He lowered his voice. “But the attack of the Territory Team had elements that weren’t so common. Quite uncommon, in fact.”

  Chuck leaned forward. “Such as?”

  “There isn’t anything that can be put in writing. But there is enough circumstantial evidence to raise doubts. The distance to the attack, for one thing. You watched the video; you saw how far the bear ran when it charged—all the way across the meadow. Generally, grizzly attacks involve bears that have been surprised in close quarters, in deep brush or dense forest. They lash out defensively, then retreat. In the case of the Territory Team, the logical assumption is that the grizzly was defending its food source—the carcass it had commandeered from the wolves. That much fits. But the distance it charged was entirely out of the ordinary.”

  Lex rested his forearms on the edge of the table. “Then there’s the fact that the bear somehow overcame the team members’ pepper spray. Was the grizzly immun
e to it? That’s a scary thought. But without video evidence, all we have is conjecture.”

  He let a beat pass. “The attack resulted in multiple fatalities, lending even more weight to the theory that it was a predatory attack as opposed to defensive. That, again, is highly unusual, and raises any number of questions about the bear itself, as well as how park scientists should conduct themselves in the backcountry until those questions are answered.” Lex’s face hardened. “All of that explains why we kept the science teams out of the backcountry last year, and why this year, still with no answers, they’re lucky to be going into the backcountry at all. The universities and foundations that fund research in the park have been all over me, wanting me to let their people head off into the woods on their own again. Even so, the decision to allow the teams to head to Turret Cabin as a group is a significant compromise.”

  Chuck gripped the edge of the table with both hands. Lex’s response several months ago to his request to have Janelle and the girls join him at Turret Cabin had been unreservedly affirmative. “Yet you are sending a group of scientists into the backcountry this summer. And you okayed my family going in with me, too.”

  “The key word is ‘group.’ Essentially, we’re forming a small city at Turret. Everyone will go out from there to conduct their research in teams of three or more, just as we recommend to anyone headed away from populated areas of the park. The idea is that they’ll be just as safe as if they were based here at Canyon for the summer, or at Lake or Old Faithful.”

  “Just as safe,” Chuck repeated warily.

  “Look,” Lex said, turning his palms up. “I know you’ve worked contracts over the years at lots of national parks across the West. But I also know this is the first time you’ve ever worked at Yellowstone. You have to understand, Yellowstone National Park is different from every other park in the country—in the world, for that matter—in the way it mixes huge numbers of people with predatory animals. That’s something we deal with every single day. Yellowstone is like the Serengeti: predators prowl here. They hunt, they kill, they eat. It’s the real deal.”