Telemetry: The Sound of Science in Yellowstone

One family's dramatic encounter with a grizzly bear. Listener discretion is advised.

Did you know there are tigers in Yellowstone? It just takes a keen eye to observe them. These creatures--and countless others like them--live in a world that's not always obvious, but the role they play in Yellowstone is huge.

"Vital signs," like blood pressure and pulse rate, are used in medicine to track human health. Paying attention to the little things can often help us better understand what's going on in the big picture. Scientists can monitor ecological "vital signs," too. In this episode, biologist Andrew Ray shows us that a little creature can tell us a lot about the Yellowstone ecosystem.

People travel from all over the world to see Yellowstone's famous geysers, colorful hot springs, burbling mud pots, and hissing fumaroles. The force that drives these amazing thermal features—a giant volcano—lies below much of the park. In this episode, we talk with scientists who monitor the volcano about misconceptions surrounding Yellowstone's volcanic past, present, and future.

Wolf researcher Kira Cassidy likes to say that when Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book in 1894 and included the famous line “For the strength of the Wolf is the Pack and the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,” he would have had no idea that over a century later, scientific research would back up his poetic phrase. In this episode, Kira takes us inside the world of the wolf and pulls back the curtain on what it means to be the leader of the pack.

On August 8, 2016, a lightning strike ignited a small fire on the edge of Yellowstone National Park near the community of West Yellowstone. Most fires in the park never burn more than about a quarter-acre, but the Maple Fire would go on to burn over 45,000. It was the largest fire in the park since the historic fires of 1988.

Last January, one of Yellowstone's marked mountain lions went missing. Scientists traveled deep into the park to investigate. And that journey? It wasn't as straightforward as they thought it would be.

Back in 1870, a member of the Washburn Expedition wrote in his diary about the Yellowstone cutthroat trout: "Two men could catch them faster than half a dozen could clean and get them ready for the frying pan.” Since then, things have become a lot more complicated.

What do scientists do when they're racing to understand what's happening to one of the smallest and most isolated common loon populations in North America? Whatever it takes. Get ready because this story might change the way you think about birders forever.