A report on the health of cultural and natural resources in Yellowstone National Park shows little has changed since 1999/NPS

A changing climate, insufficient funding, invasive species, and crowding all are impacting Yellowstone National Park, and not in a good way. That pretty much was the conclusion in 1999, and it remains the conclusion in 2017.

For the past 18 years, conditions in Yellowstone have stagnated or gotten worse in areas, with some improvement noticed in others, according to the park's State of the Resources report for 2017.

Buildings continue to want for maintenance dollars, roads and bridges needs hundreds of millions of dollars of improvements, climate change is impacting streams and aiding invasive species, human crowds are creating noise and waste issues, and wildlife diseases are on the upswing.

Back in 1999, then-Superintendent Mike Finley, in a similar analysis of how the park was faring, said Yellowstone "faces many challenges far beyond its financial abilities. In fact, the historic fabric of the park and many of its natural resources are at risk. In addition, the service levels to the public are insufficient to meet their needs or expectations."

The latest report came without an overview from Dan Wenk, who retired last week as the park's superintendent. But the data in it point to an array of pressures that are changing the park, and not always in a good way.

* Climate change is bringing less snow, and more rain, and producing an earlier-in-the-year snowmelt. This is leading wetlands to dry earlier and a greater overall percentage of "dry wetlands" in the park. This impacts fisheries in rivers and streams as well as an array of species dependent on wetlands. Overall, average temperatures are "exceeding historical norms."

* Air quality is suffering from haze created, in part, from wildfires, ground-level ozone, and nitogren deposition and sulfur pollution. The last two sources are of specific concern because the park's resources are viewed as particularly sensitive to these chemicals.

* Noise related to high summer visitation is pervasive. "Modified exhaust pipe motorcycles are the loudest vehicles during the summer and have been recorded 13 kilometers (8 mi) from the nearest road. During the summer, high levels of visitation result in both increased traffic and noise along the road corridors," the report notes.

* Colony nesting birds -- white pelicans, double-crested cormorants, California gulls, and Caspian terns -- have declined "substantially since the early 1990s."

For example, in 2016 approximately 414 American white pelican nests fledged 308 young and 57 double-crested cormorant nests fledged 34 young. These counts were down from observations in 1990, when 522 pelican nests fledged 572 young and 107 cormorant nests produced 203 young. Strikingly, 157 California gull nests fledged 295 young in 1990; but in 2016, none of only 12 nest attempts were successful. Caspian terns have not nested on the Molly Islands since 2005.

The declines are attributed to high water levels around the Molly Islands, a key nesting area for these species, as well as the declines in Yellowstone cutthroat trout, a key food source, due to the presence of non-native lake trout.

* Nesting success of peregrine falcons has dipped below the 29-year average.

* Trumpeter swan nesting and fledging rates have fallen steadily since the arrival of the 21st century.

* Wolves, often pointed to as a success story for the park, have declined by 40 percent, at least, since 2009, largely due to declining elk numbers.

Deferred maintenance, as stories in the Traveler in recent months have shown, have exacted a dire cost at Yellowstone.

One of the most pressing challenges to the preservation and use of historic structures, roads, trails, and other historic properties is the cost of deferred maintenance. The park’s historic properties are subject to deterioration caused by YNP’s harsh climate and by wear caused by high visitation and use. Due to limited resources, the park can complete only a portion of recommended preservation maintenance. ... Condition assessments document 77% of the park’s 895 historic structures are in good condition, 19% fair, and 4% poor. Since 2013, there has been no change in the overall number of buildings determined to be in good condition, and there has been further deterioration of buildings that are in fair and poor condition. Most of the buildings in good condition are in use, while those that are in fair condition are used for non-visitor functions such as storage. Most buildings that are in poor condition are currently unoccupied.

The contents of the 2017 report reflect that Yellowstone continues to be stressed by factors that in many cases are beyond the staff's control. And they very easily could be summed up much the way Finley summed up the 1999 report.

"It's very discouraging," Finley told me 18 years ago. "It's very discouraging when you're held accountable for the performance of an institution and yet not provided the resources to allow you to meet your performance standards.

"But more over, it's more frustrating to watch hundreds of thousands of American families come to Yellowstone and know that they're being cheated of a much better park experience. Not cheated, deprived. They're being deprived of a quality park experience."

There are some successes noted in the 2017 report, too. Grizzly bears, for instance, currently number around 700 in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, or roughly three times as many as there were in the mid-1970s, the report notes. Pronghorn antelope populations in the park reached 506 in spring 2017, the highest tally since 1993.

But greater human pressures, both in terms of sheer visitation, which surpassed 4.1 million last year, and in terms of population growth in counties surrounding the ecosystem (35 percent increase from 1990 to 2010), are threatening natural resources in the park and those that roam beyond its borders, such as grizzly bears, wolves, and elk.

"In the last 10 years, park visits have increased by more than 40 percent, shocking the capacity of park systems," the 2017 report notes.

What Finley said in 2000 about Congress's responsibility to see that the Park Service can properly care for its assets resonates today.

"I think all of our supporters and critics have the opportunity to review what we do, and if Congress finds that they don't like something we're doing, they can cut the appropriations and tell us not to do it," he said. "If they don't want us to protect historic buildings, if they don't want us to protect wildlife from poaching, if they don't want us to maintain roads, they have the ability to direct our behavior.

"On the other hand, I think that we've provided clear and convincing evidence that this park is underfunded and it's at risk."