While there are many, many more cars, trucks, and motorcycles traveling through Yellowstone National Park in summer than snowmobiles in winter, the summer traffic is not quite as polluting, according to park studies. Indeed, a greater problem with air quality in summer stems from forest fires.

Unexploded military ordnance turns up in parks from time to time, and a recent find in Badlands National Park was handled cautiously. That proved to be the right call.

Time is running out for Jon Jarvis to be confirmed as the next director of the National Park Service. If the Senate doesn't confirm his selection by the end of business Friday, the vote will have to wait until the Congress returns after the August break.

When last we left the issue of free-roaming bison in Yellowstone National Park, there was controversy over how the animals were being "hazed" back into the park from a place called the Horse Butte Peninsula in Montana. Now the Montana Stockgrowers Association has gone to court to force the hazing to follow a more specific schedule, even though no cattle are grazed on the land in question.