If there's an icon in the wild kingdom of Grand Teton National Park, it would be No. 399, a venerable grizzly sow known for her prolific breeding and trio of cubs in tow.

Native American artists, specialists in beadwork, flint knapping, music and other traditional and contemporary art forms, will be appearing at Grand Teton National Park through this summer.

As the country endeavors to become more and more energy independent, new techniques for extracting oil and gas from beneath the landscape are greatly expanding the footprint of energy exploration in the country. These efforts have greatly increased the production of oil and natural gas in the United States, and they also are creating problems when the drilling operations turn up on the doorsteps of national parks.

Wolf numbers in the northern Rocky Mountain states of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and parts of Washington and Oregon at the end of 2012 showed only a slight decrease from a year earlier, though the number of packs increased, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.