There was a paper that zoomed around cyberspace a couple weeks ago, one that roamed far and wide, not unlike a young wolf seeking a territory of its own. It gathered speed as it was flicked around the Twittersphere because it focused on two subjects that captivate more than a few people -- national parks, and wolves.

It was more than a year ago when the Natural Resources Defense Council asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to see if the whitebark pine, a "stone" pine that grows in the very highest reaches of Yellowstone, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, was eligible for Endangered Species Act protection. Inaction by the agency has prompted the conservation group to sue it to act on the request.

A diminutive creature that struggles with warmer temperatures brought on by climate change will not receive Endangered Species Act protection for its predicament, the Obama administration has decided in a move that brought quick condemnation from some corners.

The recent swarm of earthquakes noted at Yellowstone National Park were most likely caused by shifts in tectonic plates, not pressures in the magma chamber beneath the park, according to geologists.