For the second time this summer a black bear in Yellowstone National Park has been put down for developing too great a taste for human food. Park officials say the bear was killed after breaking into the backpacks of a "large group" of hikers.

Despite internal concerns for safety and high costs for a small number of people, the National Park Service has agreed to provide winter access across Sylvan Pass in Yellowstone National Park. However, conditions tied to that access could make it easy for the pass to stay snow-bound as Yellowstone officials initially wanted.

For the third time in a week a national park black bear has been killed, this time in Yellowstone National Park where rangers said the bruin posed a threat to visitors and park employees.

As energy prices creep steadily higher, there's a growing segment of America that believes short-term relief can literally be tapped from fossil-fuel resources in the Western states. But many of those resources are found on public lands that buffer national parks, national wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas, and their development could have dire consequences for those landscapes.