Every day here in Yellowstone about a quarter after six to around seven-thirty in the morning the local Osprey are charged with traveling up and down the rivers, as Town Fliers if you will, letting the other residents know that the tourists have been sighted and are on their way in. So everyone needs to look sharp and assume their usual positions along the banks doing what ever they do.

The elk will come down to wade in the water and pose as the first bus pulls up. The tourists all pile out amidst much shouting and gesturing, camera shutters blazing. On the days they are scheduled, the lone wolf on duty will lurk convincingly in the underbrush so it can suddenly appear for its photo-op, then move up-stream a half mile or so for its next appearance. This is just one of the many services provided by our nation’s premier national park.

There was a time not too long ago when all the animals had to punch in, get their assignments and go to work putting in their 12 to 14 hours a day. That was back in the mid 70’s, early 80’s when the parks ran a much tighter ship. However it made for a less spontaneous show and the tourists began to complain saying if they wanted a ‘show’ they’d go to SeaWorld or somewhere where they did a lot more stuff in a shorter period of time. New management was brought in that adopted a less rigorous style of running the park and although the various animals still had responsibilities they were left to their own devices as to how they wished to portray themselves.

This resulted in a much more relaxed, natural appearing park and the public loved it. It wasn’t long before the grizzlies were added and the occasional interaction between bear and human just added to the unexpected excitement as word spread that if you were lucky you could see a bear take down the occasional unwary tourist and drag it off into the bush. This was great stuff and before long the park was nearly over run by tourists wanting the ultimate spectacle. Fortunately for the targeted tourists this didn’t happen all the time so it became almost like playing lotto. If you were extremely lucky you might get to see it, screams, broken camera straps, the whole works. Repeat visits to the park became the norm and didn’t diminish in the least when the park raised its entrance fees. In fact it added an expectation that due to the higher costs you might be more likely to see the ‘big event’ and everyone wanted to be on The Bus that had the guy that got eaten by the grizzly bear.

Under these new wildlife management policies, the elk were left to battle it out during the rut rather than having to attend anger management classes, the wolf packs were allowed to consume a lot of those brand new buffalo calves without having to always stop and apologize, and the buffalo were just left alone period. They wouldn’t do anything they were asked to do anyway.

But as was mentioned previously, all of this activity starts every morning with the Town Fliers doing their part, flying up and down the Firehole and the Gibbon, the Madison and the Yellowstone, the Gardiner and the Lamar, Soda butte creek, Crawfish creek, Slough creek, Fall river and the Lewis and of course the Snake. Each river has it resident Osprey whose main duty of the day is to fly the rivers and lakes and call, “The Tourists Are Coming, The Tourists Are Coming”, as soon as they’re spotted so Yellowstone can start a new day.