PR Campaign Aims to Restore Luster to Crown Jewel : Despite Fires, Yellowstone Park Is Alive . . . and Well

Yellowstone, its image hurt by fires, starving elk and the slaughter of bison, is the focus of a high-powered public relations effort to restore the gleam to the National Park System’s crown jewel.

Nature is slowly healing the wounds left from the summer of 1988’s forest fires that burned nearly 1 million acres of the 2.2-million-acre park. But Yellowstone’s magical lure is being crippled by vivid images of 200-foot-tall walls of flame that were projected into America’s homes by television last year.

“The more sensationalistic coverage led the public to believe that Yellowstone simply burned up, that there was nothing left,” said Yellowstone spokeswoman Joan Anzelmo. “That’s very far from the truth. The park is open, it’s alive, it’s well.”

Blackened Skeletons of Pines

Thick blankets of snow are slowly melting, uncovering in the park a new landscape. In some areas, where visitors once could not see beyond the green needles on the first phalanx of pines, the eye can now scan up hillsides of charred tree trunks. Lining sections of the Grand Loop that circles through Yellowstone’s interior are blackened skeletons of once-majestic lodgepole pines.

But in other areas, grass and wildflowers are sprouting along with lodgepole seedlings that got their start when the fires seared open pine cones, scattering seeds.

Higher than usual numbers of winter deaths of elk and Montana’s hunting of bison that roam north of the park’s boundary have also hurt Yellowstone’s image.

Park biologists agree that some of the elk deaths can be traced to starvation stemming from the fire damage. But they also point out that recent mild winters and lush summers let some elk live beyond their normal years and so this year’s more typical Yellowstone winter was bound to kill large numbers.

As for the buffalo, they are killed when they wander outside the park because of fear that they may bring disease to livestock.

Natural Environment

Yellowstone defenders stress that the park is intended to be a natural environment, with death and fire as natural as re-growth and rebirth.

“The very simple solution to all of this would be to put up a 12-foot high cyclone fence around Yellowstone National Park, and we can now keep the buffalo in,” said Steve Shimek, a spokesman for Travel Montana, a branch of that state’s Commerce Department. “And then we bring in the hay trucks and we feed all the elk and we keep them nice and fat, and then we put out all the pesky fires.

“As a tourism product, we compete with a New York zoo,” Shimek said. “Montana is not interested in competing with a New York zoo. Montana is interested in competing on the level of a wild, natural place.”

Getting the public to understand that concept and return to Yellowstone is costing Wyoming and Montana hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Falloff in Trips Seen

Surveys taken in recent months found that many people said they were less likely to come to Yellowstone, and many tourism counselors foresaw a fall-off in trips there.

Gene Bryan, director of Wyoming’s Travel Commission, is sending media kits to 3,000 travel writers throughout the world. Those kits contain a fact sheet on what the fires did and did not do, a story on the park’s recovery program and an outline of the rehabilitation work.

Also outlined are the projects the Park Service is putting together to explain the ecological role of fire. Those projects will include an exhibit center and “wayside exhibits” along Yellowstone’s road system that will describe where the fires roared and what they did.

Also planned are nature trails that will lead visitors through burned and unburned areas.

In the weeks to come, TV stations in the nation’s major markets will receive videotapes depicting Yellowstone’s rebirth. Tour operators also will be escorted through Yellowstone to show them that the park is still an attractive destination.

The goal behind Wyoming’s decision to spend roughly $600,000 on the tourism campaign is to reverse the dip in advance bookings for the coming season, which at one point were running 33% behind normal for this time of year.

“Bookings are still down,” Bryan said, “but there’s a definite trend upwards.”