Regional Management Program at Yellowstone National Park‪.‬

Abstract Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the U.S., was established on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone has been a leader in the National Park System's protection and management programs, programs which sometimes require cooperative regional approaches. A major concern over preservation of the endangered grizzly bear in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s led to an interagency effort and formation of the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. The interagency effort focused primarily on habitat that encompassed Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and the six surrounding National Forests. This region later became known as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. A Yellowstone Vision Document, an interagency coordinated land and resource management plan, was completed in the late 1980s. Strong concerns from National Forest constituents resulted in a significantly abbreviated, and less substantive, Vision Document and it was essentially shelved. The Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee became little more than a periodic social gathering of the forest and park managers. Only recently has the group begun to be effective in coordinating management and planning efforts. Many of these projects require collaboration with local, state, and federal government entities. Coordinated regional management efforts are used to address and number of current issues at Yellowstone including: wolf reintroduction; northern range and elk habitat; winter use planning; visitor accommodations/facilities plans; exotic lake trout; external mining proposals; and bio-prospecting.