“The situation in Yosemite during the first reservation-less Firefall in many years is a complete mess,” frequent Yosemite visitor Jon Adams told SFGATE via email. To read the full article at SFGATE, click here.
Date: February 18, 2026 YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – Yosemite National Park today announced it will no longer use a timed reservation system in 2026. The decision follows a comprehensive evaluation of traffic patterns, parking availability and visitor use during the 2025 season. Park analysis found that most weekdays maintained available parking, stable traffic flow and visitation levels within the park’s operational capacity. These […]
“The Little Fires project, a Tribally driven, multiyear initiative funded by Yosemite Conservancy donors, is reintroducing cultural burning practices to the park. Using the same traditions and techniques that Native people used to tend these lands for millennia, Little Fires will focus on small areas with low-intensity fire. Though it’s starting as a pilot program, […]
“It’s truly disappointing to see commercial interests take priority over the duty to protect and preserve our national parks,” Pratt said, noting she’d stopped going to Firefall years ago because of the impact. “Traffic is only one issue-it’s the resource damage that is the core problem and it’s being ignored with this decision.” To read […]
“As more people live, work, and recreate in areas that overlap wildlife habitat, interactions can increase – not because mountain lions are becoming more aggressive, but because overlap is growing.” To read the full article from SFGATE, click here.
Understanding porcupine distribution isn’t easy. Porcupines are generalists, inhabiting a wide variety of forest types, so it’s challenging for researchers to know where to look. As herbivores, porcupines aren’t that easy to bait, either. Scientists have experimented with using brine-soaked wood blocks, peanut butter and even porcupine urine to coax the cautious critters toward cameras, […]
“Yosemite is prone to rockfalls, a natural and dynamic geologic process that involves the rapid downward movement of rock fragments, detaching from a steep slope, like the glacier-carved cliffs in Yosemite Valley. According to Yosemite National Park, over a thousand rockfalls have occurred in the park, and the quick-moving crack in a cliff on the […]
The federal government shut down overnight on Wednesday, leading some conservationists to worry about the disarray that could result from a lack of staffing for federal land. “You’ll have the element there of little to no staff managing the land.” To read the full article from ABC News, click here.
“Research shows that environmental reviews are rarely the main barrier to forest projects aimed at reducing fire risk. The bigger obstacles are the shrinking of the federal forest workforce over the past two decades, the low commercial value of the small trees and brush that need to be removed, and the lack of contractors, processing […]
“It just feels like we’re being taken advantage of,” said one permanent employee who has worked in Yosemite for several years. To read the full Politico article, click here.