Floodwaters this week wiped out numerous bridges, washed out miles of roads and closed the park as it approached peak tourist season during its 150th anniversary celebration.
Nearby communities were swamped and hundreds of homes flooded as the Yellowstone River and its tributaries raged.
New aerial video shows the devastating flooding in Yellowstone. The floodwaters have also impacted several nearby cities and towns in Montana. Congress allocated $178 million in emergency funds – a massive sum for park infrastructure at the time – and additional funding eventually surpassed $250 million, according to a 2013 report.
Along with the formation itself, there are also microbes and insects that thrive in the environment found almost nowhere else. And the park will need to avoid damaging any archaeological or cultural artifacts in the area with a rich Native American history.“They’ll have to look at all the resources the park is designed to protect, and try to do this project as carefully as possible, but they’re also going to try to go fairly quickly,” Hartl said.
Yellowstone’s recovery comes as a rapidly growing number of people line up to visit the country’s national parks, even as a backlog of deferred maintenance budget grows into tens of billions of dollars. The park was already due for funding from the Great American Outdoors Act, a 2020 law passed by Congress that authorizes nearly $3 billion for maintenance and other projects on public lands.