Park Officials

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- In the 1880s, after the herds of bison that once swarmed over the Western plains had been hunted to the brink of extinction, a few hundred of the animals were found living in the mountains of this national park.The Army stepped up patrols against poachers, and park authorities created a ranch in the park to raise bison. The restoration project was so successful that it became a symbol for the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service, which have an image of a buffalo on their badges.

Without drama or jellyfish, summer appeared to be winding down Sunday at Rocky Point Beach and Park. Lifeguard chairs soon go into storage as the 2011 swimming season ends at the popular, 375-acre Essex public park. Today ends lifeguard service at most public beaches throughout the state, which offered a respite during brutal heat earlier in the season. "This was a year when we were busier early in the summer," said Rocky Point manager Michael Sapp, a summer Baltimore County Recreation and Parks employee who also works as an elementary schoolteacher at Holabird Middle School in Dundalk.

After two years of waiting for funds, the Warfield's Pond Community Park in Glenwood received nearly $800,000 yesterday to develop about 9 acres into recreational facilities from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.The money will be used by the Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks to create tennis, basketball and volleyball courts, a fishing pier, two shelters, horseshoe pits, a playground and pathways and boardwalks around the pond, plus roads and a parking area.The money is one of the largest amounts provided by the DNR's Program Open Space, which buys land with the state's real estate transfer tax, said DNR spokeswoman LeeAna Salaverria.

ANNAPOLIS -- It was below freezing Friday morning on a sunny little peninsula in Harness Creek. A man bundled up in a scarf and hat walking his two young yellow Labradors was one of the few souls to brave the blustery trails of Quiet Waters Park. But the cold did not deter park rangers and maintenance workers, who arrived armed with power drills in a fleet of white pickup trucks, to dismantle a fairy-tale sculpture that Anne Arundel County park officials had deemed a safety hazard. The sculptor, Al Zaruba, said he was "emotionally beaten up" over the destruction of his work, titled The Sky Below, Earth Above - or "the treehouse," as park workers nicknamed it. After all, he had not even had a chance to finish it. "The piece never looked as beautiful as I wanted it to because it was still in the beginning stages.

Nathan A. Schomber probably learned a lesson at a wilderness park last month, when he picked up a rattlesnake and was bitten. And a further lesson when he had an allergic reaction to the antivenin and spent several days in an intensive care unit. But the National Park Service is driving the lesson home: It is fining Schomber $50 for picking up the snake to begin with. Schomber, 26, who is from Alloway in southern New Jersey, picked up the snake on July 18 in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, even though signs and park officials warn visitors not to. He was attending the Appalachian Mountain Club wilderness awareness school, and had taught wilderness classes himself, officials say he told them.

University of Maryland, College Park officials were to meet last night with state, Prince George's County and local officials to discuss the weekend fire at a house off campus in which one student was killed and another seriously injured. "It's not about pointing fingers. It's about finding ways to make sure we don't have to go through something like this again," said George Cathcart, a university spokesman. The blaze broke out in the 7500 block of Princeton Ave. in College Park early Saturday morning.

Volunteers are supposed to help. They're not supposed to help themselves to our land and our critters. But that's what has been happening at a few of Maryland's parks. The wheels of change are starting to turn, but why did it take so long? Consider: Wildlife researchers find one of their radio-collared deer dead and hanging behind the house of a Fair Hill Natural Resources Management Area volunteer. The field tag indicates the deer was killed at a time when the telemetry indicates the animal was still alive and mobile.

ESTES PARK, Colo. -- The elk that roam across Rocky Mountain National Park in their slow-moving majesty have become a signature attraction for tourists and an economic driver of the local economy in this town at the park's edge. But the animals leave some mighty big hoof prints. The park's biology has been skewed by elk overpopulation, which biologists say is squeezing out even butterflies and beavers, both of which need the aspen groves that the elk herd of perhaps 3,000 animals decimates in its search for food.

You can tell spring is here. The roller coasters at Hersheypark are getting ready to rumble. "During the winter, the temperatures are too cold - for most roller coasters, it must be above 32 degrees for them to operate," says Kathy Burrows, the park's public relations manager. "If the tracks aren't warm enough, they just won't go." Thank goodness it's supposed to be plenty warm enough this weekend for Hershey's annual "Springtime In the Park" celebration. Even though the season's grand opening won't be until May 1, visitors over the next two weekends (except for April 9)

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. -- Beneath the imperious granite faces that stare out at one another across this fabled valley, the signs of devastation are everywhere.The river that roared up just after the New Year is a quiescent mess, its banks splayed across meadows, its new shape carved from the roads and highways that ran alongside it.Favorite campsites have vanished. Marks from the water reach eight feet on some buildings. The valley's high-tech sewer system is newly visible, in lengths of thick, broken pipe that lie scattered along with countless trees.