Shutdown Puts Chill On Park Businesses Groups Uncertain Whether Park Will Be Available

Snowmobilers and skiers aren’t the only ones locked out of Yellowstone National Park during the government shutdown.

Private organizations that run photography, research and educational tours in the park are getting cancellations and increasingly nervous phone calls while the Washington politicians negotiate.

Livingston photographer Tom Murphy, who has run Wilderness Photography Expeditions in the park for 11 years, said his first group is scheduled to begin touring the park on Jan. 8.

“They’ve paid for their trip and they’re wondering if they’ve got one at all,”, said Murphy, who specializes in teaching people how to photograph wildlife, geysers and other things only the park offers.

“The nearest geyser basin that’s comparable is the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia,” Murphy said Friday.

He said he is trying to organize alternatives like Montana landscape photography, perhaps in the Crazy Mountains “but I’m not sure what people are willing to do.”

Jono McKinney, of Bozeman-based Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies, said his group has had only one cancellation but there “certainly has been a drop in inquiries” since the government shutdown began. He said his fear is that, even if Congress and the president work out a temporary solution, another shutdown could loom in the future.

“The whole winter may be affected by people who believe that Yellowstone is closed through the winter,” McKinney said.

His nonprofit educational group takes volunteers who pay a $1,100 fee to do field research in the park. Much of that work focuses on wolf impacts and probably will have to be canceled if the shutdown continues.

Interns with the group continue to do daily wolf studies in the park but the “bread and butter” that pays for that work comes from the fees paid by volunteers in the research groups, McKinney said.

Another Bozeman-based company also is concerned.

McKinney said he gave a presentation to Yellowstone Glacier Adventures this week, which is leading a group from Cincinnati around the park’s periphery.

The group had planned to spend time inside the park but is now focusing on areas like Chico, Gardiner and West Yellowstone, McKinney said.