Beetle kill damage in Yellowstone National Park. According to the park’s “Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook,” bark beetles are more frequently attacking trees in the area as the climate warms. These pages were among 13 pages referencing climate change that were removed from 2025 hand book. Credit: Don Becker / USGS Yellowstone National Park visitors over the past few years have been asking park guide Leo Leckie why some Douglas-fir trees between Mammoth Hot Springs and Tower junction are turning red. Their change in color was clearly visible, but the cause wasn’t as apparent. This story also appeared in Mountain Journal “You could see the rust-like color on the trees where you never saw that before,” said Leckie, who works for Gardiner-based tour company Yellowstone Wolf Tracker. Leckie turned to the Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook, a compendium of Yellowstone information published annually by the National Park Service. He learned that bark beetles are attacking the trees, and that a warming climate is likely making their assaults more frequent and more severe. “The resource handbook is always on hand,” said Leckie, who has worked in the park since 2010. “It is the tool that I refer to when clients inevitably ask a question that I can’t answer.” The 2025 edition of the Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook. Last year, the entry that linked beetle infestation to warmer, drier weather disappeared, along with the entire 13-page climate change section. For the first time in nearly 20 years, the handbook does not feature a single chapter dedicated to climate change. The omission occurred as the Trump administration has pressured national parks around the country to remove information on climate change, slavery and the mistreatment of Native Americans. The handbook began as a loose-leaf binder that the park used to train employees in the 1980s and 1990s, according to Yellowstone National Park spokesperson Linda Veress. Today, the book serves as a study guide for many of Yellowstone’s roughly 750 employees and the 330 companies that operate inside the park. The handbook is available to the public as a free PDF download, and the park’s nonprofit arm Yellowstone Forever sells it in its stores and its online catalogue. About 1,500 copies are printed each year, Veress said. “The book is like the Bible of interpretation,” said climate scientist Elisabeth Cohen, who served as a staff reviewer for climate change in the 2013-2015 editions of the Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook. “It’s how you look everything up. It’s how you learn.” Three sections titled “Climate Change,” “Changes in Yellowstone Climate,” and “Examining the Evidence” were removed from the 2025 edition of the Resources and Issues Handbook. Veress directed questions about why the climate change section was removed to the main NPS Media Office. “The decision to revise this content was not directed by the Administration,” said an unidentified NPS spokesperson. “The previous climate-related sections relied on outdated data and broad, non-park-specific information, including material that was more than a decade old and not focused on Yellowstone. The most recent study that the climate change section cited was from 2019, and much of the research it incorporated was from the 2000s and early 2010s. It did not include more recent climate science, such as the 2021 Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment.  “[Removing climate change] feels really irresponsible,” said Cohen, who worked as a park ranger in Yellowstone in 2001. “We’re neglecting a problem and it will just get worse if we’re not paying attention to it.” While the average overall annual precipitation that falls from the sky in Greater Yellowstone has not changed significantly, the time of year that precipitation falls has changed dramatically. Summer and winter are getting drier, while spring and fall have grown wetter. The deleted section described some climate change impacts on the park’s ecosystems, such as the shrinking of ponds and reduced summer flows in the Yellowstone River. Different areas of the 2025 Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook still mention climate change. The entry on pika, for example, states that climate change threatens their habitat, but the handbook no longer explains in-depth how the climate is shifting in Greater Yellowstone. Cathy Whitlock is a climate scientist and Regents Professor Emerita at Montana State University. “Climate change in Yellowstone means warmer temperatures, less snowpack and drier summers,” said Whitlock, who was a co-lead author of the Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment. “These conditions, in turn, will bring more wildfires, warmer, shallower streams with fishing restrictions, and more extreme events like the spring floods of 2022.” According to the Assessment, average temperatures across the region have increased 2.3°F since 1950. Spring and fall are getting wetter, while summer and winter are growing drier. Annual snowfall has dropped by about two feet, or 24 percent since 1950. Projections indicate that temperatures could warm an additional 2.7-degrees F by 2050, depending on greenhouse gas emissions during the coming decades. “[Removing climate change] feels really irresponsible,” said Cohen, who worked as a park ranger in Yellowstone in 2001. “We’re neglecting a problem and it will just get worse if we’re not paying attention to it.”Elisabeth Cohen, climate scientist, former ranger, yellowstone national park Yellowstone is not the only park in the region to take down educational material. The Jackson Hole News and Guide reported in January that Grand Teton National Park removed a sign that described the complex legacy of Gustavus Cheyney Doane, an Army Captain who wrote detailed descriptions of his 1870 journey through Greater Yellowstone that helped spur the creation of Yellowstone National Park two years later. “Doane participated in what is now known as the Marias Massacre, at which, the U.S. Army killed over 170 Piegan Blackfeet, including many women, elders, and children,” read an excerpt on the sign, titled “How do we acknowledge the good and bad of a historic figure?” The Washington Post in March highlighted a leaked database showing materials at dozens of national parks that the U.S. Department of the Interior had targeted for removal. DOI ordered every national park to report material that potentially violated Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s Order 3431, which seeks to eliminate content that “inappropriately disparages Americans” or “emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance or grandeur of [a] natural feature.”  Yellowstone reported that no signage or media it publishes violates the order, according to the leaked database. The 2025 Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook had been drafted before the secretary’s order was issued, according to an NPS spokesperson who declined to provide their name. Yellowstone National Park releases a new edition of the handbook annually. The 284-page 2025 edition contains a wealth of information ranging from the number of bat species in Yellowstone to 1920s park concessionaire slang. By 2008, the park had added a section on climate change. By 2024, it had grown into three chapter subsections titled “Climate Change,” “Changes in Yellowstone Climate,” and “Examining the Evidence.”  All three subheadings and their content disappeared from the 2025 handbook, and the park has not released the 2026 edition yet. An unidentified NPS spokesperson declined to say in an email whether the 2026 Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook will contain more up-to-date information on climate change. Educators are concerned about the impacts of removing climate change from a resource that is widely used by guides, park rangers and curious visitors. “There are about 300 guide companies in Yellowstone,” Leckie said. “The climate section of the resource guide is essential for these stewards of the park who are teaching the millions of visitors who come to Yellowstone.” The post Pages devoted to climate change have disappeared from key Yellowstone guidebook appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less