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Yellowstone National Park Junior Ranger and Young Scientist Programs


Junior Ranger and Young Scientist Badges
It's fun and easy to become a Junior Ranger or Young Scientist!

This is an overview of the Junior Ranger and Young Scientist Programs. There are two programs for youth, one for 5 - 7 year olds and one for 8 - 12 year olds. The newspaper for the 5 - 7 year olds contains seven activities. The newspaper for 8 - 12 year olds has ten different activities that you can do while you are visiting Yellowstone.
Yellowstone National Park Junior Ranger Pledge
Junior Ranger Pledge for 5 - 7 year olds Junior Ranger Pledge for 8 - 12 year olds
As a Junior Ranger, I promise to learn all I can about Yellowstone and to teach others to love and respect its beauty, its plants, and its animals. As a Yellowstone Junior Ranger, I promise to do all I can to help preserve and protect Yellowstone's wildlife and natural features. I will continue to learn about the natural world even after I leave Yellowstone.


When you have completed the number of activities you are required to do, you take the paper to any ranger station and they will announce that you have completed the program and present you with your Junior Ranger Patch. Cool! We have listed a few of the topics below to give you some idea of what to expect.

Yellowstone's Nature

When you become a Yellowstone National Park Junior Ranger, you become a Junior Ranger in the oldest national park in the United States. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the act that made Yellowstone the first national park, thereby protecting it "for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." Today you may be one of three million who come each year to see Yellowstone's natural beauty. As a visitor today, you share Yellowstone's 2.2 million acres with its wildlife, and you have the opportunity to help protect its natural wonders for future visitors. By becoming a Junior Ranger, you recognize that Yellowstone National Park is important for both people and wildlife. One animal that lives in Yellowstone and depends on the park for its future survival is the grizzly bear. That's why the track of the grizzly bear is the symbol of the Junior Ranger program. As grizzly bears lost most of their habitat across the United States to early settlement, they retreated to remote, wild places like Yellowstone. The bear is the animal that most people want to see in Yellowstone, but the bear often stays hidden from people. The secretive grizzly bear symbolizes all that is wild in Yellowstone. The bear lives here -- roams, feeds and has its young -- and we're lucky to share its wilderness. As long as Greater Yellowstone is preserved, grizzly bears and other animals that depends on this rich habitat will survive. As a Junior Ranger, you know as long as you care about Yellowstone, you can help protect its future! We hope you'll become a Yellowstone National Park Junior Ranger, and we hope you enjoy your visit in Yellowstone.



Become a Yellowstone National Park Junior Ranger and...

  • Learn interesting facts about Yellowstone's wildlife, plants and geology.
  • Understand the importance of preserving national parks for future generations.
  • Discover that becoming a Junior Ranger is both fun and challenging. It's even something you may want to do in other parks that have Junior Ranger programs.
  • Find that rangers are eager to talk with you about what you have learned.
  • Realize that becoming a Junior Ranger is just a beginning. After you visit Yellowstone, you can continue to learn about natural places-even in your own neighborhood and community.
  • Receive the Junior Ranger patch with the track of the wolf for 5 - 7 year olds and the track of the grizzly bear for the 8 - 12 year olds and be recognized by park rangers as someone who really cares about national parks and all their natural wonders.

    You Are Here

  • Be sure to show where you entered the park and mark each place where you stayed overnight.
  • Show any trails that you hiked or roadside exhibits that you visited.
  • Draw in some of the things you saw along the way, like geysers, wildlife, trees and flowers, mountains, meadows, and rivers.
  • Maybe you'll be lucky enough to visit Yellowstone in the future. Use the map in the park brochure to find names of places you'd like to visit on your next trip to Yellowstone.

    Junior Ranger Winter Program

    This program is designed for children from 5 - 12 years of age and their families. Participants explore the winter world of snow, ice and steam through activities focusing on geology, wildlife adaptations, weather, snow crystals and more. In addition to completing an age-appropriate activity paper, participants attend a program led by a park ranger, record wildlife observations, make a record of geyser and hot spring activity, and hike, ski, or snowshoe a trail.
    Children can participate by requesting the program at either the Mammoth or Old Faithful visitor centers. For $ 3.00 they receive an activity paper. Requirements include attending a Ranger-led program, hiking on a park trail, and completing activities on various park resources, issues, and concepts such as geothermal geology, park wildlife, and fire ecology.
    Some winter activities require the use of a thermometer and hand lens, so make sure you ask to check out a Junior Ranger Snowpack. Snowpacks are available at both the Mammoth and Old Faithful visitor centers and snowshoes may be checked out in Mammoth. Upon completion of the program, children return to the visitor center to have their work reviewed by a park ranger, and receive an embroidered patch. Fees collected through this program help maintain the program, allow for the continued development of new program components, and provide high school students summer jobs working with Junior Rangers.
    This winter program was a natural offshoot of Yellowstone's well established summer Junior Ranger program, which awards 15,000 patches each summer. Most parks offer some sort of Junior Ranger program, and many children enjoy collecting the great variety of patches and badges offered.
    This is a great opportunity for youth to learn about and enjoy Yellowstone's Winter Wonderland.

    Spring & Summer Junior Ranger Program

    The 5 - 7 year olds must complete four activities out of seven. These seven activities include:

    You must also complete the following:


    Youth 8 - 9 years old must complete four pages of activities. A youth 10 - 12 years old must complete six pages of activities. The activities are:

    You must also complete the following:

    Young Scientist

    NPS Image

    An In-Park Science Inquiry Paper for Ages Five to Adult


    Students ages 5 and up you can become a Young Scientist when you visit Yellowstone National Park! Purchase your self-guiding booklet for $ 5.00 at the Canyon Visitor Education Center or Old Faithful Visitor Center. Designed to serve three different age groups, the program coaches the young (and young at heart) to solve science mysteries by combining investigation in both visitor center and field settings. The program for 5-7 year olds is offered only at Old Faithful. Stop by the Old Faithful Visitor Center to check out a Young Scientist toolkit for use in the Upper Geyser Basin. Once your investigation is complete, you will be awarded an official Young Scientist patch (ages 5 - 13) or key chain (ages 14 and up).

    Young Scientist Patch - NPS Image Young Scientist Key Chain - NPS Image

    Available at Canyon

    Canyon Education Programs - NPS Image

    Available at Old Faithful

    Old Faithful Education Programs - NPS Image


    The 5 through 9 year old program is offered only at Old Faithful.
    If you are investigating in the Old Faithful area, be sure to check out a Young Scientist Toolkit, which has a thermometer, stopwatch, and other gear. Once your investigation is complete, you will be awarded an official Young Scientist patch or key chain.
    Development of this program was funded by the National Science Foundation through a generous grant to the Yellowstone Park Foundation.

    Words of Wisdom - NPS Image

    Your Yellowstone Journal

    Rangers use journals to keep a record of what they see, what they do, and what they think. Today, we still read the journals kept by early travelers through Yellowstone -- like trapper Osborne Russell in the 1830's and surveyor Ferdinand Hayden in the 1870's. Now you have the chance to record your own trip! Use the journal page to describe some of your Yellowstone experiences. Who do you think will be interested in reading your journal... today? In 10 years? In 20 years? They will ask you some hard questions like this. If you could be any animal which one would you be? Why?

    The Big Picture

    If you hear people speak about Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, they're talking about Yellowstone National Park, the area that surrounds it, all of the plants and animals that live there. In an ecosystem, everything is connected to everything else, like a puzzle. If you have all the pieces to the puzzle, then the ecosystem, and all the plants and all the animals in it, will usually be healthy. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, most of the pieces to the puzzle are still here. In fact, Yellowstone is one of the most complete ecosystems in the lower 48 states. This does not mean everything is perfect though. Since not every part of the area is protected like the park, the growth of nearby cities and towns can affect the plants and animals. As humans, it is are responsibility to make sure that the ecosystem stays healthy. After all, the plants and animals have nowhere else to go.

    Wildland Fire

    The summer of 1988 will probably be remembered for a long time.During that summer, fires affected about one third of Yellowstone National Park and many people though Yellowstone would surely be destroyed. What they seemed to forget was that fires were not new to Yellowstone; in fact, major fires like the ones in 1988 have occurred in Yellowstone every 300 to 400 years for the past 10,000 years!

    Letting Off Steam

    As a visitor to Yellowstone, you know that Yellowstone is famous for its geysers. Do you know that:
  • Yellowstone has over 300 geysers -- that's more than half of all the known geysers in the world!
  • Yellowstone has the tallest active geyser in the world! (Look for Steamboat geyser at Norris).
  • The Upper Geyser Basin, near Old Faithful, has over 150 geysers within one square mile.
    • So just how do these geysers work? Geysers all need three things: water, heat, and a strong plumbing system.

    Hot Spots

    Right now you're standing on top of a volcano! Imagine yourself standing here 600,000 years ago: You hear a deep rumbling rolling across the landscape. Suddenly there's a deafening explosion! Hot volcano ash and pumice spew out from great cracks in the earth's surface. Dust clouds blacken the sky, and volcanic debris covers thousands of square miles. Abruptly, a great smoldering pit--a caldera 28 miles across, 47 miles long and several thousand feet deep-- appears. The Yellowstone Caldera is formed! Over many of the years following, the caldera is filled in by lava flows oozing from cracks in the earth's surface.
  • Hot springs: are pools filled with hot water that do not erupt.
  • Geysers: are hot springs that throw hot water and steam into the air.
  • Mud pots: are filled with hot bubbling mud.
  • Fumaroles: are steam vents that don't have enough water to be hot springs.

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