Yellowstone — Landseed

Map key

Indicative range from habitat rules — not sightings

Yellowstone National Park

Iconic wildlifetap a species ↗

Gray wolf

Grizzly bear

American bison

Elk

Pronghorn

Bighorn sheep

Cutthroat trout

Bald eagle

Highways & main roads

Park post / HQ

Altitude bands · 1,610–3,466 m in the park

Alpine rock, high country2,950+

Subalpine fir & whitebark pine2,500–2,950

Lodgepole-pine plateau1,950–2,500

Sagebrush steppe & valley grassland1,650–1,950

Valley floor & river bottoms<1,650

Bands are altitude, not vegetation: lodgepole pine here spans a wide elevation range on its own.

Yellowstone National Park

8,983 km² of high volcanic plateau, spanning Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. A near-rectangular shape rather than a long ribbon park, but the edge still crosses the pronghorn herd's one migration corridor and the elk herd's winter range on adjacent land.

Area

8,983 km² NPS, gazetted

Boundary

309 km as digitised

Compactness

0.16 Polsby–Popper

Established

1872

Elevation

1,610 – 3,466 m

World's first national park — established 1872, over a century before most national park systems existed

Anchor of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — roughly 22 million acres across two national parks, six national forests and numerous wilderness areas

Wolves reintroduced 1995–96 — 31 animals from Canada, after roughly 70 years' absence; 108 in the park by the end of 2024

The only continuously wild, genetically pure American bison herd in the United States.

Why this park matters beyond its own borders

A supervolcano, not just a park. Yellowstone sits atop a still-active volcanic caldera and holds more than half of Earth's active geysers and over 10,000 hydrothermal features in total — the same magma chamber that shapes the whole plateau.

The wolf reintroduction's ripple effects. Thirty-one wolves reintroduced in 1995–96 restored a predator absent for roughly 70 years; the in-park population has ranged from about 83 to 174 since, and its presence has been linked to changes across the Northern Range's other wildlife, down to reduced coyote pressure on pronghorn fawns.

Bison recovered from near-extinction. Reduced to roughly 23 animals in a captive-bred remnant herd in 1902, Yellowstone's bison are now the largest population on U.S. public land — grown from the same genetic stock that nearly disappeared entirely.

An ecosystem larger than the park. Grizzly bears here are tracked as one Greater-Yellowstone-wide population, not a park-only one — no published estimate exists for the park alone, because neither the bears nor the scientists who study them treat the boundary as the edge of the story.

Area and establishment date: National Park Service. Boundary drawn from OpenStreetMap rel. 1453306. Note: that OSM ring measures approximately 8,880 km², about 1.1% less than the NPS-stated 8,983 km² — close enough that both figures are shown, but every area figure quoted in this app comes from NPS, not from the drawn shape. Perimeter and compactness are computed from the OSM ring at its digitised generalisation and are therefore scale-dependent. No UNESCO World Heritage or IUCN World Heritage Outlook figure is cited here — this build's research pass did not verify one against a primary source, so none is claimed.

Imagery: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community, captured 2023-09–2025-09 · Elevation: USGS 3DEP 1 m · Boundaries & water: OpenStreetMap (ODbL) · Protected areas & IUCN category: World Database on Protected Areas (UNEP-WCMC/IUCN)