Registration Now Open for Yellowstone Symposium Hosted by UW in Cody

Registration is now open for the Yellowstone symposium hosted by the University of Wyoming’s College of Law and the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources in collaboration with Yellowstone National Park.

The two-day event -- celebrating the iconic park’s 150th anniversary -- is free and open to the public. The symposium will take place Thursday and Friday, May 19-20, at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody.

A draft agenda includes several panel discussions and a number of keynote addresses, with topics ranging from tourism and social engagement to climate change and building federal-tribal relationships. The first day will open with a tribal blessing, and a celebratory dance will conclude the second day.

“Every panel is going to be unique and interesting, and all of our keynote speakers bring a different perspective,” says Madi Barber, a UW law student from Cheyenne, who is an organizer of the symposium.

She says U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland; National Park Service Director Chuck Sams; U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Robert Bonnie; and Professor Robert Keiter, the Wallace Stegner Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Utah, have been invited as keynote speakers.

“Then, to round it all out, there will be a student discussion with park service leadership,” Barber says. “That discussion will allow the next generation to take everything we have covered throughout the symposium and apply it to the future, to make sure that the park remains a celebrated piece of Wyoming.”

Some of the presentation topics have emerged from articles in a forthcoming special issue of the Wyoming Law Review. The articles, which examine Yellowstone National Park’s past and future, were the impetus for creating the symposium, Barber adds.

For more information and to register, go to www.uwyo.edu/haub/ruckelshaus-institute/forums/ynp-150th-symposium/index.html. Registration is capped at 150 people and is expected to fill quickly, Barber says. A virtual attendance option via Zoom also will be available.

For more information, email Barber at mbarber9@uwyo.edu.