Yellowstone Backcountry Ranger Bob 'Action' Jackson

Outspoken Yellowstone ranger gagged

November 19, 2001

"Bob Jackson has never been bashful about sharing his opinions. In the past decade, he has openly criticized hunters and outfitters who lure trophy elk and, increasingly, grizzly bears outside the sanctuary of Yellowstone National Park by placing salt licks near the park boundary.

"Salt pits are all over the Bridger-Teton Wilderness, including where five bears were killed in Thorofare four years ago," Jackson said recently. "There is no way a bear could even get a half-mile, let alone two miles, from a salt in the entire Bridger-Teton Wilderness."

But this past summer, Jackson's open expression of such views came to an abrupt end. On Aug. 30, after 30 years as a backcountry seasonal ranger in Yellowstone, he was handed a gag order by the Park Service and told to sign it or lose his job..."

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Outspoken ranger loses job

Apr 11, 2003

"After 24 years patrolling the remote Thoroughfare region of Yellowstone Park, Ranger Bob Jackson has not been rehired this season.

The move has stirred the ire of a U.S. senator and a whistleblower advocacy group that has backed "Action" Jackson through a series of run-ins with the Park Service.

"The Park Service's excuses for not rehiring Ranger Jackson after his quarter century of service are bogus," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote in a letter Thursday to National Park Service Director Fran Mainella. "The Park Service and Ranger Jackson's supervisors at Yellowstone have exhibited a clear pattern of retaliation and hostility toward Ranger Jackson in the last several years."

Jackson is a backcountry ranger with a high profile in poaching arrests. He is the park's longest-serving seasonal ranger.

A whistleblower complaint was filed Wednesday by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), alleging that Jackson was singled out for staff cutbacks. The watchdog group, which supports state and federal employees, claims Jackson was not rehired because of his well-publicized criticism of enforcement of wilderness rules in the nearby Bridger-Teton National Forest - in particular, his pursuit of outfitters who use salt to lure trophy elk out of the park..."


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Yellowstone backcountry ranger describes sighting, other incidents

Submitted by witness Bob Jackson on Friday, August 12, 2005.

"LOCATION DETAILS: The sighting occurred in a high-elevation park meadow in the Fan Creek Drainage in Yellowstone's northwest corner.
NEAREST TOWN: Mammoth Hot Springs
NEAREST ROAD: US 191

OBSERVED: The following account was given to Colorado curator T.E. Stein during a phone interview with Bob Jackson in 2003. Recently, Jackson gave permission to submit his account to the BFRO. Jackson, also known as "Action Jackson," was legendary among park supporters - notorious among outfitters and scofflaws - for his enforcement of park rules and regulations. He retired as a Yellowstone ranger in 2004. Few people have ever known Yellowstone's backcountry and its wildlife like Jackson.

"The first time heard anything was in the mid-late 70s. An outfitter and I were riding up Fan Creek in the northwest section of the park. Up the drainage in Stellaria Creek, we heard a sound that just kept going and going. It was probably a mile away. It filled the whole valley up - kind of 1,000 like elk going to their death. I couldn’t believe this thing had that much volume for that long a period of time. He had never heard anything like it, neither..."


"...Follow-up investigation report:

In the long history of Yellowstone backcountry rangers, Bob Jackson stands out as one of the most colorful. "Jackson is the last of his kind, a lawman who still chases down outlaws on horseback," wrote LA Times editor Frank Clifford in his 2002 book "The Backbone of the World."

Jackson's crusades against the practice of creating salt licks to draw in elk for easy shots just outside the park's southest boundary earned him lifelong enemies among local outfitters. He also campaigned against their habit of leaving large portions of the carcass behind, meat that habituated grizzly bears learned to come running for at the sound of gunshots. The bears that learned to scavenge the carcasses often got into confrontations with hunters and outfitters, leading to their deaths.

During his career, Jackson spent a great deal of time in the park's most remote backcountry, including the Thorofare - the place in the lower 48 states that lies furthest from a road.

This is believed to be the first time Jackson has publically talked about sasquatch."

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