In 2015 the number of visitors to Yellowstone exceeded four million for the first time. David Quammen, writing in the May 2016 edition of National Geographic magazine, asks "Can we hope to preserve, in the midst of modern America, any such remnant of our continent's primordial landscape, any such sample of true wildness-a gloriously inhospitable place, full of predators and prey, in which nature is still allowed to be red in tooth and claw? Can that sort of place be reconciled with human demands and human convenience? Time alone, and our choices, will tell. But if the answer is yes, the answer is Yellowstone."
David Quammen is an award-winning National Geographic writer and the sole author of the special, single-topic May 2016 issue on Yellowstone National Park and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). Quammen has lived in the GYE for 32 years. His writing for National Geographic includes a series of three stories about J. Michael Fay's epic 2000-mile survey hike through the forests of Central Africa, an expedition that became known as the Megatransect. Quammen's books include "The Song of the Dodo" (1996), "Monster of God" (2003), "The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" (2006), and "Spillover" (2012). "Spillover" was a finalist for seven awards and received two of them: the Science and Society Book Award, given by the National Association of Science Writers, and the Society of Biology (UK) Book Award in General Biology.
