A woman who approached a bison at Yellowstone National Park was gored by the animal on Monday, according to park officials.
The woman, who was not named, suffered a puncture wound and other injuries and was taken to the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. Her condition was not released and it was unclear whether she had survived. Park officials did not immediately respond to requests for more details on Wednesday, and a representative for the medical center said it did not have additional information to provide.
Park officials said in a news release on Tuesday that this was the first reported episode in 2022 involving a park visitor “threatening a bison” and that the animal responded by goring the person.
The incident began on Monday when a bison walked near a boardwalk at Black Sand Basin, about two miles northwest of Old Faithful, and the woman, described as 25 and from Ohio, approached it. She came within 10 feet of the animal, and two other people were within 25 yards of it, park officials said.
The bison gored the woman and tossed her 10 feet into the air, officials said, adding that they were still investigating what happened.
Park officials repeated warnings that animals should be given a wide berth, an advisory they frequently issue about bison, bears and wolves.
“Wildlife in Yellowstone National Park are wild and can be dangerous when approached,” the park said. “When an animal is near a campsite, trail, boardwalk, parking lot, or in a developed area, give it space.”
Yellowstone recommends that visitors stay more than 25 yards away from large animals, including bison, elk, bighorn sheep and deer and at least 100 yards from bears and wolves.
Bison, which can stand six feet tall, weigh more than 2,000 pounds and run three times faster than a person, have injured more people in Yellowstone than any other animal, the park said.
In recent years, a series of people have been seriously injured by bison and other animals in and around Yellowstone.
In an incident captured on video in 2019, a bison charged and head-butted a 9-year-old girl as she tried to run away. The following year, a woman who approached a bison was knocked to the ground and injured by the animal. Last April, a backcountry guide who was fishing near the park was fatally attacked by a large grizzly bear that officials said may have been protecting a food source.
And several months later a woman was sentenced to four days in jail and barred for a year from the park for not moving out of the way of a grizzly bear and its cubs.
Bison have become subject to debate around Yellowstone out of concerns that they were overgrazing. There were more than 5,000 bison roaming the park last year, and wildlife officials and tribal entities agreed in December that as many as 900 bison from the park would be slaughtered, shot by hunters or placed in quarantine at the service’s Stephens Creek Capture Facility.
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