71-year-old woman is second visitor to be attacked by a bison in Yellowstone National Park this week
A visitor was gored by a bison in Yellowstone National Park on Wednesday. It was the second such attack in the park in three days.
The tourist, a 71-year-old woman from West Chester, Pennsylvania, reportedly approached the animal by accident while she and her daughter returned to their car after hiking near the park's central lake, according to the National Park Service. The bull, or male, bison then charged.
The woman was transported to a hospital in Cody, Wyoming, which is about 50 miles away, and treated for non-life threatening injuries, the NPS said. The attack is not the first of its kind this season.
On Monday, startling video footage captured a bison charging at, and then goring, a Yellowstone visitor. That attack happened as a 34-year-old man from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and his family were walking along a boardwalk near Yellowstone's Giant Geyser at Old Faithful — the park's most popular tourist destination. Footage showed the man moving his small child away from the bison before the animal charged and flung him into the air.
NPS officials said the man was treated for an arm injury at a nearby hospital in Idaho.
A third attack happened in the final days of May, before record flooding caused Yellowstone to close briefly earlier this month. That incident involved a 25-year-old woman from Ohio, who reportedly stood too close to a bison near another boardwalk north of Old Faithful.
She sustained a puncture wound and other injuries after the bison tossed her roughly 10 feet into the air.
All three incidents are under investigation, according to NPS. The agency emphasized in multiple statements that visitors must remain at least 75 feet from all bison to reduce the risk of an attack. Bull bison, like those that gored the tourists, can grow to six feet tall and weigh as much as 2,000 pounds.
The NPS also announced Thursday that a portion of the park's north loop will reopen to visitors on July 2, several weeks after the flooding forced officials to close areas of the park. It will also suspend its alternating license plate system, which was implemented to limit the number of people in the park as officials addressed flood damage. With the changes, 93% of the park's roads will be open.