12-year-old injured by bison at Yellowstone National Park

A 12-year-old visitor was injured by a bison near Yellowstone National Park’s Mud Volcano area at about 9:15 a.m. June 26, and emergency medical personnel took the child to a nearby hospital. Park officials said the incident remains under investigation and did not release the child’s gender or the extent of the injuries.

Yellowstone has kept repeating the same warning because the same mistake keeps happening: bison are wild animals, and visitors are supposed to stay at least 25 yards away from them and other large animals. The park says wildlife can become dangerous when people do not respect that space, a reminder that close viewing is not harmless sightseeing but a direct trigger for injuries.

The June 26 encounter was not an isolated event. On May 4, 2025, a 47-year-old man from Cape Coral, Florida, was injured by a bison in Yellowstone, the first reported bison injury of that year. On June 10, 2025, a 30-year-old man from Randolph, New Jersey, was injured by a bison in the Upper Geyser Basin at Old Faithful. On June 1, 2024, an 83-year-old woman from Greenville, South Carolina, was seriously injured by a bison near Yellowstone Lake.

Yellowstone said in May 2025 that there had been two reported bison injuries in 2024 and one in 2023, a tally that shows the hazard is not rare or unpredictable inside one of the nation’s busiest parks. The pattern is especially important in peak travel season, when more visitors crowd roads, overlooks and thermal areas and some press in too close for a photo or a better look.

For Yellowstone visitors, the safety message is simple and strict: bison are not props, pets or backdrops, and 25 yards is the minimum distance that keeps a person out of the animal’s immediate space. The newest injury near Mud Volcano, just north of Fishing Bridge, added another case to a long-running safety problem that park officials keep trying to stop before it turns serious again.