Are animals fleeing Yellowstone park?

Question

This article claims that animals are fleeing en masse from Yellowstone National Park.

At Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, there is a mass animal exodus underway. Miles of buffalo can be seen running frantically from the Northwest end of the park. They are even running down roads. Elk are also evacuating at an astounding rate. Smaller animals such as rabbits and squirrels are also fleeing Yellowstone.

It includes a video clip of a bunch of bison (not really buffalo) running down a road--but it's impossible to tell from the context of the video if this is abnormal, or if the bison are even fleeing the park.

Are animals leaving the park in exceptional numbers?

Answer 1

It's unlikely, it seems they are just migrating for food.

As Al Nash, chief of public affairs for Yellowstone, explained in a rumor control video on this subject:

We do have bison, elk and other animals that have moved outside the park recently, but they're doing that because it's the depth of winter, food is a little hard to find in places inside Yellowstone, and they tend to migrate at this time of the winter outside the park to lower elevations where they think there might be something to eat that's easier to get at. When the snow melts off and things start to green up, those very same animals will walk right back into the park.

Additionally, the video displayed above was actually taken more than two weeks before the 30 March 2014 earthquake that triggered fears of an upcoming eruption at Yellowstone and shows bison running into the park, not away from it:

Leo Leckie, a sales associate of the nonprofit Yellowstone Assn. ... shot the video, which lasts 1 minute and 9 seconds and was originally posted March 14 on his Facebook page under the title, "Yellowstone bison on the run for the joy of Spring."

"Those bison were running for the sake of running," Leckie said in an interview. "There was nothing chasing them. There was no mudslide. They were just running."

Added Leckie: "And they were running into the park, not away from it."

Source: http://www.snopes.com/critters/gnus/yellowstone.asp