Star-Tribune Editorial Board

It has to be a joke, right?

Nope. No joke. Montana State University is actually applying for a federal trademark so it exclusively can promote itself as "the University of the Yellowstone."

Can somebody show these people a map? MSU officials apparently don't know or care that about 90 percent of Yellowstone National Park is located within Wyoming, not Montana.

Wyoming has been pretty good-natured about previous efforts to hijack our landmarks. South Dakota has tried to "borrow" Devils Tower to promote its badlands, and Colorado once put the Tetons on its state travel brochure.

Last year, "Sunset" magazine reported that Yellowstone was in Montana. A tourism official in that state made light of the error, saying, "Montana, Idaho and Wyoming - we all claim the park."

Of course, Yellowstone really belongs to the entire country. It was the first national park, and it's a treasure that Wyoming is happy to share with everyone from sea to shining sea. All are encouraged to spend some time at our wealth of tourist attractions, before or after they check out the wonders of Yellowstone. The welcome mat is out.

But there seems to be an underlying deviousness to what MSU is trying to do. Its officials admit they want people to think of the Montana university first whenever Yellowstone is mentioned, so it can boost student and faculty recruitment, as well as fundraising. It plans to spend millions of dollars on a Yellowstone-focused research and teaching center at Big Sky.

MSU's major connection to Yellowstone is that it's about a 90-minute drive from the Bozeman campus to the park. Granted, MSU does a lot of research work at Yellowstone, but so does the University of Wyoming. There's no reason for one to try to trump the other.

Wyoming needs to play some hardball and officially protest MSU's trademark request. We're perfectly willing to share Yellowstone with our neighbors. But when one of them tries to claim the park exclusively as its own, that's patently wrong. And absurd.

Let's stop this trend before someone tries to steal the Big Horn Mountains, the Lincoln Monument on I-80, or our jackalopes. Do we have to start nailing everything down?