Plague Warning Closes Campground in Yosemite

Risk of deadly disease is low, but squirrel deaths in park raise alarm.

There are going to be a few unhappy campers in Yosemite National Park this week.

Park officials shuttered the Tuolumne Meadows campground in Yosemite on Monday after finding the carcasses of two squirrels that died of plague. Last month, a child who had stayed at Crane Flat Campground in Yosemite was infected, the first case in the park since 1959 and the first in California since 2006.

So far, eight people have contracted plague across the United States this year, including two people who have died in Colorado this summer, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The cases involving plague, which typically is spread by fleas that have bitten infected rodents or by the infected animals

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