In July 2025, Scott Whitehead, described as an "animal expert" in his social media bios, shared a video to his social media accounts of him speaking over a video of a bunch of bison running past a camera. In the video, he claimed that on the morning of July 15, 2025, bison began a "mass exodus" out of Yellowstone National Park and "no one know why."
The video was liked more than 30,000 times on Instagram (archived), viewed more than 600,000 times on Facebook (archived) and viewed nearly 150,000 times on TikTok (archived).
The video did not actually depict a "mass exodus" of bison out of Yellowstone, and there was no evidence the park's bison exhibited such behavior. Whitehead posted several videos falsely claiming animals were migrating out of Yellowstone National Park in July 2025.
A Google search for bison leaving Yellowstone limited to July 2025 found no reputable news article reporting on a mass migration of bison from Yellowstone National Park. Instead, the top result was for an ABC News article reporting that the National Park Service denied that animals were migrating out of Yellowstone in large numbers.
In the comments of Whitehead's Instagram video, a profile with the handle @grant.t.johnson claimed to be the source of the video of bison and denied that the bison were leaving the park in large numbers.
Hi, that's my video you're showing. I think you're kidding around, but judging by a lot of the comments, and many similar videos going viral, it's worth saying unequivocally that the wildlife are NOT leaving the Park. Nothing unusual is happening here in Yellowstone, it's as beautiful and wild as ever.
The video was first posted online by the Instagram account for Yellowstone Safari (archived), which listed Grant Johnson as a photographer on its staff page, and credited him for the video in that post. Yellowstone Safari posted the video on July 1, two weeks before Whitehead posted the video claiming that there was a mass exodus of bison "this morning."
Johnson sent Snopes the original video file with the added context that it was recorded in the northeastern part of Yellowstone National Park, in front of the Trout Lake trailhead. A review of the video's metadata confirmed the video was recorded in front of the Trout Lake trailhead on July 1, 2025.
According to Johnson, the bison were moving west — deeper into the park.
Bison do congregate in herds and migrate between different areas of the Yellowstone area throughout the year, according to the National Park Service.
After posting this video, Whitehead made a playlist on his TikTok account (archived) titled "Yellowstone Migration." The bison video was the fourth video added to this playlist, all four of which he posted from July 9-15.
Snopes has previously fact-checked two of those videos, one about grizzly bears and another about mountain lions.