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Dedicated to Coverage of National Parks and Protected Areas
While the wildfires that swept Australia have been doused, the recovery of the country's national parks and their wildlife has a long way to go.
March 1st, 2020
Water is big business, bigger in the Southwest than perhaps anywhere else in the United States, and so where the Colorado River flows, economics and politics closely follow. More than 40 million people downstream depend upon its waters for agriculture, cities and businesses. At Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in southern Utah and northern Arizona, that reality rises in the 710-foot tall Glen Canyon Dam and shimmers in the lake that it has formed, Lake Powell.
February 23rd, 2020
The rustic accommodations of national park campsites get us closer to nature than private campgrounds outside the park. But opting for that primitive experience often puts RVers like you and me in the middle of that classic Goldilocks conundrum. Without good planning, we just don’t know if a campground can easily accommodate our home on wheels. I can’t count the number of times we have spent an entire afternoon jumping from open site to another, trying each one on for size until we found the one that fits just right – if we were lucky enough to find one at all.
February 19th, 2020
Climate change is altering the flow of the Colorado River through Canyonlands National Park. And that throws a significant degree of uncertainty into how the phenomena is changing the park and its river.
February 16th, 2020
The engine growls and gears grind as the yellow school bus lurches ahead. The hard, dark green, vinyl bench seat accentuates the jolt. Memories of a childhood decades removed flash through my mind. I feel a surge of youthful energy as we begin a tour of the diverse and interesting architecture in and near Indiana Dunes National Park.
February 14th, 2020
Late one evening last summer, about the time that bats take to the air, I was stretched out on a patch of warm sand next to the Green River in Utah’s Desolation Canyon, waiting for stars to appear. Next to me were a couple my age from Baltimore and their two young grandsons, part of a group enjoying a six-day float trip with a Utah adventure outfitter. As darkness fell, the glittering band of the Milky Way spread above us from cliff to cliff. This was one of the reasons we had come to this place, for the “star river,” as the ancient Chinese poets called it, is no longer visible from our homes in the city.
February 12th, 2020
National Parks Traveler Episode 54: Colorado River Economics, Rebranding Bandelier National Monument
In recent years there has been a movement of sorts to rebrand units of the National Park System as “national parks,” a movement motivated in large part by the economic boost such a redesignation is hoped to have. But in New Mexico a group is opposed to turning Bandelier National Monument into Bandelier National Park. We discuss that issue with Tom Ribe, executive director of Caldera Action. But first, we continue our series on how the health of the Colorado River impacts Canyonlands National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah. To get a better understanding of the river economics in play, we reached out to Megan Lawson, an economist with Headwaters Economics. And for bonus content, an audio version of RVing The Parks | Choose Your National Park RV Carefully.
This week’s show kicks off National Parks Traveler's coverage of the Colorado River and how its health, or lack of health, impacts Canyonlands National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah. We also take a peek at Grand Portage National Monument in Minnesota to see what awaits intrepid park travelers who put it on their to-do list.
Bonus coverage: Paddling The Border Route In The Boundary Waters
Candy Harrington, a journalist who traveled the National Park System to see how accessible lodges and trails in the parks really are, discusses her new book on accessibility in the parks. And Cory MacNulty and Erika Pollard from the National Parks Conservation Association’s Southwest Regional Office discuss the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s plans for managing the greatly reduced in size Bears Ears and Grand Staircase monuments, and the roughly 2 million acres that were pulled out of the monuments so they could be opened to mining, grazing, and other resource-impacting activities.
In this week’s show, we sat down with Emily Hoff and Maygen Keller to discuss their upcoming book, Scenic Science of the National Parks, an Explorer's Guide to Wildlife, Geology, and Botany. The book, scheduled to be available March 31, is a wonderfully new guidebook to help you get the most out of your national park adventures. We also talk with Tanya Shenk, a National Park Service scientist who helped develop a draft framework for bison stewardship in the Midwest Region of the park system. It’s a region where you can find bison at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas, Badlands National Park and Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.
This week’s show is our 50th, a number that looked so distant a year ago. Today we talk with Dr. Mark Loewen, a paleontological research associate at the Natural History Museum of Utah, and associate professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah, about a Jurassic Period carnivore dubbed "AJ," a new species of allosaurus, found in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Lisa Dittman, chief of interpretation at Saratoga National Historical Park in New York, provides us with a short Revolutionary War history tour of the park. It was on that landscape in 1777 that the British army suffered its very first defeat on the battlefield.
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Week of: Feb 27 2020 | A keyhole kiva in Coyote Village ruins, Mesa Verde National Park | Photographer: Rebecca Latson
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Week of: Feb 24 2020 | A White Sands moonrise, White Sands National Park | Photographer: John Fowler
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Week of: Feb 20 2020 | Walkers on the Athabasca Glacier, Jasper National Park, Canada | Photographer: Rebecca Latson
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Week of: Feb 17 2020 | Sunset over the landscape in Joshua Tree National Park | Photographer: Chuck Holland
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Week of: Feb 13 2020 | Petrified logs along the Crystal Forest Trail, Petrified Forest National Park | Photographer: Rebecca Latson
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Week of: Feb 10 2020 | An aerial view of Everglades backcountry, Everglades National Park | Photographer: NPS
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Week of: Feb 6 2020 | A winter sunrise over the Chihuahuan Desert, Big Bend National Park | Photographer: Rebecca Latson
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Week of: Feb 3 2020 | American Anhinga drying its wings, Big Cypress National Preserve | Photographer: Judy Gallagher
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Week of: Jan 30 2020 | The immensity of Badlands National Park | Photographer: Bernard Spragg
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Week of: Jan 27 2020 | Billions of stars above the night landscape, Voyageurs National Park | Photographer: David Fulmer
If you've always wanted to read to a goat, you can do that during the month of March at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in North Carolina.
March 1st, 2020
The annual arrival of peregrines to nest in the cliffs of Zion National Park is leading to a temporarry closure for some climbing routes in the park in southwestern Utah. Closures are implemented due to the falcon’s sensitivity to disturbance during the nesting season. If disturbed, the nesting pair may abandon their nest site and not nest again until the following year.
February 29th, 2020
Though there will continue to be some delays, the Bote Mountain Tunnel that provides access to Cades Cove at Great Smoky Mountains National Park is set to reopen to traffic on Saturday.
February 28th, 2020
A wide range of daily excursion trips are available this year from Steamtown National Historic Site in Pennesylvania, with steam and diesel locomotives pulling vintage passenger cars across the landscape.
February 28th, 2020
NatureBridge is seeking participants for its summer backpacking programs in Yosemite and Olympic national parks. Enrollment is open for students entering 7th-12th grade.
February 28th, 2020
More than 327 million visitors descended on the National Park System in 2019, a number that is seen as the third-highest single year tally dating to 1904, yet the head count comes at a time when some parks are overcrowded, National Park Service ranks are depleted, and Congress continues to fail to both adequately address year-to-year funding for the parks and attack the roughly $12 billion maintenance backlog.
February 27th, 2020
A ranger at Grand Canyon National Park who searches for untold stories from the past has received the 2020 Edwin C. Bearss History Fellowship.
February 27th, 2020
Airborne sharpshooters killed roughly one-third of the estimated 100 nonnative mountain goats in Grand Teton National Park before Interior Secretary David Bernhardt called off the hunt after Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon complained that ground-based volunteer shooters weren't used.
February 25th, 2020
Graffiti artists have been frequent visitors to Joshua Tree National Park, where they wielded cans of spray paint and other tools to vandalize areas of the park.
February 25th, 2020
With the large international visitation that the National Park System receives, it's only natural to wonder how the National Park Service is guarding against visitors who might be infected with coronavirus.
February 25th, 2020
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