With a new year dawning on the National Park System, what will it bring?/Kurt Repanshek file

What will 2022 bring to the National Park System? There are plenty of unknowns, but there are some "knowns," as well, when it comes to what the National Parks Traveler will be reporting on. Here are some of the stories we'll be following:

Oil Exploration And Production At Big Cypress National Preserve

Where will the National Park Service come down on the request by Burnett Oil Co. to allow drilling into oil reserves beneath the preserve? The company has requested permits to drill horizontal wells from pad sites along Interstate 75 between Fort Launderdale and Naples and another a bit north of U.S. 41 where Collier, Broward and Miami-Dade counties meet.

Along with opposition from many conservation groups, the project has been questioned by the Miccosukee Tribe because of cultural sites that could be impacted, as well as from possible environmental damages.

Will Interior Secretary Deb Haaland take the matter away from the Park Service by unilaterally blocking the project? Last March a number of conservation organizations asked the secretary to block the project, saying the "proposed oil extraction activities would be detrimental to the Preserve’s purposes and impair the Preserve for the enjoyment of future generations. New oil development in the Everglades would also be inconsistent with President Biden’s initiatives to combat the climate crisis; protect public health; conserve our lands, waters, and biodiversity; and deliver environmental justice."

Of Burnett's proposed pad sites, the groups said both "are located in wetlands and primary Florida panther habitat. These proposed oil wells and their associated land clearing, equipment storage, wetlands filling, hydrologic alterations, staging areas, access roads, drilling rigs, storage tanks, fuel tanks, water wells, disposal wells, reserve pits, grading, erosion, sedimentation, and potential oil spills --on their face-- would be detrimental to the explicit purposes of the Preserve."

Rockets Over Cumberland Island National Seashore

Will the day come not too far down the road when a commercial spaceport less than five miles west of Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia launches rockets over the seashore?

The Federal Aviation Administration opened that door late this month when it issued an operating license to Spaceport Camden. While the FAA said there were many more regulatory hurdles the spaceport needs to clear before a single rocket takes off, groups that oppose the spaceport are working hard to block the project.

Four days before Christmas a judge in Camden County, Georgia, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the county from buying roughly 4,000 acres once used by Union Carbide for the spaceport. A group of county residents opposed to the spaceport had presented Superior Court Judge Stephen Scarlett with petitions signed by about 4,000 residents asking that a county-wide referendum be held on the question of whether Camden County should be in the business of launching rockets into space.

Accessible only by boat, the national seashore features unspoiled beaches and dunes, marshes, and freshwater lakes, along with historic sites. Twisting live oaks covered in resurrection ferns and spanish moss make up the island's maritime forest, shading an understory of sable palms and palmettos. Facing the mainland, the island gazes across mudflats during low tide and swaying marshes.

Concerned onlookers, which range from the National Park Service to private landowners on Little Cumberland Island at the northern end of the national seashore as well as Camden County taxpayers who see the spaceport as a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars, have a range of fears.

There's the possibility of rockets failing in launch and crashing down on the seashore or Little Cumberland Island; air quality concerns; noise pollution; hazardous wastes; and logistical impacts to the seashore staff.

Air Tours Over National Parks

More than two decades after the National Park Service and Federal Aviation Administration were ordered by a federal judge to prepare air tour management plans for flights over national parks, the work remains to be completed. 

Since last summer two dozen park system units, from Arches National Park to San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park have been working on their management plans. However, concerns have been voiced by the National Parks Conservation Association that the plans are inadequate and so far haven't required any in-depth environmental studies to judge how the flights impact the experience of visitors on the ground.

The Traveler has been told that at least four of the two dozen parks have decided to prepare environmental assessments on their draft management plans, but the names of those parks were not provided.

Crowding In The Parks

If you've been to Zion National Park, Arches National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Acadia National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, or Yosemite National Park, just to name seven parks, in the summer, you know there are crowding problems. 

Parks are beginning to respond to those crowds with strategies to manage them. Rocky Mountain, Yosemite, and Acadia national parks resorted last summer to reservation systems to manage crowding, and Rocky and Acadia will continue with them in 2022. Arches National Park is going to try that approach in the spring, and Glacier National Park is going to continue with a ticketing system for visitors wanting to travel the Going to the Sun Road and visit the North Fork area of the park.

Zion isn't restricting visitation to the park, but will require permits if you want to hike to the top of Angels Landing. You'll have to pay $6 to enter a lottery to land a permit, too, and successful permit holders will then pay a $3 per person fee. 

Will these plans reduce congestion and crowding in the parks? Will other parks adopt similar reservation plans? The Traveler will continue to monitor these efforts.

Climate Change In The Parks

As the climate continues to go through contortions, it will continue to impact national park units. The drought in the Colorado River basin has been ongoing since 2000, and while the start to the winter of 2021-22 has brought heavy snows to parts of the basin, there's still no end in sight to the drought. 

At Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah and Arizona, consultants are working with park staff to determine how boat ramps can be extended to safely allow motorized watercraft (including houseboats) to launch into Lake Powell. 

How is sea level rise impacting parks? Will there be more hurricanes battering the Eastern Seaboard? Will there be more wildfires in the West? These are just some of the stories we'll be watching.

National Park Service Director Chuck Sams

For the first time since Jonathan Jarvis retired in January 2017 at the end of the Obama administration, the National Park Service has a Senate-confirmed director in Chuck Sams. And he has a lot of work to do.

Along with seeing that billions of dollars in Great American Outdoors Act funding and infrastructure funding are well-spent, he wants to improve morale across his vast workforce. According to the 2020 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey, the Park Service ranks 353rd out of 411 agencies in terms of best agencies to work for. Only the Bureau of Indian Affairs ranks lower among Interior Department bureaus.

There no doubt are many reasons behind that low ranking -- pay levels, housing, quality of life -- but there have also been harassment issues the agency has struggled with.

The National Park Service Voices Report, launched in late 2017 with interviews with Park Service employees to uncover the extent of harassment across the agency, was completed two years later. Then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called for the investigation after a survey showing that nearly 40 percent of the National Park Service workforce had been the victim of sexual harassment, intimidation, or discrimination.

While the Covid pandemic slowed service-wide distribution of the findings, according to Park Service chief spokesperson Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles, at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility officials claimed the report was intentionally "buried" to the detriment of the Park Service's workforce.

"The Park Service has turned a deaf ear to a cry for help from its own workforce,” said Rocky Mountain PEER Director Chandra Rosenthal in November. “It is unlikely that the deep internal dysfunction the report described has improved but may have gotten worse.”

Sams also wants to address the forementioned crowding problems by spreading visitation out across the park system to less-visited units through a public relations campaign, one that "is very inclusive to bring everyone into the parks so that they can enjoy these spaces."

The Parks

Traveler journalists and contributors will, of course, continue to generate content from out across the National Park System to help you make the most out of your national park vacation. Whether you're a hiker, paddler, camper, photographer, or simply looking for some rejuvenation in nature or primers on American history, we'll be looking for stories to fit your needs.

Editor's postscript: If you appreciate and look forward to this coverage, please donate to the National Parks Traveler. It takes a lot of creativity, determination and, frankly, expense, to produce the kind of in-depth reporting we strive for every day. It’s hard but essential work, and it’s readers like you that make it all possible.