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Ghost at Blevins Farmstead; Excerpt From 'Haunted Hikes'

Nov 1st - 00:08am | haunted hiker

Update: My latest source says that Oscar Blevins never wore overalls. So, depending on your beliefs, the rangers are seeing an image that represents the image concocted by their own guilty conscience or it implies that someone other than Oscar is haunting the Blevins homested.

4-Year-old Dies in Fall off South Rim of Grand Canyon

Oct 31st - 22:09pm | Anonymous

My husband and I visited the Grand Canyon in September of this year - 2007. We rode the train up to the Village and walked along the sidewalks near the hotels and shops. Even though there was a rock wall, it didn't cover the entire area and it was only about two-to-three feet tall, maybe not even that tall. It had a rim/edge on top that you could sit on.

Centennial Projects: Mountain Biking in Big Bend National Park

Oct 31st - 12:56pm | Mark E

Many national parks do allow mountain biking on narrow, single-track trails. One recent trial conducted in Kentucky concluded that shared-use trails for hikers and mountain bikers have few problems. Shared-use Big South Fork trail deemed a success By Morgan Simmons Knoxville News Sentinel October 7, 2007

Oct 25th - 20:24pm | Bob K

I am an avid mountain biker and sometimes racer. I am also an avid hiker and life-long advocate for the NPS and wilderness. I have hiked and ridden many Big Bend NP and region trails, and appreciate the arguments on both sides. Final disclosure: last year we wrote in support of the BBNP mountain bike trail proposal.

Kids Detached From Nature? Here's One Example

Oct 31st - 12:39pm | Mark E

It seems important in discussions like this to try and remember what it's like to be a kid. Trees are, to nearly all kids, really pretty boring. It's not until later in life that the subtle appeal of passively studying the natural world holds much appeal. But kids do love to explore, ride bikes, play in the woods when they're given opportunities.

Oct 25th - 22:15pm | Anonymous

All good points in this discussion. Just to add a bit more substances to the subject from a personal observation viewed today. While heading out to the local Baylands to observe nature in it's fall pattern of bird migration, I couldn't quite get mind off the local golf course ( adjacent to the refuge) which was super busy for Thursday afternoon.

Oct 25th - 19:30pm | Merryland

Simple acts like walking or riding a bike to school are also becoming a thing of the past. Kill your TV. Our Christmas season has been so pleasant around our house without cable TV these past 5-6 years. When the kids aren't sure what they want for Christmas and ask mom and dad for ideas, that's a GOOD thing. That means the media giants don't have a stranglehold on them.

Oct 25th - 18:32pm | DARWIN

WELL MY KIDS GO CAMPING AND FISHING AND FLOATING "KAYAKING" ABOUT 25 WEEKENDS A YEAR BECAUSE WE TAKE THEM

Hunting Across the National Park System: Good or Bad?

Oct 31st - 12:14pm | Alan S

When an attack happens in a National Park it is guaranteed to make national headlines. Yet we only read about one or two every year. But as our example of Googling "deer attacks" illustrated, far more attacks happen outside of parks. Many of these attacks, as well as bear, elk, moose etc. happen to hunters.

Oct 30th - 17:49pm | Alan S

"*ONE QUICK REQUEST: Can we stop using the phrase "the rangers?!?""

Oct 30th - 01:09am | Anonymous

I'm fine with not having hunting as long as we don't pretend we're not then moving into gardening the landscape on a mass scale and that we're permanently altering the park's ecosystem into something different than what was there.

Oct 29th - 21:45pm | Anonymous

Lone Hiker, in part your right, but the natives also stampeded hundreds of buffalo over huge gullies and high cliffs, with intentions for a mass kill, in order to have plenty of meat for the winter months and heavy warm hides to bear the bitter cold on the Dakota plains. There were excesses by the natives but not much waste!

Oct 29th - 21:41pm | J Longstreet

Anonymous asks if I believe that Katmai National Preserve's bear hunt is being managed appropriately. I don't profess to know everything that I would like to about this situation, but what I know makes me as uncomfortable as most of you are.

Oct 29th - 21:08pm | Lone Hiker

I don't think Frank's point about the alteration of the ecosystem can be ignored. The lands that the parks encompass are simply not the same ecosystem that was so masterfully managed by the Natives centuries ago, or even the same that Powell, et.al. "discovered" in the late 19th century. It is an artificial preserve, with selected predation and prey as deemed fit by human "stewards".

Oct 29th - 15:29pm | Lone Hiker

Unfortunately, I don't believe it to be true that the majority of Americans really give a damn one way or the other regarding hunting inside or outside the parks. I wish it were so, and that the public took a truly active stand on issues pertaining to the National Parks.

Oct 29th - 13:15pm | Random Walker

Hunting Across the National Park System: Good or Bad?

Oct 29th - 13:01pm | Anonymous

Remember - hunting is only permitted in parks where the park's legislation allows it. Hunting is not permitted in the vast majority of parks and is prohibited by law. Only Congress can change the legislation of parks where hunting is not permitted. See the famous court case NRA v. Potter.

Oct 29th - 11:29am | Alan S

Wildlife biologists have learned more about the lives of wolves by observing them in the wild in Yellowstone in the last 12 years than in all of history prior to that. Much of what we know of bear behavior was gleaned from the Craighead research of the fifties and sixties in Yellowstone. Predator, prey knowledge has been greatly advanced by observations in Isle Royale.

Oct 29th - 09:32am | Lone Hiker

I spent half a dozen or so weekends at Zion last summer and was quite surprise (and dismayed) be the behavior of the local mulies. But with a couple million people annually sardined into that relatively small tract of land, I guess I had no right to be surprised.

Oct 28th - 21:31pm | Alan S

"They are places where mountain lions stalk and eviscerate deer, raptors snatch up cottontail rabbits in their talons and rip out their entrails with sharp beaks"...............Excuse me? These aren't part of the natural processes? These things don't happen in the forests where hunting is allowed? The difference is that in a National Park we might actually WITNESS them.

Oct 28th - 15:38pm | Anonymous

Frank, you seem to say it like it is regarding to the issue which has much merit in my book. Mr. Longstreet's comments bothers me to the point, when you start dragging in the NRA with the hunting issue in the National Parks (and under this present administration) things tend to get real messy.

Oct 28th - 13:23pm | J Longstreet

Whatever we may think of the pros and cons of hunting in the national park system, the discussion needs to be cognizant of federal law and court cases.

Oct 27th - 20:22pm | Alan S

Parks are a place for families. They are a place for picnics, hikes and campfires roasting marshmallows. They are a place of education and wonder. They are a place where a father (or mother) can share with their children a bear and her cubs, a deer and its fawn.

Oct 26th - 08:36am | Anonymous

Geez Frank, your comments merits at least one good solution to the wildlife population demise in the parks. That's what I like, a clean honest take down of a animal in chase. Now that's pure hunting at it's best, which includes the down trodden and the needy in the meat sharing process. How humble you are in thoughts!

Oct 25th - 19:06pm | Merryland

1) The Cape shouldn't be stocking the park with non-native species. 2) The National Park Service should be in the business of species preservation, not destruction. 3) I don't have any problem with people hunting animals that are not endangered or not at the top of the food chain, but not in a National Park.

Oct 25th - 16:25pm | Anonymous

Jeremy, I have to question your risk assessment skills when you say you'd prefer to startle a bear and not a hunter. ;)

Katmai Bear Hunt: Outfitter Says It's No Walk in the Woods

Oct 31st - 08:24am | Bob Jackson

For anyone who would like a better visual of this year's bear hunt out on Katmai go to www.scottdickerson.com he's a photographer that took many still images of the bears milling around the hunters plane and camps. I think it further drives home just how simple it was for these guys to walk up to their animals and shoot!!

Alaska Regional Director Responds To Outrage Over Katmai Preserve Bear Hunt

Oct 31st - 08:19am | Bob Jackson

For anyone who would like to get a better visual of the bears milling around the lake and camps where the hunters are set-up go to www.scottdickerson.com he's a photographer that took many still images of the so-called bear hunt on Katmai.

Letter from Congress Urges Director Bomar To Ban Snowmobiles from Yellowstone National Park

Oct 31st - 06:47am | Terry and Brenda

Director, Terry and Brenda just want to say hi and that we are proud of your work!

Oct 30th - 21:00pm | Merryland

Not only the overflights, but the "underflights" at the Grand Canyon as well -- those military jets whose pilots that think it's some yukkity yuk rite of passage to break the law and fly through the lower gorge -- they should be stopped as well.

Oct 30th - 16:50pm | Lone Hiker

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it appears that now it's Congress turn to do the about-face double talk. I guess that since we're dealing with a current issue, the statement about "preserving the soundscape" is all well and good. But shouldn't that same logic apply to the over-flights at the South Rim?

Museum of the National Park Service Will be Built in West Virginia

Oct 30th - 21:20pm | Lone Hiker

You're dead on target Jon. Any reader of those captions would be hard pressed to find even one that didn't apply across the board to what we're discussing on most every issue. Kurt should feature a link......

Oct 30th - 20:25pm | Bart

Thanks, Frank, for you positive feedback. Back at ya! Good to hear you had an independent thinking supervisor at Zion. Truthfully, I believe most NPS employees know the difference between logic and absurdity...but we exist in a culture where daring to speak common sense, for some obscure reason, seems "dangerous" and "revolutionary".

Oct 30th - 06:09am | Merryland

Has everyone seen the demotivational posters and calendars at despair.com? They're hilarious and they poke fun at those beautiful posters with inspirational messages. There's one with a picture of an eagle soaring above some snow-capped mountains and the caption at the bottom reads: "Leaders are like eagles. We don't have either of them here."

Oct 29th - 17:36pm | Bart

A museum dedicated to a federal bureaucracy? Will it be filled with life-sized photos of noted NPS bureaucrats? I wonder if space will allow for images of giant sequoias, grizzly bears, waterfalls, and exploding volcanos? Perhaps not, now that such concepts are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Oct 29th - 14:11pm | Mookie

A million visitors does seem a bit optimistic, but I don't fault anyone for optimism. Harpers Ferry currently gets about 250,000 annual visitors a year, and Gettysburg, only about 60 miles away, gets over 1.5 million.

Oct 29th - 06:00am | Merryland

This is great -- another place I can volunteer when I retire to my cabin on the Potomac. I'll make sure everyone hears the stories of the NPS mistakes so they're not repeated by future generations -- feeding trash to bears, damming rivers then destroying the dam later, stocking National Seashores with non-native species, allowing commercial rave parties at Alcatraz, the list goes on.

Oct 27th - 13:56pm | Lone Hiker

Or just maybe, since the NPS is so eager to spend money for the Jazz Museum in New Orleans, we can get the NPS Heritage Museum funded by the National Endowment for the Arts?

Oct 27th - 11:33am | Water Witch

Guess the devil will be in the details on where the funds to purchase 15 parcels of land encompassing 564 acres will come from, and who will get what for it.

Oct 27th - 09:41am | repanshek

Water Witch, I guess I don't see the contradiction. In the case of Fort Hancock, you have the Park Service giving over to a commercial developer publicly owned historic buildings that he plans to transform into for-profit enterprises.

Oct 27th - 08:45am | Water Witch

This certainly seems like a desirable and ambitious project. Let's hope that the community dialogue doesn't result in delays such as the rehabilitation of Gateway's Fort Hancock has been subjected to. On that subject, I have difficulty resolving NPT's support of the Harpers Ferry project with its opposition to the Fort Hancock rehabilitation.

Oct 27th - 08:10am | Art Allen

Thanks Kurt, for picking up this story. The National Park Service is the first Agency in the world to attempt to preserve a Nation's legacy of natural and cultural resources. This project will be an attempt to communicate that 100 year long story.

Oct 26th - 15:20pm | Joy Oakes

Thanks, Kurt. We're very pleased to see a developer working with the Park Service, instead of at cross purposes. We look forward to a community dialog about this proposal. Joy Oakes Senior Mid-Atlantic Regional Director National Parks Conservation Association

Big Cypress National Preserve: The Latest Battleground Over ORVs in the Parks

Oct 30th - 06:30am | Romeolin

What is Superintendant Gustin thinking? Opening more trails for ORV's will have a negative impact on the environment and wildlife. This is just another example of people selfishly taking more land away from animals that were there first and we need to speak up for them. I'm just wondering if Gustin has some ulterior motive?

Oct 30th - 06:29am | Lone Hiker

So much for preserving the integrity of the pride. By introduction of an exotic species to artificially raise the population you have committed the worst type of biological atrocity. You have effectively brought the Florida line to extinction by introducing genetic mutation, thereby forever altering the bloodline.

Oct 30th - 05:55am | Merryland

While working at the Everglades back in '86 I visited all the surrounding parks including the Big C. It was a very sad place -- kinda like the Lorax story with trees splintered up, tire tracks everywhere... you could tell recreational vehicles of all kinds were king there.

Flag Soars Above USS Arizona Memorial

Oct 29th - 15:22pm | Random Walker

Yup, sad place. I couldn't hang there long.

Trekking to Dick Proenneke's Cabin in Lake Clark National Park

Oct 29th - 08:46am | Anonymous

Kurt, what a example of a man that can teach us so much about the simple basic things in life and yet be quite content. What a refreshing story that touches the human heart and soul in what a true pure wilderness experience is. This man is a real stud!

Park Service Now Interested in Adding Christmas Mountains to Big Bend National Park

Oct 28th - 09:32am | Anonymous

I own property in the Christmas Mountains adjacent to this tract, and in the past had numerous problems with poaching across it when it was previously used for hunting. Since hunting has stopped, return of wildlife has been spectacular, and now includes at least one wild black bear.

Camping in Comfort: A Guide to Roughing It With Ease and Style

Oct 26th - 13:38pm | Steve Sergeant

"Roughing-it" doesn't have to be rough. It's mostly about your mindset and your expectations.

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