Creeks, streams, and rivers provide a sense of place, a grounding at times, an identity for surrounding communities. They provide a recreational outlet, and can provide food, but often it's that sense of place that roots deepest. Hurricane Helene disrupted all that when it swept out of Gulf of Mexico and reached deep into southern Appalachia.

Uh-oh, this doesn’t look good. A kayaker is careening down the narrow winding river, letting the current pull her towards danger instead of paddling like mad away from it. “Stay hard right,” shouts Hailey Albers. “Stay away from that root wad.” Whooping and hollering, the woman rather gleefully crashes right into a partially submerged tangle of tree roots.

Being caught in a national park in unexpected weather can mean the difference between an enjoyable outing and one that is dangerous or deadly.

To be honest, I have no clue what I’m looking at beyond the fact that it’s a key object in the World War II-era race to develop the world’s first atomic weapons before Nazi Germany. There is a giant wall full of holes that reminds me of a Lite-Brite toy, mannequin men with rods and a legend that talks about donut, iodine and uranium fuel slugs.

President Trump’s zest for rapidly shrinking the government is triggering anxiety about conservation priorities that have been embedded for more than five decades in the country’s national parks and wildlife refuges.

Amid rising water levels, some of the country's oldest and most valuable historical artifacts are at risk of being lost forever.

On a recent trip to Tennessee, I lost count of how many people told me the same strange and unusual thing about Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If you stacked up all of the park’s salamanders against its roughly 1,900 black bears, the salamanders would weigh more. Or was it salamanders versus all of the mammals and birds, or even all the wildlife?

The first time that I went seabeaning, I triumphantly scooped up what looked like a shrivelled brain from a national seashore that was dotted with plastic trash. I turned the fist-sized oddity over in my hands, admiring how the deep grooves on its bumpy brown surface created brain-like patterns.

On the cusp of careers envisioned to last decades, fired National Park Service employees are left wondering about what might have been.

A federal hold on funding could upend a novel approach to preventing mosquitoes from sending a number of Hawaiian bird species into extinction.

An undersea wonderland some 80 miles off the New England coast that bursts with a biodiversity so bountiful that it’s dubbed the Yellowstone of the Atlantic needs better protection, maintain marine ecologists.

Every seven seconds we hear it — the long, drawn out “hooooooo” of one of the world’s rarest birds. The Grenada Dove may be shy, elusive and critically endangered, but it’s cooing its heart out on this drizzly day in the Caribbean.

While the National Park Service, and other federal agencies, are in a state of turmoil under the administration's push to drastically shrink the size of government, the agency has no idea how many vacant superintendent positions exist across the National Park System.

The EXPLORE Act was celebrated by many in the outdoor community, but wilderness advocates had some reservations.

National park visitors could be confronted by "chaos" this summer if the hold on seasonal hirings by the Trump administration is not lifted soon, says former National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis.

As dawn painted the Montana sky in hues of gold and amber, I sat in an inflatable raft on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River, gripping a fly rod for the first time. This wasn't just a fishing adventure—it became a journey of self-discovery.

Floyd Collins entered Sand Cave a century ago today to explore its prospects as a visitor site and became trapped in a passageway not much wider than his chest, dislodging a 27-pound rock that pinned his leg.

There is a shrinking potential to increase the amount of official wilderness in the country. The possibilities are waning because of federal agency decisions and congressional opposition or indifference.

“Are you a birder?” the woman asked from the front seat of her pickup truck in the parking lot of a Newfoundland national park on New Year’s Eve.

National parks, especially in the Southeast, are bearing the brunt of intensifying weather events.