Features

Nearly a century after a series of canals was dug through Cape Sable to the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay, work to permanently seal them all is almost complete in another step towards restoration of the "river of grass."

America's move to electric vehicles could run out of juice in the National Park System, where many challenges stand in the way of installing EV chargers.

Fetching as she is, the reconstructed French fortress is not the draw on this blustery day as a fierce winter storm approaches Cape Breton. It’s a 40-minute interpretive walk that quietly beckons because it speaks to how coastal erosion is impacting the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site, its rocky shoreline and one of its centuries-old mass grave.

“A thousand Yellowstone wonders are calling, ‘Look up and down and round about you!’” In an 1885 essay, John Muir waxed rhapsodic about the nation’s first national park, then just 13 years old. Yellowstone’s wonders still were little known except to Native Americans who had been on the land for millennia; East coasters assumed it was a “park” akin to New York City’s Central Park. At its 150th birthday, Yellowstone is an eternity away from that wrongheaded view, and enmeshed in raft of modern-day complexities never envisioned its youth.

More than four decades after a large swath of Big Bend National Park was identified as potential wilderness, there's a grassroots effort under way to convince Congress that now is the time to transform it into official wilderness.

While two river guides, armed with a UV flashlight, searched the beach for scorpions, I wandered in the other direction down the shoreline of the Colorado River to stare into the night sky at the Milky Way and its surrounding twinkling diamonds of light.

In 2018, Great Smoky Mountains National Park began a concentrated effort to tell the stories of African Americans who have lived and worked in the Smokies over the past several centuries. Born out of that focus, the African American Experiences Project aims to collect the stories and history of Black people in the Smokies and to educate the public about their historical presence and contributions dating back to the 1540s.

Three decades after I was first told that Americans were loving their parks to death, some of the patients seem in need of life-support in the National Park System.

More people are leaping into the RV lifestyle every year. They’re exploring national parks in comfort, but all that extra traffic makes spontaneous road trips to the parks largely a thing of the past, at least during the busy summer season. With more rigs on the road than campsites to accommodate them, RVers like me are constantly competing for a scant number of RV-friendly campsites. I learned this lesson the hard way when I arrived at Yellowstone without reservations.

On a July 4th weekend, I slowly circled the Hoh Campground, passing just about every one of its 72 sites in search of an empty, unreserved campsite. With the sinking feeling that my campsite would end up somewhere in the adjoining Olympic National Forest, it was stunning to find a vacant site on a turn in the road and separated from the Hoh River by a line of towering trees.

Less than an hour’s drive southwest of Calgary, Bar U Ranch National Historic Site — the only one administered by Parks Canada to celebrate ranching history — recently received infrastructure funding to preserve key buildings. The investment ensures visitors can have authentic experiences for years to come at a site with the country’s largest collection of historical ranch buildings.

As the Biden administration's 30 by 30 initiative moves forward, it's likely it will rely heavily on the National Park System to succeed.

With its sharp, hooked bill, the kiwikiu is a master at cracking open branches or berries in pursuit of a plump insect meal. Ironically, this olive green and yellow bird, already on the national endangered species list, risks being pushed into extinction by an insect.

Charles "Buffalo" Jones is just a footnote in Yellowstone National Park's history, but his work more than a century ago might have played a role in a current legal drama revolving around whether Yellowstone bison are an endangered species.

A cold day makes Valley Forge National Historical Park a particularly haunting and powerful place to visit.

As they launched their slender bodies rocket-like into the unknown of their new homes, the fishers had no idea of the weight of expectation riding on their furry shoulders.

A veritable flood of dollars – literally billions – is flowing into the National Park System to address maintenance projects long overdue for attention, but as heartening as that influx is, there's still a lack of balance in how the National Park Service is funded that goes beyond bricks and asphalt.

Once the focus of widespread environmental concern over water quality, the Chesapeake Bay is also now on the front lines of climate change.

Today, numerous species living in Saguaro National Park, including the signature cactus, face many challenges — urban development along with invasive species, drought, and wildfires that are amplified by climate change.

Dual threats -- climate change and growing popularity -- have combined to alter the experience and threaten the barrier island setting of Fire Island National Seashore.