Features

While invasive plant, animal, and fish species are attacking the National Park System, there are some success stories to note in the battle.

The National Park Service has partnered on a new storytelling program that celebrates authentic traditions and experiences in the historic Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Reaction to news that President Biden was restoring the original boundaries to two national monuments in Utah and one off the coast of New England was predictable, with tribes, conservationists, and environmentalists applauding the move, and Utah politicians highly critical of the decision.

A chill is in the air, leaves are changing, and people are looking towards the holidays. Autumn also is the perfect time of year to soak in some of the country's history along with the fall colors at historic sites and historical parks in the National Park System.

Climate change is leaving National Park Service managers with stark choices: Stand by as the world warms to a point where ancient trees might no longer survive, or intervene so those trees may no longer be considered wild and national parks become something along the lines of national gardens.

A disease that threatens an entire ecosystem lies below the surface of the sea – out of sight and out of mind.

Humans arrived in North America thousands of years earlier than previously accepted, according to groundbreaking research tied to a series of human -- and animal -- footprints preserved in fossilized sand within today's White Sands National Park.

Pronghorn antelope are renowned as the fastest land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, but they're not expected to be fast enough to outrun climate change and drought in the Southwest. By the end of the century, half of the pronghorn populations in the region are expected to be gone, according to federal researchers.

Giant sequoias are no stranger to fire, but if they are to withstand large conflagrations such as those burning in California this year, fire has to be a regular visitor to the groves of these big trees.

Two centuries after the British were defeated at Saratoga in upstate New York, a new invader is forcing the National Park Service to set fire to the landscape in a bid to preserve its appearance.

This year's wildfires in the West have released a hazy, choking trail of smoke that has settled over much of the country.

Wilderness, and its occupants, slowly are vanishing. How we explore national parks determines whether we can preserve both.

National park gateway towns often put up with a lot when high season brings floods of tourists, but they also profit quite a bit, too.

Hot, dry weather caused by climate change is reshaping the landscape in many Western national parks, and bringing with it an uneasiness over how plants, animals and visitors will be impacted.

A soaring, 1.3-million-acre swath of the High Sierra would make a wonderful addition to the National Park System, one that could help slow the sixth mass extinction, forward the Biden administration's 30 by 30 initiative, and possibly even help the fight with climate change.

They were ornamentals, showy vegetation once viewed as being beautiful and helpful landscape additions, but today many have turned into invaders that are adversely impacting national park landscapes.

"In the beginning, it was the root, the tree, the bark that taught my ancestors,” says Todd Labrador as he splits a long spruce root into sinewy twine used to stitch birchbark onto a canoe frame. Each summer, Labrador builds a birchbark canoe at a shelter in Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site in Nova Scotia. This particular canoe was nearing completion in August 2019 when I signed up for a one-day workshop with Labrador, keen to say I had a hand in building this traditional and oh so Canadian craft. “We don’t have the elders to teach a lot of these things anymore, but the material will teach you how, if you listen to it.”

As more and more people heading into the National Park System to escape being cooped up, rangers are finding themselves responding to more and more search-and-rescue calls.

Dialogues about offensive climbing route names have ramped up in the last year as protests and ongoing dialogues about race and equity have happened across many sectors.

This summer's heat waves baked the Cascades and the glaciers in national parks there, but last winter's heavy snowpack might have been enough to shield the ice rivers from retreat.