Features

A far-reaching and effective partnership has greatly improved the prospects for the endangered California condor.

Has the time come to develop a Civilian Conservation Corps-type program for today's unemployed and youth? A campaign for a new corps program to provide jobs for young people, to address pressing problems arising from climate change and environmental degradation, to especially address needs and opportunities to improve public lands like national parks, and to provide one vehicle for national service, must be mounted and can accomplish much good on many fronts.

While the coronavirus pandemic largely dominated news about the National Park System in 2020, there are more serious threats and impacts to the parks, ranging from noise and light pollution to oil exploration and even the deterioration of historic structures in the parks that need to be addressed.

The beginning of winter found me feeling torn between the sleepy comforts of home and the satisfying challenges of rugged wilderness camping. As usual, the mountains won. “I’m headed north on Highway 15 out of Silver City, New Mexico,” I had texted my family. “No service for a few days, until I get back.”

With the departure of the Trump Administration, many conservation organizations are asking President Biden to revere some of his predecessor’s actions affecting public lands and the environment. There are concerns over new Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act regulations and of course President Trump’s splintering of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments.

Tracing the route through the forests and skirting lakes that the voyageurs followed in the 1700s provides ample reminder that the natural world provides an important part of the human landscape at Grand Portage and many other historic sites.

There is in the southern Arizona desert a structure known locally as Sivan Vahkih. Nearly four stories tall, it's the remaining focal point of a culture that had figured out centuries ago how to tame this unforgiving landscape.

For those allergic to snow, ice, and sub-freezing temperatures, there is an escape to national parks in the lower half of the United States, parks that offer sweeping panoramas, interesting wildlife, warm and even hot temperatures, and lots to do.

Anhingas at Everglades National Park, yellow-rumped warblers at Yosemite National Park, and Snowy owls at both Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras national seashores. Tallying those, and hundreds of other bird species, resumes in earnest Monday and continues through early January as the 121st Audubon Christmas Bird Count brings thousands of birders to national parks and other landscapes to see what they can spot.

Once upon a time in the Midwest, almost a century ago, there was talk of creating a "Great Plains National Monument" that would preserve a slice of grasslands that once dominated that part of the nation. Today there's talk of rescuing the grasslands that once swept the horizon in a wide belt ranging from Canada to Mexico.

In the Great Smokies, Shenandoah, and elsewhere, black bear populations are growing. The BearWise program is designed to protect our ursine friends—and ourselves, too.

There is in New Mexico a national monument that protects a headland, or bluff, that for centuries has attracted travelers seeking to quench their thirst. But even before that this place was home to an ancient culture that once touched many corners of the Southwest.

What motivates people to hike as far as they can as fast as they can? For many who live near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the answer can be found on the trails.

Winter, the season with cold, snow, short days and long nights, can be a challenging season to explore the National Park System. Yet it also holds surprises that reveal themselves in shimmering lights darting across the night sky, in tracks of what passed the night before across the snowscape, and in congregations of wildlife.

Across the National Park System there are crowding and environmental issues that park managers are struggling to address. But Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida has an issue that is a bit more unusual than many others. It involves Crab Island, a lively spot within the national seashore that attracts throngs of partiers, personal watercraft, and businesses that sell everything from frozen bananas to hot boiled peanuts.

El Morro and El Malpais national monuments preserve rugged, demanding landscapes that nevertheless attracted travelers, from ancestral Puebloans to early 20th century homesteaders. Today visitors study the signatures at El Morro, or peer into the lava tubes that worm beneath El Morro's surface. But there's also the backcountry of both that attract visitors who look for beauty, solitude, and perhaps a connection with those who came long before.

How much do you know (or think you know) about Grand Teton National Park? Find out with the Traveler’s Quiz and Trivia #20: The Grand Teton National Park Edition. If you’ve never visited this national park, then let these questions, answers, and bits of trivia sway you into adding this place to your park bucket list.

Two years after the Carr Fire burned across nearly the entire Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in California, recovery and rebirth are continuing, but perhaps more slowly than some would like.

Saguaro National Park covers little more than 90,000 acres, which is small compared to Yellowstone or Death Valley national parks, and less than a quarter the size of nearby Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. But that doesn't mean you should take a windshield tour of Saguaro and be gone in 24 hours.

There soon will be a sensory experience that more visitors to Redwood National and State Parks will be able to have safely, now that a project to build a trail to one of the world’s most magnificent groves of redwoods is well under way.