Features

While the coronavirus pandemic is putting a stranglehold on some businesses that cling to the National Park System, others seem to be faring better, at least early on during the economic downward slide.

We never imagined that someday we would trade our backpacks for a big, boxy trailer. But it was the perfect way to give our dying dog the road trip of a lifetime. The learning curve was steep but once we discovered the joys of RVing with pets to national parks, campgrounds, and public lands, there was no turning back. During the last thirteen years of living on the road full-time, here’s what we’ve learned about camping with pets in America’s parks.

At Olympic National Park middle school students are involved in a program geared toward science learning and centers around the question: “How is changing snowpack, due to climate change, going to affect park ecosystems and surrounding communities?” Students help rangers, teachers and scientists collect data at Hurricane Ridge —5,000 feet above sea-level — to help answer that question, taking their measurements back to the classroom to add to other data that has been collected over the years.

Over the years I've developed great respect for those who work for the National Park Service, knowing that most employees are underpaid, that living conditions for many are borderline tolerable, and yet daily they must -- and usually do -- sport a smile and openness with visitors, some who don't deserve either. But the paralysis that has afflicted the upper echelons of the agency during the novel coronavirus pandemic is baffling in its apparent lack of common sense, something that hopefully can be traced to the political winds that swirl through the Interior Department and not the judgment of career employees.

Providing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on the National Park System is difficult at best, in large part because there are more than 400 units of the park system and many park-specific actions need to be approved by National Park Service leadership in Washington, D.C. This is a rolling news story, one that can change by the hour.

A stark beauty is sweeping across Big Cypress National Preserve. It’s early March, and red spikes that signal the erupting bracts of the cardinal airplant are poking out from countless numbers of these epiphytes that have latched onto the trunks of dwarf cypress trees, a remnant of Florida’s vast old growth forest.

"I worry that the success of The Times is crowding out the competition."

While the wildfires that swept Australia have been doused, the recovery of the country's national parks and their wildlife has a long way to go.

Water is big business, bigger in the Southwest than perhaps anywhere else in the United States, and so where the Colorado River flows, economics and politics closely follow. More than 40 million people downstream depend upon its waters for agriculture, cities and businesses. At Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in southern Utah and northern Arizona, that reality rises in the 710-foot tall Glen Canyon Dam and shimmers in the lake that it has formed, Lake Powell.

The rustic accommodations of national park campsites get us closer to nature than private campgrounds outside the park. But opting for that primitive experience often puts RVers like you and me in the middle of that classic Goldilocks conundrum. Without good planning, we just don’t know if a campground can easily accommodate our home on wheels. I can’t count the number of times we have spent an entire afternoon jumping from open site to another, trying each one on for size until we found the one that fits just right – if we were lucky enough to find one at all.

Climate change is altering the flow of the Colorado River through Canyonlands National Park. And that throws a significant degree of uncertainty into how the phenomena is changing the park and its river.

The engine growls and gears grind as the yellow school bus lurches ahead. The hard, dark green, vinyl bench seat accentuates the jolt. Memories of a childhood decades removed flash through my mind. I feel a surge of youthful energy as we begin a tour of the diverse and interesting architecture in and near Indiana Dunes National Park.

Late one evening last summer, about the time that bats take to the air, I was stretched out on a patch of warm sand next to the Green River in Utah’s Desolation Canyon, waiting for stars to appear. Next to me were a couple my age from Baltimore and their two young grandsons, part of a group enjoying a six-day float trip with a Utah adventure outfitter. As darkness fell, the glittering band of the Milky Way spread above us from cliff to cliff. This was one of the reasons we had come to this place, for the “star river,” as the ancient Chinese poets called it, is no longer visible from our homes in the city.

A warming climate has been linked to human activity around the world, and has affected the Colorado River System as well. The impacts are substantial, from reduced water flows, threats to indigenous species and the influx of new invasive species along the river system. National Parks Traveler sent Patrick Cone to investigate the impacts on Canyonlands National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. From Moab to Green River, Utah, and Page to Flagstaff Arizona he talked to Park Service personnel, river runners, residents, business owners and other stakeholders who rely on a healthy Colorado River for their existence

On a hike in the forests and hills of Montenegro’s Lovcen National Park, our writer dodged some illegal foresters in search of free timber, and a wily fox that blocked her way.

Despite the imagery of dental picks, small handheld whisk brooms or paint brushes, and chisels, sometimes paleontologists need something bigger to get a fossil out of the rock. Like explosives and helicopters.

“The basis for conservation has to be love…There are lots of different approaches to conservation, but I don’t think any of them will work unless there’s a personal connection between the individual and the natural world.” --Michael Soule interview, The Sun magazine, April, 2018.

Meteorology is being factored into the future of visitation at Big Bend National Park, at least when it comes to finding a room in the rugged and sprawling swath of Chihuahuan ecosystem protected by the park in West Texas.

Jon Jarvis took a detour from the typical retirement path after his National Park Service career, which he wrapped up with eight years as director of that agency. Instead of traveling for enjoyment and relaxation, he's working to help guide the Park Service's approach to climate change from outside the agency.

That headline packs a wallop. There are those who either disagree the climate is changing due to human behavior, or that there's nothing that can be done regardless of the driver, as well as those who would love to see more national park lands and those who believe such a move would tie up federal lands from multiple resource activities, such as logging or mining.