Features

What does a landscape contain, and how do you measure its richness? Is it just the soil beneath your feet and the vegetation that rises up and adds texture and even structure? What about the sky overhead and, of course, the naturalness and ecological integrity?

An atmospheric river of moisture took aim on California and the High Sierra over the last few months, dumping snowfall in amounts that haven’t been seen in years. While the state’s multi-year drought isn’t entirely over, the Pineapple Express (as the storms raging in over the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii are referred to) has been hammering California with rain and snow.

The health of America’s national parks depends upon the health of the waters that surround, and flow through, them. At the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), we work every day to protect and restore waterways across the country to benefit national parks, the communities that surround them, and the millions of people who visit them each year.

Has anyone not heard that the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park is one of the best places on Earth to paddle or float? Or that the New River Gorge National River has one of the best one-day whitewater paddles in the National Park System? If you’ve heard of those, and other iconic paddling spots in the park system, perhaps you are looking for something new, and not so thick with other boats that you’ll slap each other’s paddles. Let us offer you some suggestions, in no specific order.

Horace Kephart roamed the Smoky Mountains in all seasons, but he held springtime here in high esteem.

As soon as we slid the canoe into the river, the current grabbed it and pulled us towards the first rapid on our 26-mile guided trip down the East Branch of the Penobscot in the heart of Maine’s north woods. Now mid-May, it was the perfect time to run the Stream of Light, as the native Abenaki called it, in part because the black flies weren’t yet biting.

Delicate trilliums, glorious columbines, and flamboyant redbuds are some of the harbingers of spring found across the National Park System. This is a favorite season for birds, bees, and photographers. Wildlife is more easily seen in the spring in many parks, too, making the coming three months idyllic for exploring the parks.

There should be little doubt that the National Park Service's Find Your Park campaign for its centennial in 2016 was a resounding success, with overall visitation up nearly 8 percent to 331 million, setting a record for the third consecutive year. But those visitation levels are having adverse impacts on both park resources and the national park experience in some corners of the National Park System.

In the heart of the Canadian Rockies, a trail gently climbs through a forest, rises above tree line to a meadow dotted with colorful wildflowers, and ascends to a sweeping view of the Columbia Icefield. Here, a pair of brilliant-red Adirondack chairs, placed on the mountain ridge by Parks Canada, beckon. Take a seat and contemplate the scene.

A common, and surprising, thread runs through Grand Canyon, Olympic and Yellowstone national parks, as well as through Canyonlands, Grand Teton and Pinnacles national parks. They all faced measures of local opposition when talk arose about designating them.

The spine of the Appalachian Range runs north and south through the Mid- and South-Atlantic states, a rumpled stretch of mountains that long has provided a corridor for species. One uninvited species, the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, arrived in 1951, and since then has attacked hemlock forests once commonplace in Shenandoah National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Since 1988 the National Park Service has been battling the tiny insect, and has met with varying success in those three parks. While much work remains to be done, there is optimism some of the hemlock stands will be saved. In the following stories, we take a look at the campaign.

With winter storms buffeting the Bay Area, about 10 to 12 towering coast redwoods in Muir Woods National Monument have toppled during the last two months, according to trail crew members in the Golden Gate National Parks.

Spring can be one of those iffy seasons in the National Park System. You might run into warm, sunny days with an easy breeze at your back. Or, you could find yourself being pelted by sleet, battered by a stiff wind, with grey clouds scooting by overhead.

A battle over the future of two national monuments in Utah appears to only be getting started, with the state's congressmen determined to see the new Bears Ears National Monument decommissioned and the decades old Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument reduced in size. Countering their efforts, gear manufacturer Patagonia has launched a campaign to have Americans flood Utah Gov. Gary Herbert's office with phone calls in support of the monuments.

With all of Washington, D.C.'s political intrigue -- the seeming commercialization of the White House, the administration's mysterious connections to Russia, and President Trump's ability to be both landlord and tenant on a government property -- why is U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz so curious about the planning and forethought that goes into a Twitter tweet? No, the Utah Republican is not sifting through the president's Twitter feed. Rather, his attention was caught by a seemingly innocuous tweet from Bryce Canyon National Park.

David Hurst Thomas had planned to personally carry the "Pueblo Bonito Frog" from its safe storage at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to Chaco Culture National Historical Park in a remote and dusty corner of New Mexico as the hallmark of a world-class exhibit of Chaco Culture artifacts. But as problems continue to plague the park's new museum, the exhibit has been put off indefinitely and the frog is remaining in hibernation.

It all started with an international snowball fight.

Just two weeks into the Trump administration, one pledged to pursue a vigorous energy development course, Zion National Park officials find themselves in a bind over how to react to proposals to allow oil and gas exploration within a mile of the park.

The arrival of 2017 has opened a new chapter for the National Park Service and the National Park System, one that in the first days of the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress is fraught with concern over both the stability of the agency and the health of the parks.

Investments in the National Park System, from whittling away at the $11.9 billion maintenance backlog to adding personnel and forging strategic partnerships, are among the suggestions the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks has forwarded to the incoming Trump administration.