Night sky programs introduce Olympic National Park visitors to the other half of the park.

Pecos National Historical Park in New Mexico is rich in history and stories, from its Spanish mission to the surrounding pueblos, kivas, and Indigenous culture.

There is a need to link Western national parks that are home to many species of wildlife that otherwise would be stranded on biological islands.

My son and I are one percenters – a label unrelated to our income level. We belong to the privileged one percent of the six million annual visitors to Grand Canyon National Park who walk from the rim to the canyon floor.

Michael Reichmuth was stunned to see Chinook salmon showing up in Redwood Creek, a tiny stream that meanders amid the towering coast redwood trees in Muir Woods National Monument.

The call came during the 20th century's first decade: Did the Interior Department have any surplus beavers?

Though national parks can play vital roles in helping species move off the threatened and endangered species lists, the challenges are mounting.

As societies around the globe recognize with great concern the declines, drastic in some cases, of wildlife and wild places, the National Park System, a key to preserving nature and its life forms in the United States, is facing a confluence of challenges that could jeopardize efforts to reverse those declines.

The cascading effects of climate change, including increasing rain events and rising seas, are causing challenges for cultural resource managers throughout the national park system.

Water, the universal solvent, is eroding parts of the National Park System. It is slowly overcoming Cape Hatteras National Seashore and has done significant damage to Yellowstone and Death Valley national parks, as well as Mojave National Preserve and Vicksburg National Military Park. And with climate change, it is gaining strength.

Across the National Park System, hundreds of millions of dollars obtained through the Great American Outdoors Act were put to work in the parks this past year.

Across the National Park System, declines in park staff are paired against soaring visitation levels in a discordant dance that challenges the National Park Service to accomplish its mission.

The tallest mountain in North America is known for making its own weather. Now its weather patterns and temperatures are the subject of scientific scrutiny in a warming climate.

In northern Minnesota, tucked up against the Canadian border, thousands of furry engineers are at work.

Biscayne National Park's mesmerizing bay is slowly suffocating from urban wastes that are depleting the bay's oxygen.

Thirty-one species of cacti live in the starkly beautiful Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in the Sonoran Desert, along with bighorn sheep, pronghorns, javelinas, kangaroo rats, rare pupfish and all kinds of reptiles and birds. But the green desert is also home to a 30-mile stretch of America’s steel border wall and warning signs had this traveler anxious that “smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area.”

Peeking through the viewing slots on the wooden observation platform at Étang de la Baie Lucas, we don’t need binoculars to see an embarrassment of wildlife. Large iguanas are nestled in the mangroves, including one bright green female and two males that have turned reddish-orange to display dominance and attract mates. There’s a Brown Pelican on the rocks. In the water, a Snowy Egret looks for food near a Great Egret and Spotted Sandpiper as four White-Cheeked Pintail ducks putter merrily about.

“You can die out here and nobody would know it for a week, or longer,” the BLM ranger warned after I mentioned we were headed to Basin and Range National Monument.

Each cactus had more personality than the last as we road tripped through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona and admired all the organ pipes, saguaros and senitas. But it was a singular cactus with a striking deformity that stood out.

Author and professor John Elder envisioned the ideals for Vermont’s only national park at the opening of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in 1998, calling it "...an entirely new kind of park. It must be one where the human stories and the natural history are intertwined..."