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UPDATE 2 | National Park Concessionaires Seeking Federal Help In Dealing With Tourism Falloff

Concessionaires who run lodges, restaurants, inns, climbing expeditions, river trips, and other recreational operations in national parks have asked the White House to provide financial assistance to deal with the falloff in tourism to the National Park System due to the coronavirus pandemic. Their requests range from a waiver of franchise fees paid to the parks to a two-year extension of current contracts.

Erosion: Essays Of Undoing

National park enthusiasts will likely be familiar with the writing of Terry Tempest Williams. Her previous book The Hour of Land told national park stories as only she, in her lyrical, insightful, and emotional way, can tell them. Erosion is not explicitly about national parks, though some of the essays lament what has happened to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monuments. She has already addressed the challenges of many other parks in that earlier work. The 32 pieces in this book, most of them essays, address a “world being torn to pieces,” being eroded, a condition that brings Williams, at times, to heartbreak.

UPDATE 3 | National Park Service Suspending Fee Collections Across Park System

More and more parks Wednesday shut down visitor facilities ranging from restaurants to campgrounds and ending ranger-led programs in an effort to confront the spread of coronavirus, while Interior Secretary David Bernhardt encouraged visitors to "find refuge" in the park system and waived entrance fees to make it more appealing.

A Day For Students To Be Nature Detectives On Hurricane Ridge In Olympic National Park

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.

Some, But Not All, Virgin Islands National Park Coral Reefs Are Recovering From Hurricanes

After Hurricanes Irma and Maria delivered a one-two punch to Virgin Islands National Park in September 2017, the impacts to the park's coral reefs were significant. While research indicates that soft corals at the park are recovering, there has been a great decline in stony corals such as elkhorn corals that are the primary reef builders.

Utah Health Officials Discouraging Visitors To Moab Area National Parks

Utah health officials on Tuesday issued an order aimed at discouraging visitors from heading to the state's southeast corner where Arches and Canyonlands national parks are located in a bid to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus to that part of the state. While the order banned most camping on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, there had been no decision on national park campgrounds.

UPDATE | Park Superintendents Given Authority To Manage Coronavirus, Facilities Closing

Visitor facilities, hotels, museums, ranger programs, and other visitor services across the National Park System shut down Tuesday, hours after park superintendents were given the authority to do what they thought best to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the parks. Shuttle systems ground to a halt, visitor centers closed, as did some entrance stations and campgrounds, and ranger-led tours and concessionaire-provided activities were halted in many parks. Even the iconic Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park shut down

Traveler's View: The National Park Service's Battle With Politics And Common Sense

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.