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.

More areas of the National Park System closed to the public Monday due to the spread of COVID-19. In the greater New York-New Jersey Metropolitan Area the Statue of Liberty National Monument closed, as did facilities at Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts.

Statue of Liberty National Monument closed Monday due to the coronavirus outbreak that's been expanding in parts of the United States.

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.