The murders of six in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including five rangers, this week has been condemned by the director-general of UNESCO.

Gunplay on the Blue Ridge Park near Roanoke, Virginia, left one dead Tuesday, park officials said. The shooting was believed to have stemmed from a road rage incident.

A senior National Park Service manager based in New York state was found to have misused park funds, retaliated against an employee who voiced concerns about her official travel, and let visitors stay in a ranger station that was not approved park housing, according to an investigation.

I stumbled across a video the other day that further convinced me that I need to move Gates of the Arctic National Park higher on my to-do list. In it, two septuagenarians set off on a three-week canoe trip down the Noatak River, a river the park staff tells us "drains the largest mountain-ringed river basin in America that is still virtually unaffected by human activities."