So, have the stories of tremendous crowds at some national parks this summer convinced you to put off your national park adventure until next year? Or have you shied away from the iconic parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon, and instead focused on small, less traveled units?

The centennial of the National Park Service (NPS) is inspiring an impressive amount of soul-searching about the agency and the lands for which it is responsible. This is timely and potentially beneficial. As many analysts as well as agency employees themselves have long argued, the NPS faces serious challenges that affect the preservation and management of these precious lands.

National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis expects to hear of more incidents of sexual harassment or misconduct from his agency once a hotline is set up to receive reports.

Outlining steps that will be taken to root out sexual harassment across the National Park Service, the agency's leadership team has laid out its zero tolerance policy to employees, who will be anonymously surveyed this fall to determine how extensive the problem might be.