Summer is almost here. The upcoming Memorial Day weekend is the official kickoff to the summer travel season, and I’m happy to say that the National Parks Traveler will be continuing to bring you news about the parks and how you can enjoy them.
As much as Editor-in-Chief Kurt Repanshek was looking forward to retiring, listener and reader support has enabled the news organization to continue on with its editorially independent coverage of National Parks and protected areas.

Smokies Life, which most of you who closely follow Great Smoky Mountains National Park know was previously known as the Great Smoky Mountains Association, produces educational and informational materials for Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This week we’re joined by Laurel Rematore, the chief executive officer of Smokies Life, to discuss the name change as well as how her organization lends a big hand to the Park Service staff at Great Smoky. 

Wolverines, the largest land-dwelling members of the weasel family, once roamed across the northern tier of the United States, and as far south as New Mexico in the Rockies and southern California in the Sierra Nevada range. But after more than a century of trapping and habitat loss, wolverines in the lower 48 today exist only as small, fragmented populations in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, and northeast Oregon.