It’s been six years since an oil company headed out across the marl prairie of Big Cypress National Preserve with vehicles weighing as much as 30 tons to search for oil reserves. Signs of that work continue to show on the prairie, despite stringent National Park Service requirements for restoring the landscape after the searching was completed.

Throughout history the barrier islands that today are home to Cape Hatteras National Seashore have been attractive to wildlife. A variety of sea turtle species come ashore to lay their nests, and a variety of shorebirds settle there, too, to lay their eggs. 
But the thing with wildlife nesting on the beaches of Cape Hatteras is that one great season can be followed by a poor one. Influencing the outcome can be human disturbances, storms, and predation. 

When a young park ranger was asked by his supervisor to clean out an old barn at Grand Teton National Park in the early 1970s, he discovered a dusty and stained blue, grey, and green poster inviting folks to “Meet the Ranger Naturalist at Jenny Lake Museum". This young ranger, Doug Leen, soon discovered that it was one in a series of posters created by the Works Progress Administration to put artists to work and promote visitation to the national parks during the late 1930s.