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 …

Spur a discussion about traveling to a national park for a vacation and odds are that it will revolve around getting out into nature, looking for wildlife, perhaps honing your photography skills, or marveling at incredible vistas. Will the discussion include destinations that portray aspects of the country’s history, or cultural melting pot? Equati…

Tens of millions of people in the United States will be able to witness a Total Solar Eclipse on Monday as the rare astronomical event cuts a path from Texas to Maine, up to 122 miles wide in some spots. This is a great opportunity to see the exact moment when the moon fully blocks the sun, creating a blazing corona visible to those observing from …

With March madness down to the Sweet 16, and Opening Day of Major League Baseball having arrived, we’re going to take a break this week and dive into our podcast archives for this week’s show. This is Kurt Repanshek, your host at the National Parks Traveler. My NCAA bracket was busted the very first day, and while the Yankees won their opening day …

One of the most popular public events in the National Park System was the release of sea turtle hatchlings, shuffling off into the Gulf of Mexico at Padre Island National Seashore. I say was, because the number of those public events has been drastically scaled back in recent years. The programs featuring the release of Kemp’s ridley sea turtle hat…

Air pollution and climate change impacts can have outsized effects on the National Park System, as well as lesser noticed but just as concerning effects. But are those impacts spread across the entire park system, or clustered around a few? Back in 2019 the National Parks Conservation Association looked at how air pollution and climate change were …

While most visitors to the National Park System view the parks as incredibly beautiful places, or places rich in culture and history, there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes within the parks, and with the National Parks Service. Traveler editor Kurt Repanshek has closely followed the parks and the Park Service for more than 18 years. Over that…

With nearly 430 units in the National Park System, of which 63 are National Parks, we all probably could use a little help in planning our adventures into the park system. But do you simply visit a park’s website to plan your trip? Find an online guidebook? Buy a hardcover guidebook? Or simply wing it when you reach your destination? This is Kurt R…

Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park is such a unique destination in the National Park System. Located on the Big Island, it’s surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, it has rainforests, and it boasts two active volcanoes in Mauna Loa and Kilauea. A visit to Hawai’i Volcanoes comes with a number of options. Do you simply hope to catch an eruption of Kilauea an…

From the Rocky Mountains to the West Coast and up to Alaska, there are thousands of historic structures and archaeological sites on National Park System landscapes. They range in variety from homesteader cabins to pre-historic cave dwellings. Taking care of these buildings and archaeological sites is a valuable job for the National Park Service, as…

Stand before a giant sequoia tree in Sequoia or Kings Canyon national parks or nearby Yosemite National Park and you’re overwhelmed by their size, and assume they’re impervious to anything that might be thrown at them. But as we learned from wildfires in 2020 and 2021 in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, that’s not the case. The Castle Fire …

Mountain lions are an incredibly charismatic animal on landscapes within, and adjacent to, the National Park System. But they’re seldom seen because of their nocturnal tendencies. There recently was a new report that focused on a comprehensive estimate of mountain lions in California, and the number is much smaller than many had thought it was. To …

Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia protects one of the defining battlefields of the Civil War. It was there that the first battle of the war was waged, in 1861, it was the scene of a second battle a year later, and it was where Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson got his Stonewall nickname. Despite the significance of Manassas, …

Mount Rainier National Park is the most recent unit of the National Park System to announce that you’ll need a reservation to enter the most popular areas of the park during the busy summer months. At the same time, Shenandoah National Park has announced that a pilot program it’s been running for two years for access to Old Rag will be permanent go…

When Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973, it said that species of fish, wildlife, and plants in the US have been rendered extinct as a consequence of economic growth and development untampered by adequate concern and conservation. Other species of fish, wildlife, and plants have been so depleted in numbers that they are in danger of,…

As a young boy growing up in New Jersey, a year-end holiday treat was setting up our model railroad. It gave me and my two brothers hours of fun and an opportunity to learn a little about the steam age of railroads. Our first railroad featured Lionel O gauge locomotives and cars. Later we moved into HO gauge trains, and many years later I had an N …

We’re closing out the year with a look back at some of the top stories around the National Park System, and involving the National Park Service. We opened this look back a week ago, with Kristen Brengel from the National Parks Conservation Association, and Mike Murray from the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, discussing issues involvi…

The past year has been a trying one for the National Park Service, and for many of the units in the National Park System. For the agency, employee morale continued to be a major issue as housing, pay, and leadership remained sore spots for many who worked for the Service. On the ground, climate change continued to impact parks, from sea level rise …

Who wouldn’t like to visit a tropical paradise? Virgin Islands National Park in the Caribbean is one such paradise. It resides on the island of St. John, and features beaches sparkling white and lined with palm trees and other tropical vegetation. Those beaches are washed by warm, turquoise waters that provide habitat for sea turtles the size of tr…

When Kurt Repanshek launched the Traveler back in August of 2005, it was primarily to find stories that he could pitch to magazines. But the magazine world took a nosedive, while at the same time readership on the Traveler continued to grow. Today, between 2.5 and 3 million readers and listeners a year turn to the Traveler to learn more about the N…

It’s been six years since an oil company headed out across the marl prairie of Big Cypress National Park 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. Located…

Utah has five spectacular national parks, and Arches is one of them. It’s a relatively small park. The scenic drive is only 18 miles long, ending at the Devil’s Garden area, but you’ll have incredible views of the reddish rockscape the entire way right from your vehicle. Of course, it’s always better to get out on the trails and take in as much off…

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…

It was just over a month ago when the federal government was staring at the possibility of a shutdown. Well, little seemingly has changed in the ensuing four weeks, other than that the House of Representatives has a new speaker in Mike Johnson from Louisiana, and the full chamber has settled on its budget numbers for fiscal 2024…which started back …

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…

There are more than 2,000 species currently listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. And while species that gain protection under the act have a great chance to survive, not all do. Just recently the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that 21 species – birds, fish, mussels, plants, and even a bat – were officially …

As you walk through the white gypsum sands of White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico, your footprints will likely be quickly erased by shifting winds. So it’s somewhat of a phenomenon of nature that the oldest footprints ever discovered in North America are not only found here — in perfect form, having withstood time and weather — but sho…

The Olympic Peninsula of Washington state is a wild and wooly place, even now in the 21st century. That’s no doubt largely because the heart of the peninsula is taken up by Olympic National Park, a more than 900,000-acre jigsaw puzzle of glaciers and peaks, rainforests, rivers, and Pacific coastline. You might view Olympic National Park as three pa…

Snow has fallen in the upper reaches of Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, and fall weather in general is making a national park trip in the northern half of the United States not terribly appealing. October is a season of transition across the National Park System. Cooler, and in some cases colder, weather is sweeping across the northern stat…

For the second time in five years, and the third time in the past decade, the United States government was poised to shut down this weekend because of an impasse in the House of Representatives over how to fund the government. And, as a result, the National Park System was poised to shut down. Indeed, by the time you’re listening to this episode, t…

For the past 240 weeks, the National Parks Traveler has brought you weekly podcasts examining life, news, and exploration of the National Park System. It’s been a long-running series that has never lacked for topics. We hope you’ve found those episodes as informative and interesting as we have. For this week’s show, we’re diving into shows from pas…

Grand Teton National Park is an incredible place, rich in wildlife, mountaineering history, pioneer history, and Native American history. And, rightfully so, it’s one of the busiest parks in the National Park System. In 2021 the park saw nearly 4 million visitors, as the public rushed back out into nature after the worst of the Covid pandemic. Last…

Bison have been in the news recently. The Interior Department this past week released $5 million to help fund both bison restoration and grasslands rehabilitation. And next month Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan will release their latest documentary, The American Buffalo. The American Buffalo documentary traces the history of how bison nearly went extin…

It’s been nearly eight years since a storm of historic proportions pounded Death Valley National Park and did extensive damage in Grapevine Canyon in the northeastern corner of the park where Scotty’s Castle stands. The popular tourist attraction still has not reopened as repair work continues. That storm was described as a once-in-a-thousand years…

If you were to plan an extended trip through the National Park System, how would you do it? Where would you go first? How would you prepare? In this week’s podcast, the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick talks with Cristian Garza, who recently returned from a four-month jaunt through the parks. He clocked some 300 hours of driving across 17,000 miles of the U…

In 1964, passage of The Wilderness Act promised Americans that there would be lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition. It was a promise from Congress that the American people of present and future generations would be able to enjoy the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.” When President Johnson signed…

The New York Times recently summed up one of the biggest climate change stories of the year so far. The planet’s average sea surface temperature spiked to a record high in April, and the ocean has remained exceptionally warm ever since, the paper reported. In July, widespread marine heatwaves drove temperatures back up to near record highs, with so…

Majestic wildlife abounds across the National Park System. You can see wolves, grizzlies and bison in Yellowstone, California condors at Pinnacles and Grand Canyon, moose in Voyageurs, and sea turtles at Cape Hatteras and Padre Island, and elephant seals at Point Reyes National Seashore, just to name some of the possibilities. Another charismatic s…

Why expand the National Park System? That can be a controversial question. There are many folks who would love to see additional units added, and there are just as many who say the National Park Service does not have the staff or funding to adequately maintain the existing park system. We’ve been exploring that question in recent weeks and months, …

This summer has been one of the hottest for the entire world, with temperatures rising above 100 degrees Fahrenheit quite frequently. Here in the United States, there are many places where the heat has gone well above 100 degrees. And at Death Valley National Park, the temperature this past week attracted crowds hoping to see it reach 130 degrees. …

There are seemingly endless guides to exploring the national parks: Moon, National Geographic, Lonely Planet, and various other corporate publishers. Indeed, it’s rare these days that you find a writer who takes on the role of both guidebook author and publisher. Most of these guidebooks take the same approach: a nice overview of the park in questi…

When you talk about expanding the National Park System, any expansion should be strategic. Whether it’s to protect a cultural or historical site, or one rich in natural resources. Today, if you want to protect natural resources, it should be done with an eye towards protecting biodiversity. There is too much at stake today to expand the National Pa…

Once upon a time, there might have been 60 million bison on the North American continent. The herds were so large that they covered prairies like immense horizon-stretching black cloaks, and their annual migrations carved such wide paths into the landscape that some were turned into roads by human travelers. As vast as bison herds were, the species…

A winter heavy in snowfall has slowed the start to the wildfire season across parts of the West, although the return of the El Niño weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean could reverse that start and contribute to another smoky summer in the National Park System west of the Continental Divide. Climate change, coupled with the departure of the La Niña…

There always seem to be calls to expand the National Park System. And those calls always spur a number of questions. Why does the National Park System need to be expanded? What sites might be considered for expansion? Can we even afford to expand the system? After all, as the Traveler frequently points out, the National Park Service doesn’t have th…

You likely know that Dry Tortugas National Park houses Fort Jefferson, which served as a Civil War-era prison with a community for soldiers, civilians, and slaves. Were you aware that hidden remnants of a hospital and graveyard have been found nearby — offshore — adding to the puzzle of life and death in the Civil War era? Lynn Riddick dives into t…

It’s summer. Not officially, but close enough. Many schools have already taken the next few months off, others will soon join the summer break. Summer for many is the peak travel time. Parks are a great destination, whether in summer or just about any other month of the year. To help you come up with some ideas of which parks to visit and why, we’v…

Horses can be found in many corners of the National Park System. You spot them running wild at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, splashing in the surf at Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina and at Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland and Virginia, and of course as pack animals and tireless steeds that carry b…

There are external and internal influences that can impact units of the National Park System. Urban sprawl can strangle parks and their natural resources. Wildfires can sweep across boundaries and into parks. Rivers can flood and wash out trails and roads, as we saw last June at Yellowstone National Park. Today we’re going to be talking about loomi…

While spring is slowly giving way to summer in many parts of the country, with visitors gaining more and more access to the National Park System, a stand-off in Washington over the country’s debt ceiling very likely would greatly disrupt operations in the parks. It was just a decade ago that a federal budget sequestration, that is a forced cut acro…