National Parks Traveler Podcast

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 and more potent storms, to wildfires, and hotter a...

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 trunks, colorful fishes like blue tang and parrot fi...

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 National Park System, both its wonders and how it'...

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 to the north of Everglades National Park, Big Cyp...

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-road as your timetable and legs will allow. T...

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 o...

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 on October 1.   While most national parks likely w...

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 artis...

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 declared extinct.  We're going to discuss that new...

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 show that ancient humans lived here much earlier than...

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 parks in one: The coastal area battered by the Pacif...

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 states, while southern states are not as blazingly hot...

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, the parks might already have been closed and visito...

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 past years to bring you two we think you'll find...

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 year it counted 2.8 million visitors.  How many v...

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 extinct, and how they came back. It will be delivered...

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 storm.   A year ago, rainstorms again pounded D...

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.S. and Canada and shares some of his experienc...

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 act into law, he said that "If future gener...

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 some hot spots nearing 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  In l...

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 species in the park system, but one you're not like...

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, and an argument can be made that since national pa...

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. In the National Park System, there are places wher...

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 question, followed by a breakdown of places to stay, wh...

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 Park System just for the sake of adding units. The c...