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Across the National Park System, national parks fortunate enough to have friends groups helping them out have been leaning a little bit harder on those non-profit organizations than in the past. In some cases a lot harder as federal funding has not kept up with the increase in park units, or the costs of maintaining and operating those parks.
It seems the National Park Service can never get ahead of the costs of operating the park system. That's where national park friends organizations come into play. They raise charitable dollars to help cover the costs of programs and initiatives that the parks wouldn't otherwise be able to afford.
The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation has been doing this kind of work for 25 years. Today we're going to take a look back at the foundation's many successes with Jordan Calaway, the foundation's chief development officer.
National Parks Traveler correspondent Jennifer Bain visits Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southwestern Arizona. Jessica Pope, the park's interpretation, education and community engagement programs manager, gives Bain a tour of Quitobaquito Springs, a lush oasis in the middle of the Arizona desert.
Freeze-dried meals long have been the go-to food source for many backcountry travelers, but only because they didn't know other options existed for meal time. And not everyone easily stomachs those meals. To explore the possibilities of home-made dehydrated meals, we are joined by Chef Glenn McAllister, who decided that a 315-mile hike on the Appalachian Trail would be a great shakedown trek for experimenting with dehydrated meals. Chef Glenn runs the website BackpackingChef.com, which is the go-to source for how to dehydrate meal ingredients, and what to do with them.
There are places in the National Park System that take your breath away. Places such as Glacier National Park, along the shoreline of Avalanche Lake, or atop Logan Pass staring down valley along with the mountain goats. If you've been here, you'll never forget the experience. Husband-wife duo Laurie Raveis & Dennis Kole capture their experiences in "Glacier" in their upcoming 2023 album "In the Moment."
This year has been a year of firsts for the National Parks Traveler Editor Kurt Repanshek. First-time visits to units of the National Park System, that is. This year Repanshek has taken road trips through Nebraska, Kansas, and New Mexico to explore overlooked gems of the park system. To discuss these and other must-see sites with us today are Rebecca Latson, Traveler's contributing photographer, and Kim O'Connell, a Traveler contributing editor.
As winter approaches, the slow season is setting in across the National Park System, which makes it a good time to take measure of some issues that are confronting both the parks and the National Park Service. We've invited Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, and Mike Murray, the chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks.
As hot, arid, and dusty as Death Valley National Park is, it might come as a surprise to learn that it has a very important fishery of sorts. There is a place in the national park where there is a warm spring that is home to a rare and endangered fish - the Devils Hole Pupfish.
Each year the population of pupfish can swing wildly between highs and lows. Recently, researchers completed their biannual count of Devils Hole Pupfish and the numbers are encouraging. Devils Hole is the only natural habitat where this critically endangered fish exists in the wild, and as the Traveler's Lynn Riddick discovers from a chat with a park aquatic ecologist, the numbers are the highest in two decades.
National Parks Traveler Founder Kurt Repanshek and contributing editors Kim O'Connell and Lynn Riddick discuss the Traveler's role in reporting on national parks and how reader and listener support make that role possible.
Back in 2009, a small herd of bison was relocated from Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota to Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas. The goal was not only to restore an essential foundational species of wildlife that had not grazed on those lands for more than a century, but to also reestablish the unique ecological benefits bison bring to the landscape while preserving the genetic integrity of the species.
In this week's podcast, the Traveler's Lynn Riddick takes us to Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve and chats with Park Superintendent Kristen Hase to see how this special conservation herd has been faring lately.
Terry Karlsen is Parks Canada's only shipwright. And his latest challenge is a big one: Restoring the S.S. Klondike, a vintage steam-powered paddlewheeler. The work is underway at the S.S. Klondike National Historic Site in Whitehorse, Yukon.
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