Parks in the News

The body of a Seattle attorney who planned to climb Storm King Mountain in North Cascades National Park by himself has been found on a steep slope of the mountain, according to park officials.

After two weeks of searching without spotting a clue, National Park Service officials on Friday announced that they were scaling back efforts in the hunt across massive Katmai National Park and Preserve for a lost plane and its four occupants.

When wolf packs were successfully returned to Yellowstone National Park back in the mid-1990s, they were followed by droves of scientists and researchers keen on learning how the predators might impact the rest of the park's wild kingdom.

A podcast about water safety might sound like a project from a park located on the beach rather than in the mountains, but there are good reasons for a new free video offered by the Great Smoky Mountains Association. Here's where you can view "Water Safety and Day Hiking"—and why everyone who enjoys the out-of-doors should see it.

In what likely will be great news to many of our regular readers, we've integrated a new email notification system in the Traveler.

Favorable weather again greeted searchers Thursday as they headed off into the skies over Katmai National Park and Preserve, anxious to find any sign of a plane that went missing nearly two weeks ago.

Another week has been added to collect public comment on a study into a proposal to substantially upgrade a transmission power corridor that crosses the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, and the Middle Delaware National Scenic and Recreational River.

If the Traveler has enabled you to follow the search-and-rescue mission at Katmai National Park, or provided you with news on the workplace survey concerning the National Park Service, or helped you learn about efforts to create a new international park on the U.S.-Russian border, we'd like your help.

Imagine Shenandoah National Park without its autumnal showcase of colors, or a sign along the Virginia coastline noting that the site of the Jamestown colony is offshore and under water. Both scenarios could be realized in less than a century if human-influenced climate change isn't slowed, according to a report.

Grizzly bear studies in Yellowstone National Park will become a bit more intense in the coming weeks as wildlife biologists head into the backcountry to trap bears and gather data.

Polling conducted for the National Parks Conservation Association shows Maine residents overwhelmingly would prefer to see their state's "North Woods" preserved as "parkland" and sustainable timbering rather than dotted with vacation homes.

Poor teamwork. Miserable balance of work and your life. Little success with strategic management. Doesn't sound like the best place to work, does it? But those are some of the findings of life within the ranks of the National Park Service, according to this year's Best Places to Work in the Federal Government.

Here at the Traveler we'd like to welcome the Crater Lake Institute to our sponsorship rolls, and invite you to learn more about this advocacy group that works in support of Crater Lake National Park.

A decision by officials at Little River Canyon National Preserve in Alabama to ban ATVs as of today isn't setting well with some state lawmakers, who are looking to legislate a way around the ban.

Efforts to protect sea turtle nests at Cape Hatteras National Seashore have been controversial in some quarters, but the work is paying off. So far this year, a record 151 nests have been recorded, and once the eggs have hatched, the nest is excavated for further study. The public is welcome to watch the process, and it's been a crowd pleaser.

With Hurricane Earl taking aim at the North Carolina coastline -- and points north -- officials at Cape Lookout National Seashore have ordered an evacuation of the seashore, while a bit farther north Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials are closing visitor centers and campgrounds.

A mixed bag of weather Tuesday limited the unrelenting search in Katmai National Park and Preserve for a missing plane and its four occupants, according to National Park Service personnel.

Virgin Islands National Park has survived Hurricane Earl with only heavy rains and a few downed trees to report, but park officials aren't ready to take their hurricane shutters down just yet.

Alaska's latest political upstart, Joe Miller, wants to go Wyoming Gov. David Freudenthal one better. While Governor Freudenthal had threatened to sell state lands within Grand Teton National Park to the highest bidder, Mr. Miller wants the federal government to turn over all national parks to the Alaskan government.

There were almost 3,500 search-and-rescue missions conducted across the National Park System during 2008 at a cost of $4.8 million, according to best available National Park Service statistics. One-hundred-32 of those missions involved a fatality, and 16 ended without the subject being found.

The U.S. already has a cross-border park arrangement with Canada (Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park) and proposals for some type of agreement with Mexico across from Big Bend National Park have been floating around for decades. Now there's news of renewed interest in expanded cooperation with another country, but it doesn't involve either Canada or Mexico. Can you locate "Beringia" on a map?

A recent big wall rescue at Yosemite National Park had some added challenges for everyone involved, including a language barrier, unusual heat and challenging terrain. Extraordinary skill and teamwork, plus use of a bean bag/short haul technique, carried the day.

Though good weather returned to Katmai National Park and Preserve on Monday, searchers again failed to detect any trace of a single-engine plane that vanished nine days ago on a flight to retrieve a work crew from a remote shore.

Hurricane Earl with its 120 mile-per-hour winds on Monday was ripping through the Caribbean, where a hurricane warning was posted for Virgin Islands National Park on the island of St. John.

For four decades the Spread Creek Dam has blocked the migratory route of a unique species of cutthroat trout in waters that flow into Grand Teton National Park. That's all about to change thanks to a partnership between Trout Unlimited and the National Park Service.

Sometimes, it helps to read the fine print. And then Google it. When the New York Times ran an op-ed piece the other day on the dangers of an unsigned wilderness area, it simply identified the author as an attorney. It turns out he's also an avid mountain biker, which helps explain his motivation in assailing The Wilderness Act.

A history-making and much debated project to restore the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State has taken a big step forward. A contract has been awarded to remove the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams in an ambitious, and expensive, effort to reverse decades of environmental damage to an important river system.

Shifting weather conditions -- from good to bad to good again -- have hampered search efforts for a plane missing for more than a week over Katmai National Park and Preserve.

A two-mile section of winding road in Cape Cod National Seashore will gain some improvements that will make it safer for bicyclists...and motorists, as well.

Perhaps it's a nod to the aging Baby Boomers, but a pair of longhorn calves born earlier this year at Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site have been named after the two female leads from a 1970s sit-com.