Browse Through the Traveler Content

Gray wolves are fairly well-known to be loping about Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Teton, and Isle Royale national parks. But they're also roaming the forests of Voyageurs National Park.

The piping plover, Charadrius melodus, sparks recreation area closures in many parts of the national park system drawing critics and champions all across the country and causing a much larger stir than its tiny size suggests.

Tarantulas, banana slugs, crocodiles, muskoxen and more. The Creature Features we posted in 2010 represent quite a menagerie. Here's a complete list with handy links.

The lightning whelk, a sea snail with a lovely southpaw shell, is very proficient at finding, opening, and eating clams.

There are crocodiles, including some genuinely huge ones, living in South Florida. Not everyone is happy about it, but these fascinating creatures have made a dramatic comeback from near extinction.

How hoary bats ever managed to cross thousands of miles of open sea to colonize the Hawaiian Islands is a mystery we may never solve. Scientists do think we’ll figure out how to make their place in the islands secure for the foreseeable future.

Thanks to translocations that began 80 years ago, herds of prehistoric-looking muskoxen once again roam Alaska’s tundra. Could these shaggy Ice Age survivors be emergent stars of the watchable wildlife world?

It is at the same time both one of the most striking fish you'll encounter as well as one of the most dangerous to appear in the waters of Biscayne National Park.

The Asian swamp eel is prolific, hardy, voracious, ecologically disruptive, and on its way to becoming the scourge of the Everglades. Is it already too late to stop it?

If you've ever heard a frog doing its “ribbet” thing anywhere along the Pacific Coast, it's probably been a Pacific Treefrog. And if you’ve ever seen one of these little critters up close, you know why many consider it one of the most fascinating of all the amphibians.

The American Marten is a rare North Woods animal that you'll probably never see, save for paw prints in the snow. This brown, bushy-tailed little critter, which looks something like a cross between a mink and a house-cat, was prized for its luxurious fur and darn near trapped to extinction in the United States during the 19th century. Today, despite habitat losses and related problems, the American Marten still inhabits much of its historical range.

A tiny clutch of islands in the South Pacific harbors not only the National Park of American Samoa, one of the National Park System’s oft-overlooked delights, but also some of the last vestiges of the many-Colored Fruit Dove, a colorful bird that long has captivated those lucky enough to spy it.