National Parks Traveler

Late September marked the tenth year that the Yosemite Climbing Association has spearheaded a major volunteer effort at Yosemite National Park known as Yosemite Facelift. The 2013 version of the event ran from September 24-29, and over 1,200 volunteers once again made a huge positive impact on the park and its resources

Though the loss of birding opportunities due to the closure of national parks pales to the economic hardships dealt by the closure, the timing of the government shutdown -- during the fall migration -- will lead to a loss in data.

Around the country, as the partial government shutdown moves into its second week, taxpayers angry with the closure of national parks are showing their disgust through civil disobedience, mockery, and anger directed at the National Park Service.

Though it won't be an immediate help to those Colorado River runners beached at Lees Ferry by the shutdown of the National Park System, the National Park Service will refund their permit fees and give them a choice of launch dates in the years to come.

As the government shutdown drags into its second week, there are increasing risks of vandalism in the National Park System and possibly even poaching, according to past National Park Service personnel.

A search for a hiker missing in the rugged Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho led underground, as cave specialists headed into lava tubes looking for the missing physician.

In order to better track sea-level rise along the East Coast and the related impacts, National Park Service researchers have been building a database of habitat, vegetation, and erosional processes in the agency's National Capital Region.

It's not unusual for find piles of stones marking the way for trails across open terrain in mountains, deserts and terrain otherwise devoid of easily recognizable landmarks, but these "cairns" can evoke a surprising amount of controversy both in an out of national parks. Sometimes, however, what appears to be a cairn is actually instead an item of historic interest.

Almost a decade after a ranger who couldn't believe a billionaire had been given the OK to cut down trees in a scenic easement along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park landed in administrative purgatory, his case has been settled.

Seventy-five years ago, in June, 1938, Congress passed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the bill creating Olympic National Park. With this act Americans embarked on something new in land conservation: creating a wilderness preserve large enough to protect intact old-growth forest communities and the hosts of forest-dependent wildlife they contained.