National Parks Traveler

We’re awash this year in a sea of propaganda and misinformation. Fake news sites, false reports, news-like stories selected and spun not to make us smarter, but to make us hate, to steer us toward supporting someone else’s cause.

A young woman scuba diving in Lake McDonald at Glacier National Park died during the outing, while two men appear to have been suicide victims at Mount Rainier National Park.

Leave it as It Is is the most engaging and powerful book about Western public lands that I have read in a long time. Gessner published a terrific book in 2015 titled All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West, and I find some Abbey and Stegner in this new book, both in style and content. He traveled the West in search of Abbey and Stegner in that book as he does with Teddy Roosevelt in this one. He looks at all these icons in the context of the modern West with a clear and analytical eye.

Can there be too much of a good thing in the National Park System? There just might be at a patch of sand and water in Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida, where its growing popularity is leading to adverse impacts on Gulf of Mexico fisheries and deadly accidents.

A gray wolf wearing a radio collar was shot and killed illegally in Grand Teton National Park, where rangers are seeking information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of the individual responsible.

Though this fall is starting out on the warm side (highs in the mid-70s this week), the turning of the calendar means Zion National Park is transitioning to fall and winter operations.

Earlier this year we introduced you to Jacob Job and his work recording sounds of nature inside the National Park System. Well, he's taken his game to the next level with help from the National Park Service, Parks Canada, the George Wright Society, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the World Commission of Protected Areas.

Prospects for prairie grasslands, Lakota culture, and reservation economics and health have been boosted with the arrival of 100 bison from Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt national parks at the Wolakota Buffalo Range on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation.

Across the country, there are many nonprofit organizations that work to support the National Park System. One of those organizations that shoulders a great load is the Western National Parks Association, a nonprofit education partner of the National Park Service.

We're excited to announce that beginning today, November 1, we’re participating in NewsMatch—a national matching-gift campaign that drives donations to nonprofit news organizations around the country. Readers like you can play a key role in keeping our news operation strong.