Dinosaur National Monument

There are a handful of places in the National Park System where you can view petroglyphs or pictographs. Some are walk-up panels that you can ponder for hours, others require a float down a river or a long hike. Here's a quick look at some of those units and what you can expect to find.

When the Bush administration late in 2008 tried to auction energy leases near national parks in Utah, there was an outcry by many who considered siting oil and gas exploration projects next to parks was anathema. The Obama administration quickly reversed the decision, but the debate over whether to locate energy projects next to parks continues.

The showy tamarisk tree, aka "Saltcedar," long has been reviled as a thirsty scourge of Western national park riparian areas. But new research shows it's not any thirstier than some native species. However, tamarisk isn't valued as highly as cottonwoods and willows by some bird species, the studies say.

Work is progressing on schedule to build a new visitor center at Dinosaur National Monument.

Snowmelt's running around the National Park System, which makes it a perfect time to start thinking about paddling trips in the parks. Here are some ideas, and contacts, that can help you get wet in the months ahead.

Work on the badly-needed new visitor center and quarry exhibit hall at Dinosaur National Monument is getting underway, and that has prompted some changes for visitors to the park. Here's what you need to know before you visit the area.

Back in January 2008 the Traveler warned about a movement in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to allow tar sands development in Utah. Well, it seems that project could soon be sprouting near Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument.

The fossil fields at Dinosaur National Monument continue to yield their ancient treasures. In a find being hailed for producing the only complete "sauropod skull in the entire Western Hemisphere from the last 80 million years of the Age of Dinosaurs," paleontologists have tapped into a trove of fossilized bones that they hope will produce a complete skeleton of this particular plant-eater.

So construction can begin on a permanent visitor center at Dinosaur National Monument, the temporary visitor center is being relocated just down the road.

Not all proposed wilderness areas are always pristine. Some have waning vestiges of an early day. In Dinosaur National Monument, for instance, there long have been some falling down structures in an area along the Green River that has been recommended for wilderness designation. It took a while, but crews from the monument were able to remove all the facilities from the setting.

Dinosaur National Monument has received a donation of artwork depicting what the landscape might have looked like when dinosaurs walked about.

Ever get the itch to take a float through the colorful landscape of Utah's canyon country? Well, the folks at Holiday Expeditions are offering a 20 percent-off sale on select trips through Dinosaur National Monument and Canyonlands National Park.

It's certainly true that travel schedules and seasonal weather patterns dictate that the heaviest traffic flows to national parks come during the summer months. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to do in the parks in winter. At Dinosaur National Monument, for instance, a park that showcases geology, paleontology, and rivers in summer, winter brings opportunities for snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and even snowmobiling.

A succinct, four-paragraph memo from National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis two weeks ago spurred an outpouring of comments from Park Service employees and marked, potentially, a sea change in how park superintendents go about budgeting for their parks. But is it something the general public should take note of?

In a brief, four-paragraph memorandum, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis has brought to an end a controversial budgeting process that stripped arguably key positions from parks. Dubbed "core ops" for its approach to analyzing a park's core operations, the process failed to produce wise budgeting decisions, the director said in a letter to his regional directors.

An intangible but priceless value of parks is the opportunity they provide for healing of mind, body and spirit. A recent example occurred at Dinosaur National Monument when the Wounded Warrior Project led a group of wounded veterans on a rafting trip through Lodore Canyon.

A review of how the U.S. Bureau of Land Management handled energy leases near national parks in Utah shows some areas where the system broke down and carries recommendations for, at a minimum, review of previous leasing decisions. Some tracts, the report said, should be removed from leasing.

A longstanding problem for fisheries in the Upper Colorado River Basin is the competing demands for water. It's needed for irrigation, it's needed to generate power, and it's needed, not surprisingly, to sustain fisheries. With drought a frequent visitor to the states of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, how that huge watershed is cooperatively managed is critical for all these demands.

A Colorado woman has apparently drowned on the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument after being thrown from her raft while going through a rapid.

Designs for a new visitor center as well as an "exhibit hall" that would both protect and display a cliffside studded with fossils have been released by Dinosaur National Monument officials, who now must find companies that can build the two facilities.

In a remote canyon in Dinosaur National Monument, paleontologists found hundreds of tiny fossil footprints left by primitive mammals that lived 190 million years ago when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

Sure, the most iconic river in all the land is the Colorado that flows through Grand Canyon National Park. But that doesn't mean you can't find quality river trips elsewhere in the National Park System.

Are many months as fickle as April? Bogged down in gooey mud that once had been the campground at Deer Lodge in Dinosaur National Monument while grilling brauts over an open fire in the rain didn't seem to portend a good river trip. At least it wasn't snowing. No, that would come the next night.

How comfortable have we become with national park settings? With the big sweep of granite that frames the Yosemite Valley, with Old Faithful's not-quite-so-faithful demonstrations of steam and hot water, with the fall's colorful deciduous forests of Great Smoky and Shenandoah?

In a field that often employs paint brushes and dental picks to unlock fossils from their encasing rock, you'd think explosives would be the last tool paleontologists at Dinosaur National Monument would reach for. But, actually, it can come in quite handy when you have hundreds of tons of overburden to remove.

Should search-and-rescue subjects be billed for the cost of their rescue? It's long been a thorny issue, one that organizations that respond to SARs long have opposed.