Don't expect a final decision this year on how the booming elk populations at Theodore Roosevelt or Wind Cave National Parks will be brought under control. National Park Service officials say they don't expect to have the National Environmental Policy Act process completed before year's end for either park.

South Dakota’s Fossil Cycad National Monument was supposed to protect a geologic treasure when it was established in 1922, but its marvelous surface deposits of fossilized plants had already been stripped from the site. A bill signed into law on August 1, 1956, abolished the park, which has served ever since as a cautionary tale. If you don’t protect park resources, they won’t be there for future generations.

On a clear day, you often can see for miles and miles. But as a report from the National Parks Conservation Association points out, clear days are harder and harder to find in our national parks under the Bush administration's relatively laissez-faire approach to coal-fired power plants.

Nestled in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Wind Cave National Park preserves not only its namesake cave, but one of the last remnants of the mixed-grass prairie that once covered the majority of the Northern Plains.