National Parks Traveler Podcast

Kansas is a big place, and not one particularly well-known for national park destinations. But that doesn’t mean you should overlook the Sunflower State. In the closing days of September, as the country seemed destined for a government shutdown, the Traveler's Kurt Repanshek and Patrick Cone headed into Kansas to visit some of the parks there to better understand their role in the National Park System. And we were not disappointed. Back in 2022 Kurt made a similar trip, and stopped at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills of central Kansas. During that stop Ranger Eric Patterson gave Kurt a wonderful tour of the preserve and explained its history.  Eric has moved on, but during Kurt and Patrick's recent visit Heather Brown, the preserve’s chief of interpretation, sat down with them to discuss the preserve in general and the tallgrass prairie specifically. During their swing through Kansas, Kurt and Patrick also headed to Nicodemus, a well-off-the-beaten path destination in the National Park System, one so far off the beaten path that the state of Kansas does Nicodemus National Historic Site a tremendous disservice by providing very little signage showing you how to get to Nicodemus. But stay determined and you can find the site. While the Park Service only claims five buildings at Nicodemus, and only two are open, the history of how the townsite was founded in post-Civil War America by more than 300 previously enslaved peoples is an uplifting history of self-determination, grit, and perseverance. What follows are two conversations they had with rangers – before they were furloughed when the government shut down – at the two sites, LueCreasea Horne Horn at Nicodemus National Historic Site and Heather Brown at Tallgrass prairie.

How do national parks develop their interpretive materials? What influences come into play when a park begins to outline its approach and the direction it takes when crafting educational materials for visitors? Is the National Park Service careful to take a truthful path when presenting history? Those are topical questions considering the Trump administration’s efforts to rid the National Park System of interpretive materials that disparage Americans. But political influences on park messaging are not unique to the Trump administration. Robert Pahre, a political science professor at the University of Illinois, has been studying the effect of politics on national park interpretation in the past. He joins us to discuss what he’s found in that research, and to weigh in on what’s going on today in terms of political pressures on the National Park Service.

Nearly 700 volunteers, including some from as far away as Japan, descended on the Appalachian Trail in the past year in an unprecedented effort to recover a landscape forever scarred by Hurricane Helene. The storm in September 2024 shut down 431 miles of the AT. Trees were snapped in half, piled in what looked like a bizarre game of pickup sticks. Landslides and flooding tore away trails and treadway. Bridges and crossovers were gone. It was — and still is — a disaster of historic proportions. But it’s also a story of resiliency of the land and the people who are stewards of it. This week the Traveler’s Jan Childs talks with two of the famous trail’s stewards: Joe Morris, project coordinator for Tennessee Eastman Hiking and Canoeing Club, and Franklin Tate, regional director for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, which by the way is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

This past week unspecified interpretive materials related to slavery were either removed or tagged for removal from Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia. It also was reported that a troubling photo known as the “Scourged Back” that depicted the scar-riddled back of an enslaved man was taken down from Fort Pulaski National Monument in Georgia. The National Park System has been pulled into the current-day battles of wokeism of sorts through the removal of those, and likely other, interpretive materials in the parks that help us better understand enslaved history. Where it will end, or whether it will be reversed, is unknown. To better understand what’s transpiring and what the impacts are, we’ve invited Alan Spears, the senior director for cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association, to join us today.

We can’t escape history. We’re born into a world full of it, and we’re making it as we go from day to day. But how are we at preserving history? There’s been a lot of concern this year that the administration of President Donald Trump is altering, if not entirely trying to erase, history. But can that actually be done? The National Park Service, often called the nation’s storyteller, has been interpreting history for more than a century, and some of that interpretation revolves around sites that have lost their physical structures over the decades. Today's guest is Monica Rhodes,  an internationally-recognized leader, advisor, and influencer who has directed preservation activities in 46 states and completed projects in more than 100 national parks. Today, she advises and partners with cites, universities, and other institutions to revitalize and leverage historic sites and communities to ensure a vibrant future for these places.

We’ve made it past Labor Day. Which means fall colors in some parts of the country aren’t too far off, seasonal wildlife migrations are getting under way, and summertime crowds in the national park system have thinned out. Fall is a glorious time to be out in the park system. The question right now, though, is how will the park system be functioning come October? That’s a very pertinent question, because the federal government is facing a shutdown on September 30 if Congress can’t come to terms on a budget for fiscal year 2026, which starts October 1. To consider the possible options, Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president for governmental affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, joins Editor Kurt Repanshek to discuss the situation.

Once upon a time, there were tens of millions of bison on the North American continent. Today, there are somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000. Most are in commercial herds, with a relative few in private herds and on public lands. Should there be more bison on the continent? There potentially is space for them on places like the 550,000-acre Thunder Basin National Grassland in Wyoming, the nearly 600,000-acre Buffalo Gap National Grassland in South Dakota, and the roughly 440,000-acre Comanche National Grassland in Colorado, just to name three locations. And a new study out this past week explains why bison are more beneficial for grasslands than traditional livestock, and the benefits increase as herd size does. To understand what’s going on, we’re joined today by Professor William Hamilton from Washington and Lee University in Virginia, one of the study's co-authors.

It’s been said that the night skies are the other half of the National Park System. And it only makes sense, for when you’re in a park and the sun goes down you tend to look into the night sky to spot constellations or, if you’re lucky enough and in the right place, a comet overhead. Keeping that other half of the park system in mind, today’s podcast will be a somewhat dark one. Our guest is Jeff Pfaller, a fine arts photographer who spent five years capturing night skies over national parks and other public lands. A book coming out in October by Pfaller showcases synchronous fireflies at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the famous illumination that makes Horsetail Fall in Yosemite National Park look like a cascading stream of lava, a shot of the whirling Milky Way against a colorful stump of petrified wood at Petrified Forest National Park, and many other nighttime images that remind us of that other half of the park system is overhead. National Parks Traveler readers can obtain a $15 discount on the book's purchase price by using this link to order it.

Vessel-whale collisions are a significant concern in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, where nutrient-rich waters support a seasonal influx of humpback whales and other marine mammals. As one of the most visited marine parks in Alaska, Glacier Bay sees a high volume of vessel traffic, including cruise ships, tour boats, and private craft. This summer an adult humpback whale was seen with a fresh, one-foot gash behind its dorsal fin which appeared to be from contact with a boat propeller.  This week the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick reaches out to biologist Chris Gabriele to discuss this incident and the park’s strategies to reduce whale collisions, including monitoring whale activity, warning systems, and public education. 

Is nature nonpartisan? Earlier this year we had an interview with Dr. Caleb Scoville from Tufts University, who received an Andrew Carnegie fellowship to explore whether environmental issues are highly partisan. It can certainly seem that here in America just about everything is partisan these days, but is nature partisan?  As another of our guests pointed out, those who enjoy going out into nature come in all political flavors. That said, our guest today is Benji Backer, the driver behind the Nature is Nonpartisan campaign to get the American public – all of us – to convince the decision makers in Washington that the environment is too important to be a partisan issue.