National Parks Traveler Podcast

News around public lands these days seems to revolve entirely around the Trump administration. In the case of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, many of the steps the administration is taking with the operational efficiencies of the National Park Service and other land management agencies certainly are keeping PEER busy.   But what exactly is PEER, and what is their mission? For as long as the National Parks Traveler has been in existence, going back 20 years, stories recounting PEER and its lawsuits against land-management agencies have appeared frequently in our coverage. To explain the nonprofit organization’s role, our guest today is Tim Whitehouse, PEER’s executive director. 

True birders are some of the most determined and persistent hobbyists out there. If you want to call bird watching a hobby. For many, it’s more like a passion. Many look forward to “Big Day” competitions, where individuals and teams strive to see how many different bird species they can spot in a 24-hour period. Many birders log their sightings and identifications in eBird, a smartphone application created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. The good news is that millions of birders use this app. The concerning news is that their bird sightings over a recent 14-year-period point to population declines in 75 percent of North American bird species. To learn more about this news, we’ve invited Dr. Amanda Rodewald from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Cornell University to join us today.

It’s fair to say that the nation’s public lands, those managed by the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land-management agencies are at risk under the Trump administration. There’s no hyperbole in that statement if you pay attention to what the administration already has done in terms of downsizing those agencies’ workforces, and when you listen to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum say he wants to open more public lands to energy development and mining. Federal lands in the United States are owned by all Americans, but at various times there have been efforts to wrench those lands away from the government to give to the states or sell off. Walt Dabney spent his professional career protecting public lands during his decades-long stint with the National Park Service and then as director of the Texas State Parks. Now he is working to educate Americans on their vested interest in those lands and what could be lost if Congress or the White House tries to get rid of them. 

The first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term might be the most tumultuous first 100 days of any president. He certainly came in prepared to move his agenda forward, no matter what barriers to it existed. We don’t usually discuss presidential politics, but President Trump has released a blizzard of executive orders and directives touching all corners of the federal government, including the National Park Service. What we have seen so far is the loss of perhaps 2,500 Park Service employees, and along with them some crucial institutional knowledge. Any day we expect to hear of a further reduction in force of the Park Service. The president and the Republican Congress have also taken aim at environmental laws and regulations, determined it seems to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, among others, and there’s been talk about selling off federal lands.  And, of course, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has made it clear he wants to see more coal mined and more oil and gas reserves tapped. The administration also is taking aim at agency responses to climate change, and the president has ordered the militarization of federal lands – including national park lands – along the country’s southern border with Mexico. To get a take on what’s going on and what the impacts might be, we’re joined today by U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.

There has been much upheaval in the National Park Service this year, with firings, then rehires, and staff deciding to retire now rather than risk sticking around and being fired. There have been fears that more Park Service personnel are about to be let go through a reduction in force.  While Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has ordered the Park Service to ensure that parks are properly to support the operating hours and needs of each park unit,” that message said nothing about protecting park resources.  Among all this upheaval the question that goes begging is whether the Interior Department is as concerned about protecting natural resources, including wildlife, as it is about seeing that visitors have a good national park experience? Our guest today is Dr. Michael Soukup, who during his National Park Service career served as the agency’s chief scientist. When he joined the Park Service in 1975 Dr. Soukup, a distinguished coastal ecologist, biologist and researcher, brought a clear vision for natural resource stewardship that would be embraced throughout the NPS and supported by visitors and local citizens.    He was directly responsible for launching the Natural Resource Challenge, a $100 million funding initiative that brought the protection of natural resources of the parks to the forefront. 

George Melendez Wright was a brilliant young scientist with the National Park Service back in the 1920s and 1930s. You could say he was ahead of his time, in that he wanted the Park Service to take a holistic role in how wildlife in the parks was managed. While Wright tragically left the world too young when he was killed in a car crash in 1936, his name lives on today in the George Wright Society, a nonprofit organization that is focused on stewardship of parks, protected & conserved areas, cultural sites, and other kinds of place-based conservation. Our guest today is Dave Harmon, executive director of the society. We’ll be back in a minute with Dave to learn more about the society and the role it plays.

One of the greatest shows on Earth has been going on now for several months in Hawaii, where the Kīlauea volcano at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park has been erupting since late December. The Kīlauea volcano is the most active volcano on Earth. It’s also a relatively safe volcano in that it spends most of its time simmering and bubbling without any spectacularly explosive eruptions. But lately it has been putting on some incredible shows of lava fountains, with one glowing string of magma soaring about 1,000 feet in the air, a truly spectacular sight to see.  To understand what’s going on with Kīlauea and what danger it poses, we’re joined today by Matt Patrick, a research geologist with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

Kim O’Connell and Rita Beamish, seasoned writers at National Parks Traveler, dive into the hidden stories of national parks. They share captivating trivia, like the surprising weight of salamanders compared to bears in Great Smoky Mountains. The duo discusses the historical significance and preservation challenges of Jamestown against rising sea levels. They also address workforce changes in the Park Service and the threats to the Endangered Species Act, highlighting the intricate balance between conservation efforts and legislative pressures.

In this week’s podcast we thought we’d take a break from the unsettling news happening in and around our national parks and federal lands regarding park staff reductions and threats of reducing park boundaries to make way for mining.   Instead, the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick catches up with a former scientist who’s now a comedian to hear about his experiences during his artist-in-residency program at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii.  Selected for the residency by the National Parks Arts Foundation, Ben Miller spent a month with park staff and scientists to absorb as much as possible about Hawaiian culture, landscapes and history. The end result was a comedy routine designed specifically for Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.

There is, across the country, some upheaval going on as the Trump administration works to reduce the size of the federal government. Whether you support that effort or oppose it, you can’t deny there’s not upheaval going on. That upheaval has hit all federal government agencies. At the National Park Service, seasonal ranger job offers were rescinded back in January. Roughly 1,000 probationary employees were fired on Valentine’s Day. Another 700-1000 Park Service employees took up the administration’s offer to resign now, but stay on the payroll through the end of the fiscal year. And this week the Park Service and other government agencies are expected to send their plans for a reduction-in-force to the administration. To discuss these developments, we’ve invited Rick Mossman, president of the Association of National Park Rangers, to join us.