National Parks Traveler Podcast

National Parks Traveler's Lynn Riddick connects with Dr. Tracy Romano of Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut to discuss the plight of beluga whales in Cook Inlet in Alaska and the threats they face, including the threats posed by the proposed Pebble Mine project.

This week we look at a nonprofit organization whose sole existence is to acquire, from willing sellers, private lands surrounded by official, or proposed, wilderness in national parks, national forests, and other publicly owned lands. Once those lands are acquired and transferred to federal land managers, The Wilderness Land Trust will put itself out of business. But that's not going to happen overnight, as the Trust's executive director, Brad Borst, explains during our conversation.

In this week's show, we look at one of the hottest places on Earth, Death Valley National Park in southeastern California and western Nevada. And this summer was especially hot. The park broke records in a number of categories as it experienced some of the hottest days ever recorded on Earth. August was particularly brutal, with record temperatures reached 12 times for both the daily high and the daily low. To take a closer look at these numbers and why they don't seem to be a deterrent to visitors, Traveler's Lynn Riddick spoke with Death Valley Superintendent Mike Reynolds.

Life in the National Park System doesn't pause for presidential elections. Indeed, there have been many issues across the parks to pay attention to and discuss. To help us with that task, we've invited Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, and Sheridan Steele, a Park Service veteran who sits on the executive council of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks.

In this week's show, we look at a national park site that celebrates distinctly American music -- the Blue Ridge Music Center near Galax, Virginia. Traveler's Lynn Riddick visits with Richard Emmett, director of the center, to find out what's happening in the interpretation, presentation, and promotion of traditional American mountain music. We'll kick it off with a clip from the Chatham Rabbits, who recently performed at the center.

In this week's show, we welcome you to fall with a conversation with lodging experts David and Kay Scott on where best to relax and enjoy the fall foliage in the National Park System. And Lynn Riddick catches up with Seth Benz, the bird ecology director at the Schoodic Institute, to discuss fall migrations at Acadia National Park.

We're going to dream a little bit about places in the National Park System we'd like to visit with hopes we can help you discover a new park destination. To launch this audio bucket list, we're looking towards Arizona and Parashant National Monument, which despite its more than 1 million acres seems to fly below most park visitors' radar. Following that, we're going to continue to ponder the topic of species extinction, and whether national parks can help slow the sixth mass extinction.

This week we take a look at the outdoor recreation industry and how it has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. We also take a look at the upcoming fundraiser for Outdoor Afro. Yosemite National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson will host the fundraiser for the organization that inspires and facilitates the connection of Black Americans to natural spaces everywhere.

In this week's show, we question whether national parks can serve as a barrier to slow the sixth mass extinction. But first, what can turn a five-day trip to Yosemite National Park into a one-day trip to Assateague Island National Seashore? Covid can. In this lighthearted and informative story of their trip to the beach, the Traveler's Lynn Riddick and her friend Michele Hogan demonstrate that it's all about flexibility when trying to find some outdoor space in the age of a global pandemic.

In this week's show, we're focusing on the current coronavirus pandemic as well as the 1918 flu pandemic and how those diseases impacted national park visitation. After discussing those two pandemics with Professor Terence Young from California Polytechnic State University, we visit with contributing writer Rita Beamish, who tried to escape the current pandemic by taking to the John Muir Trail for nine days. She found that many other hikers were being careful by keeping their distance and wearing face masks when necessary, while others were more cavalier.