National Parks Traveler Podcast

June has been an especially newsworthy month across the National Park System. The U.S. Senate passed what has been called the most important public lands bill in decades, and more national parks have reopened areas to the public. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is proposing a large oil and gas lease auction for lands near Arches, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef national parks, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a natural gas pipeline could be tunneled beneath the Appalachian Trail. Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, discusses the news events. 

We take a look at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s move to offer more than 110,000 acres in Utah for oil and gas development. How might that proposal impact Arches, Capitol Reef, and Canyonlands national parks? Erika Pollard from the National Parks Conservation Association joins us to explain some of the issues in play. After listing to our conversation, take a look at this story that looks at the issue in more detail. Finally, we leave you with a rationale for instituting a reservation system for visiting some units of the National Park System.

There's always a lot of shaking, rattling, and occasional rolling going on in Yellowstone National Park. Keeping track of it is the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, one of five such observatories under the purview of the U.S. Geological Survey. It keeps real-time tabs on volcanic, hydrothermal, and earthquake activity in the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field. Lynn Riddick speaks with the scientist-in-charge of the observatory, Michael Poland, Ph.D. From his home in Vancouver, Washington, Poland gives us a glimpse into the latest monitoring systems in Yellowstone National Park and the park’s recent geologic activity.

In this week’s show, we’re going to delve into landscape photography in the National Park System. “Good photography is about creating a feeling of things, rather than a picture of things.”  That’s the philosophy of our guest, Clyde Butcher, acclaimed photographer and environmentalist. You might be familiar with his iconic black and white large format landscape photos that often are part of larger efforts to protect fragile ecosystems that he knows so well. And as Lynn Riddick found out in her conversation with Butcher from his home in Venice, Florida, he doesn’t mind wading chest-deep through a cypress swamp or facing off against a hoofed animal to show why a place is worth protecting.

We sit down with Becky Lomax, author of Moon’s USA National Parks, to discuss news stories that arose from the National Park System during May. And we bring you an interesting story about efforts to recover populations of endangered black-footed ferrets in the West. Two places where they’re working on that are Wind Cave and Badlands national parks in South Dakota.

We're joined this week by Costa Dillon, a National Park Service veteran who ended his long career as superintendent of Indiana Dunes National Park, to discuss a novel management decision in Thailand to close that country’s national parks every year for two months to give wildlife a break from humans. Would such a move be good for America’s national parks? Lynn Riddick returns this week with a story about a roughly 1,200-mile extension to the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail that runs from St. Louis to Pittsburgh.

In this week’s program, we talk with Toby O’Rourke, the president and CEO of Kampgrounds of America, about a study KOA commissioned to gauge Americans’ interests in returning to campgrounds on and near public lands as the fight with the coronavirus pandemic continues. The findings are quite interesting and point to renewed interest in camping as a recreational pursuit. After that conversation, we tempt you to explore the dark side of the National Park System. No, not the night skies overhead, but rather the subterranean world of Jewel Cave National Monument and Wind Cave National Park, two parks in South Dakota separated by fewer than 20 miles as the crow flies.

This week we talk with Robert Young, director of Western Carolina University’s Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines about a project to more accurately determine the cost sea level rise could inflict on coastal units of the National Park System. We also take a look ahead to summer in the National Park System, the watery side of the system specifically, with a look at some of the prime sea kayaking destinations awaiting paddlers in the National Park System.

Who makes those colorful interpretive panels found in the National Park System? One person is Steve Patricia. He’s an independent artist and content specialist who provides illustrations and diagrams for waysides, exhibits, and murals at national parks, monuments, and historic sites all over the country. From his home in the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania, he shares some insights with Lynn Riddick.

This week we pick up with the musings of Doug Leen.  As a young park ranger in the 1970s, Leen stumbled upon a poster promoting a meet-the-ranger event at the Grand Teton National Park.  It turned out to be one of 14 long-forgotten silk-screened posters made under the Works Progress Administration to promote tourism to the national parks.  In the 50 years since that discovery, Leen has been searching high and low for the rest of the missing posters.  His efforts have yielded noteworthy success, stirring up widespread interest in the posters and evolving into a thriving printing business of his own. As Lynn Riddick continues her talk with Doug, he discusses his business, Ranger Doug’s Enterprises, and how the popularity of the posters has generated millions of dollars in revenue for the national parks.  We also check in with Earl Brechlin, the communications director for Friends of Acadia, to get the latest on how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting that friends group and how it is responding.