National Parks Traveler Podcast

Candy Harrington, a journalist who traveled the National Park System to see how accessible lodges and trails in the parks really are, discusses her new book on accessibility in the parks. And Cory MacNulty and Erika Pollard from the National Parks Conservation Association’s Southwest Regional Office discuss the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s plans for managing the greatly reduced in size Bears Ears and Grand Staircase monuments.

Emily Hoff and Maygen Keller discuss their upcoming book, Scenic Science of the National Parks, an Explorers Guide to Wildlife, Geology, and Botany. The book, scheduled to arrive March 31, is a wonderfully new guidebook to help you get the most out of your national park adventures. Tanya Shenk, National Park Service scientist, explains a draft framework for bison stewardship in the Midwest Region of the park system. It’s a region where you can find bison at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas, Badlands National Park and Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.

This week’s show, our 50th, looks at a Jurassic Period carnivore dubbed "AJ,"  a new species of allosaurus, found in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, and takes a short Revolutionary War history tour of Saratoga National Historical Park in New York State.

John Freemuth, who holds the Cecil D. Andrus  Endowed Chair for Environment and Public Lands at Boise State University, and Nada Culver, the vice president for public lands and senior policy counsel at the National Audubon Society, discuss efforts in Washington to tweak the National Environmental Policy Act as well as the Endangered Species Act.

Former National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis discusses the Institute for People, Parks, and Biodiversity that he launched at the University of California-Berkeley and how it's trying to guide climate change work in the National Park System.  We also visit with Tumacácori National Historical Park Chief of Interpretation Anita Badertscher to learn about her park and what awaits visitors there.

Michael Kellett, the executive director of RESTORE: The North Woods, discusses a campaign to see the size of the National Park System roughly tripled to more than 182 million acres. And Traveler contributing editor Erika Zambello and Becky Lomax, author of Moon’s USA National Parks, the Complete Guide to All 59 Parks, join Kurt Repanshek to discuss their favorite winter national park destinations.

The past year brought many news-making events to the National Park System. It started, of course, with the partial government shutdown that created more than a few problems for the park system, the continued lack of a Senate confirmed director of the National Park Service, hurricanes inflicting damage on coastal parks, and construction of a border wall in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that possibly destroyed some archaeological sites there. To help us look back on 2019 and the national parks, we’re joined by Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association. 

With many national parks across the country in trouble from such myriad threats as climate change, overcrowding, energy exploration, invasive species, and poor air quality, National Parks Traveler’s  new “Threatened and Endangered Parks” lists identify parks that are struggling to retain the very essence that led to their inclusion in the National Park System in the first place. In this week's show, Phil Francis of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks and Mark Wenzler from the National Parks Conservation Association discuss the threats facing the parks.

How big of a problem are invasive animal species in the National Park System? This week we examine the topic of invasive animal species – think Burmese pythons in Everglades National Park, wild hogs in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and even feral cats at Cape Hatteras National Seashore – and how the National Park Service is trying to tackle the problem. Traveler's staff looks at some of the most photogenic destinations in the National Park System. And we include some surprise locations.

Kyle Joly, a National Park Service wildlife biologist who long has studied terrestrial migrations in national park units in Alaska, discusses the world's longest land migrations in this week's show. Caribou and reindeer are at the top of the list of long-distance travelers, but what about wolves? Contributing writer Kim O’Connell, fresh back from a visit to New Orleans, gives us a preview of her time at Jean LaFitte National Historical Park and Preserve. 1