NPS Free Days for 2017
After splurging for 16 fee-free days to celebrate its centennial, the National Park Service will offer 10 in 2017. The number is up from nine in 2015. In 2017, the fee-free days include: January 16: Martin Luther King Jr. Day February 20: Presidents Day April...
NPS Seeks Buffalo Soldiers Insight, Comments
The Buffalo Soldiers played a key role in the early development and management of our national parks, and their story provides a key connection between communities of color and our public lands. In an effort to strengthen this connection, the National Park Service is conducting...
West Obsessed: NPS Challenges
The National Parks reached their centennial facing myriad challenges that threaten their next 100 years, ranging from climate change, funding woes and even a lack of diversity in park visitation and workforce. This episode of West Obsessed features a discussion of those issues, recently covered...
A Not-Always-Rosie Road
Betty Reid Soskin earned fame as “the nation’s oldest park ranger,” but her contributions to America’s national parks run much deeper On a brisk, foggy morning in mid-July, reporters gathered outside the visitor center of Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park, which sits...
Prepping for a Hotter Future
Gonzalez walks the walk for climate action in national parks By Elizabeth Shogren High Country News The first unmistakable sign of climate change Patrick Gonzalez ever saw in the field was in Senegal. It was a dead tree — Prosopis Africana or, as the locals...
System failure
A change in hiring programs cost the NPS a diverse, young ranger You may never have heard of him, but Masyih Ford is arguably the third most-recognizable African-American ranger in the National Park Service. The first and second are, of course, Shelton Johnson at Yosemite,...