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...
‘Spokesperson for the Dead’
Shelton Johnson keeps alive the story of the Buffalo Soldiers to connect African Americans, other nonwhites to national parks NOTE: Clicking on most images will launch a full-sized viewer. Story, photos and multimedia by Glenn Nelson Shelton Johnson is the Michael Jordan among people of...
Sheltonisms
A ranger at Yosemite National Park for 23 years, Shelton Johnson has a vivid, distinctive way with language – not a surprise given his training and experience as a writer and performer. During my time around him, I started a list of what I started...
Diversity Stars at Ranger Congress
Shelton Johnson of Yosemite National Park and Ravis Henry of Canyon de Chelly National Monument helped put the National Park Service’s scant diversity on display during opening ceremonies of the 8th World Ranger Congress on Sunday, May 22, at YMCA of the Rockies in Estes...
Parks Week No Game Changer
Sitting in front of the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center last week, the iconic National Park Service ranger Shelton Johnson and I saw something that stopped our conversation in mid-sentence: a brown-skinned couple. The man wore dreadlocks, but both had their backs turned to us. We couldn’t...
A Hint of Change
by Teresa Baker My most recent trip to Yosemite was eye opening. I have been on this hunt for diversity and inclusion for years now, visiting parks and reporting on how things remained the same. But this trip was different. As I stepped off the...