National Parks Traveler Podcast

For 21 years, the National Parks Traveler has taken you around the National Park System and kept you informed on how the National Park Service and Congress have managed your national parks. We've gone underground to describe for you the wonders of Wind Cave, Jewel Cave and Mammoth Cave, hiked into cypress domes at Everglades National Park to marvel at the park's flora and fauna, and bucked the rapids of the Colorado and Green Rivers through Canyonlands National Park and Dinosaur National Monument. We've also followed the political and governmental contortions that have impacted the parks, along with the hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and climate change. In short, the Traveler has worked to be your window into all things national parks, serving both as your daily parks newspaper and feature-length magazine. This is our last episode. To look back at 21 years of Traveler, Kurt Repanshek invited Associate Editor Rita Beamish and Contributing Editor Kim O'Connell to join him for a conversation.

Across the United States, from Alaska to Puerto Rico, there are about 112 million acres of officially designated wilderness. That amounts to about 5 percent of the country's land mass. It might appear to be even smaller when you consider that more than half of those 112 million acres protected as wilderness are in Alaska. To say that wilderness is at risk from the human imprint isn't hyperbole. While there are millions of acres of proposed, recommended, and potential wilderness across the country, Congress acts extremely slowly on these matters. Indeed, it was back in 1989 when America's Red Rock Wilderness Act was first proposed in Congress to protect 8 million acres in Utah as official wilderness. The clock continues to tick on that proposal. Without official designation as wilderness, lands can be impacted by motorized and mechanized activities, from logging and mining and energy development to off-road-vehicle recreation. But the threats to both unofficial and official wilderness might be growing, as the Trump administration has called for a review of wilderness management on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and even the National Park Service. To explore what's at stake with wilderness in America under these proposals, we have Kevin Proescholdt, the conservation director for Wilderness Watch, a nonprofit advocacy organization, and Bob Krumenaker, chairman of Keep Big Bend Wild, a nonprofit advocating for official wilderness designation in Big Bend National Park and a long-time National Park Service manager joining us today. Public comment on the Interior secretary's directives is being taken through mid-August. Here are links to the public comment pages: BLM https://www.regulations.gov/document/BLM-2026-0034-0001 https://www.regulations.gov/docket/BLM-2026-0068 https://www.regulations.gov/docket/BLM-2026-0069 https://www.regulations.gov/docket/BLM-2026-0067 NPS regulations.gov - NPS 2026-0101 regulations.gov - NPS 2026-0100 FWS Wilderness Administration and Resource Stewardship; Managing Climbing Activities in Wilderness https://www.regulations.gov/document/FWS-HQ-NWRS-2026-1618-0001

It was a little more than a year ago when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked the public to help him identify interpretive materials in the National Park System that disparaged Americans past or living or which contained content that detracts from viewpoints of scenic grandeur. Well, it appears that the public didn't share his concerns. Recent Freedom of Information Act requests have turned up nearly 36,000 comments in response to Secretary Burgum's mission "to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing." The folks at the Center for Western Priorities recently filtered through the nearly 36,000 comments that were received by Interior, and found that just 47 – that's right, only 47 comments – called for a sign to be removed or supported Burgum's request to tidy up history. Our guests today are Kate Groetzinger and Lilly Bock-Brownstein from the Center for Western Priorities, and they'll explain how they filtered those comments and what they found.

Since this past December here at the Traveler we've been bringing you a series of stories on the Endangered Species Act and the threatened and endangered species it's intended to keep from going extinct. For me, it's been an eye-opening series because of what our editors and writers have learned about threatened and endangered species — from birds to trees and even to grasses — and the work being done to help them recover. It's certainly not an easy task, and one that often takes decades before you can see progress. In today's podcast, I sit down again with Jake Li, the vice president for conservation policy at Defenders of Wildlife, to get his take on efforts in Congress to rewrite the Endangered Species Act in ways that might not be so beneficial for threatened and endangered species. I think you'll find it to be a very insightful conversation. We recorded this conversation in mid-May, right before Endangered Species Day.

Public lands stewardship has most definitely changed under the second presidential administration of Donald Trump. Land-management agencies such as the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management have lost thousands of employees, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is on a mission to turn the country's public lands into a cash cow of sorts. As the political tenure in Washington D.C., swings wildly back and forth like a massive pendulum when it comes to our public lands, there is an effort under way to provide a roadmap for public lands stewardship in the United States that stretches far into the future. Ground Shift is a new nonprofit organization working to, as they put it, "develop creative, durable, and transformative ideas to shape the next century of public land and water stewardship in the United States." To better understand this organization and its goals, our guests today are Lynn Scarlett, who was a deputy Interior secretary during the administration of President George Bush, and Tracy Stone-Manning, who directed the Bureau of Land Management under President Joe Biden.

A fast-track proposal to develop a gold mine near Alaska's Cook Inlet and Lake Clark National Park and Preserve is alarming scientists, environmental groups and local communities because of the devastating effects it is expected to have on the region's critically endangered beluga whales. Cook Inlet is home to a small and genetically distinct population of beluga whales that has struggled for decades from habitat loss, industrial activity, pollution, and underwater noise. Supporters of the mining project say it will bring jobs, economic growth and profit to Native Alaskans. This week Traveler's Lynn Riddick talks with Cooper Freeman, Alaska Director of the Center for Biological Diversity. His organization along with many others argue that the gold to be extracted isn't worth the cost of threatening a species already vulnerable to extinction and forever desecrating a magnificent landscape.

America's 250th birthday is coming up this summer, festivities will be held all over the country, and history buffs will be delving into the various nooks and crannies of the National Park System to see where they can visit sites of Revolutionary War battles. Don't overlook South Carolina and its three park sites that preserve Revolutionary War battlefields – Kings Mountain National Military Park, Cowpens National Battlefield, and Ninety-Six National Historic Site. The state of South Carolina takes so much pride in these three sites that some of its license plates proclaim that the Revolutionary War was won in South Carolina. But was it? Today we're going to pose that question to James Taub, the associate curator at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.

We're living in somewhat tumultuous times in the print media industry. Well-familiar titles are either disappearing, shrinking drastically, or shifting over to the internet. On top of that, the advent of Artificial Intelligence has some readers wondering how much human effort and talent went into the piece they're reading. Today we're going to be talking about a throw-back, a publication that has come and gone a bit over the past six decades, but which has a hallowed space among publications for its long-form journalism that dives into mountain culture, environmental issues, and outdoor adventure. The Mountain Gazette has published such literary notaries as Hunter S. Thomas, Ed Abbey, John Fayhee, Sadie Stine, Royal Robbins and so many others. And it's back. Our guest is Mike Rogge, the owner and publisher of Mountain Gazette. He'll help us stroll down memory lane a bit and look at the current state of outdoor journalism.

National parks provide us with so many services, from providing us with inspiration, allowing us to leave our stress behind for a few hours or a few days, offering a recreational outlet, and enabling us to pursue hobbies from photography to other artistic endeavors, and looking for wildlife. The parks also allow us to go back into history through living history programs and interpretation, provided both by rangers and by organizations that produce interpretive materials. They also serve as a great background for storytellers. Today our guest is a former ranger who held the informal title of Chief Storyteller. Tom Medema until recently was Associate Director for the National Park Service, with a focus on interpretation in the parks. We'll discuss all things interpretation and inspiration tied to the National Park System.

Across the United States, there are many thousands of collisions between vehicles and wildlife each year, killing people and animals and causing millions of dollars in property damages. Some solutions revolve around creating bridges specifically for wildlife, from elk and mountain lions to even turtles and salamanders. It's been estimated that collisions with wildlife in the United States kill around 200 people and injure more than 26,000 per year. Building wildlife crossings can reduce those collisions by up to 97 percent. Back in 2021 the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided $350 million to be doled out as grants over five years on building such crossings. But the funding runs out this year, and the National Parks Conservation Association has been urging Congress to not just renew the program, but see that it provides $200 million a year going forward. To explain the problem and associated costs with the lack of wildlife crossings today's guests are Bart Melton, senior director of NPCA's wildlife program, and Renee Callahan from ARC Solutions, a nonprofit that works to facilitate new thinking, new methods, new materials and new solutions for wildlife crossing structures.

You might not entirely appreciate the wonders and majesty of national parks unless you venture out after dark and gaze up at what often is referred to as the other half of the national park system. The view can be quite dazzling, with planets, stars, the Milky Way, and for the lucky, a comet or shooting star. Sadly, not every park offers such dazzling views. Light pollution reaches more than a few national parks, and can really infringe on your nighttime enjoyment of the parks. Gavin Heffernan is among those park travelers who are troubled by light pollution. He's a California-based photographer with a unique long-form time lapse style. And he's hoping this approach brings a fresh awareness to the wonders of night skies in the national parks and creates advocacy to fight light pollution and the damage it wreaks on natural habitats.

Warming oceans, pollution, more potent hurricanes, anchor drops, dredging and trawling. The Florida Reef struggles with a lot of impacts today. In fact, only about 2 percent of the reef that stretches some 350 miles from Biscayne National Park past Everglades National Park and down to Dry Tortugas National Park is covered with living coral. For several months now at the National Parks Traveler we've been building an ongoing series of stories and podcasts focused on impacts to the Florida Reef and whether it can be saved. Today our guest is Dr. Erinn Fuller, an associate vice president for research, senior scientist, and coral health and disease program manager at the Mote Aquarium in Florida. Dr. Fuller is on the forefront of efforts to offset impacts to the Florida Reef and restore its corals. She'll explain the various impacts to the reef and the work being done to offset them.

Capitol Reef National Park in Utah is one of the Mighty Five, as the state likes to say in its tourism promotions, and while it's somewhat off the beaten path, visitors are finding it. In 2024, visitation to the park was a record 1.4 million, a number that likely increased in 2025 and will continue to increase for the foreseeable future. Cognizant of the rising tide of visitation, the National Park Service staff at Capitol Reef has been working on a visitor use management plan intended to better manage growing visitation. Our guest today is Sue Fritzke, a former superintendent of the park and a member of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks.

What do you do, where do you go, when you pull into your favorite national park and can't find a place to park or a trail without crowds? Those are good questions probably going through many people's minds as the national parks become more and more popular with more and more people. Mike Oswald might have the answers you're looking for, at least for the Western half of the country. Oswald is the writer and publisher behind Your Guide to the National Parks, a thick, fact-filled guidebook to the 63 national parks in the country. This year he's veering outside of the parks with a new book titled, simply, Public Land, 1,000 Western Wonders.

Congaree National Park is an often-overlooked unit of the National Park System. Indeed, only about 250,000 visitors set foot in Congaree each year. Those who do are awestruck by the size of the trees there, as the park contains the highest concentration of champion-sized trees anywhere in North America. Our guest today is Professor Kimberly Meitzen from Texas State University. Before arriving at Texas State, she studied at the University of South Carolina, where she fell in love with Congaree, its floodplain, and its big trees.

A growing majority of bat species are in serious trouble, largely because of white nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that resembles a white fuzz on infected bats. As the disease has spread across the country, it's decimated bat populations – killing upwards of 99 percent of some populations – and turned up in many national parks. As part of the National Parks Traveler's Threatened and Endangered Species Project, contributing writer Kim O'Connell has been looking into the situation with bat species.

Big Bend National Park lately has drawn a lot of national attention, and not in a good way. Recently the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced that it wanted to build some sort of border wall along all or part of the 118 miles of border the national park shares with Mexico. Is that a good idea? Will it adversely impact the park? Can it even be done? To discuss those and other questions, our guest today is Bob Krumenaker, whose long Park Service career included a stint as Big Bend's superintendent. Bob also is chair of the Keep Big Bend Wild organization that is pushing to see a large portion of the park designated as official wilderness.

To put some perspective on the National Parks Travelers' monthslong coverage of threatened and endangered species, we're going to go back in time a bit today to replay a podcast in which we discussed the ESA — and possible changes to it — with Jake Li, a vice president with Defenders of Wildlife, and Stephanie Adams, director of wildlife at the National Parks Conservation Association.

At Cumberland Island the National Park Service currently is crafting a visitor use management plan that critics say poses a great threat to the national seashore's official and potential wilderness. To get an understanding of what's at risk, we've invited Jessica Howell-Edwards, the executive director of Wild Cumberland, which advocates for the seashore's wilderness area and ecosystems, to join us.

The Florida Reef stretches from Biscayne National Park south past Everglades National Park and down to Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida. It's roughly 350 miles long, and is the only coral reef in the continental United States. When it comes to reefs around the world, the Florida Reef is the third largest. But, unfortunately, it's under a lot of pressure. It's dealing with pollution, ocean warming, damage inflicted by anchors, and disease. Perhaps the most serious disease infecting the reef is Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, which can be fatal to corals. Our guest today is Beth Firchau, who works for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Part of her role is to manage the association's safe coral program, and part of her role is AZA's coordinator for the Florida Reef Tract Rescue Program. And part of her work involves a network of aquariums across the United States that are holding samples of corals from the Florida Reef.