If you’re interested in volcanoes, you need not go further than our national parks to get your fill. Eighty-four units of the National Park System have volcanic resources. These parks run the gamut of having very active volcanic features to those where volcanoes formed the landscape and contribute to the geodiversity of the park. The most active volcano in our park system is Kīlauea in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii. It’s also one of the most monitored and researched volcanoes anywhere. This week the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick talks to Professor Leif Karlstrom, whose recent research of Kilauea might be music to your ears.

National Parks Traveler Episode 181: Musical Kīlauea

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With the summer vacation season not too far off, no doubt many National Park Service Superintendents are trying to figure out how to manage the crowds and avoid impacts to natural resources in the park system.  With Memorial Day weekend just two weeks away, and Congress in its usual battles over how to fund the federal government, we wanted to take a look at how the funding situation looks for the Park Service. To help understand the financial setting across the National Park System, we’ve asked Phil Francis, from the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks to provide some insights.  

National Parks Traveler Podcast | NPS Budgetary Blues

Smokies Life, which most of you who closely follow Great Smoky Mountains National Park know was previously known as the Great Smoky Mountains Association, produces educational and informational materials for Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This week we’re joined by Laurel Rematore, the chief executive officer of Smokies Life, to discuss the name change as well as how her organization lends a big hand to the Park Service staff at Great Smoky. 

National Parks Traveler Podcast | Smokies Life

Have you ever closely inspected the landscape when you’re touring the National Park System, particularly in the West? You never know what you might find. Back in 2010 a 7-year-old attending a Junior Ranger program at  Badlands National Park spied a partially exposed fossil that turned out to be the skull of a 32-million-year-old saber-toothed cat. If you’ve ever visited Petrified Forest National Park you’ve no doubt marveled over the colorful fossilized tree trunks. There are also fossilized trees on the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, but nowhere near as colorful. For this week’s episode we’ve invited Vince Santucci, the National Park Service’s senior paleontologist, to discuss the many fossil resources that exist across the National Park System, from coast to coast and north to south.

National Parks Traveler Podcast | Fossilized Parks

Wolverines, the largest land-dwelling members of the weasel family, once roamed across the northern tier of the United States, and as far south as New Mexico in the Rockies and southern California in the Sierra Nevada range. But after more than a century of trapping and habitat loss, wolverines in the lower 48 today exist only as small, fragmented populations in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, and northeast Oregon.  However, there’s soon to be an effort in Colorado to help the carnivores recover in that state. The Colorado legislature has been considering legislation calling for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Agency to move ahead with a recovery plan for wolverines. The bill is expected to face its final legislative hurdle in the coming weeks.  To discuss this initiative, we’re joined today by Megan Mueller, a conservation biologist with Rocky Mountain Wild, a non-profit advocacy organization working to bring them back, and Elaine Leslie, who was Chief of Biological Resources for the National Park Service before retiring.

National Parks Traveler Podcast | Wolverine Recovery in Colorado

Spur a discussion about traveling to a national park for a vacation and odds are that it will revolve around getting out into nature, looking for wildlife, perhaps honing your photography skills, or marveling at incredible vistas. Will the discussion include destinations that portray aspects of the country’s history, or cultural melting pot?  Equating national parks with nature is obvious, but making a similar connection with history and culture might not be so obvious. And maybe that lack of appreciation for America’s culture and history explains why the National Park Service has been struggling with protecting and interpreting those aspects of the parks. The National Parks Conservation Association has just released a report calling for a Cultural Resource Challenge, one that asks for a hefty investment by Congress in the Park Service’s cultural affairs wing. We explore that report in today’s episode with Alan Spears, NPCA’s senior director for cultural affairs.

National Parks Traveler Episode 181: Musical Kīlauea

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