We’re five days into 2025, and already there’s a lot of news concerning national parks and the National Park Service. Traveler Editor-in-Chief Kurt Repanshek is joined today by Contributing Editor Kim O’Connell to discuss  the Traveler’s 4th Annual Threatened and Endangered Park Series and other recent park-related news.

Many of us like to take a walk in our favorite national park, whether it’s a short stroll down one of the boardwalks at Yellowstone National Park, the hike to the top of Old Rag at Shenandoah National Park, or up the Mist Trail at Yosemite National Park, we like to get out and experience parks up close.

As you might imagine, there are walks in the National Park System, and then there are walks. Kevin Fedarko and his photographic sidekick Pete McBride took one of those “other” hikes in Grand Canyon National Park. And it didn’t initially go as planned. While Fedarko raised some serious blisters on his feet that required duct tape to protect, McBride almost needed a medical evacuation from the backcountry. 

Still, the hike - or rather hikes - generated a compelling book from Fedarko titled, appropriately enough, “A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon”.

There are across the country more than 430 units of the National Park System. And no doubt, most of us are only familiar with the so-called name brand parks. Places like Shenandoah, Acadia, Everglades, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon… But just because you’re not already familiar with a park unit doesn’t mean you should write it off your to-do list.

While I am familiar with the names of most park units due to my day job, I haven’t had the chance to visit them all just yet. Being a lover of water and paddling, when I consider going for a break from the keyboard, I often have a requirement that water is required. And while I haven’t been there yet, I am intrigued by St. Croix National Scenic Riverway in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and its two rivers. 

Today I’m going to learn a little bit more about this interesting park and share with you my conversation with Nate Toering, the park’s Director of Communications and Education. 

Elephant seals are not your small, cuddly marine mammals. They are behemoths. Males, known as bulls, can reach 5,000 pounds, while females, known as cows, routinely clock in at around 1,000 pounds or so.   If you’re a wildlife watcher, now is the time to check elephant seals off your life list. Between December and March, they come en masse to Point Reyes National Seashore in California to give birth and mate again. But they don’t come ashore to simply laze about and soak up the sun when it’s shining. Males are building their harems much like bull elk do, and that can sometimes lead to fights between these ponderous animals.   To learn more about elephant seals, how they spend their days, and where you can see them at Point Reyes, we’re joined today by Sarah Codde, a marine ecologist at the national seashore.

Most, if not all of us, have bucket lists. Places we want to visit…but don’t always get the opportunity.   This is Kurt Repanshek, your host at the National Parks Traveler. One of the destinations on my bucket list is Gates of Arctic National Park and Preserve and the Noatak River that runs through it. A week or two floating the river sounds pretty ideal to me.   While it’s debatable whether I’ll cross that off my bucket list remains to be seen, today’s guest has floated the river more than once and backpacked all over Gates of the Arctic. And Jon Waterman returned from those trips with incredible stories of the places he saw, the people he met, and the wildlife that came in range of his eyes.   But over the course of several decades Jon also has witnessed the impact of climate change to the region, and it hasn’t been good. It’s the main thread of a story he lays out in his latest book, Into the Thaw.

Change happens…and sometimes it doesn’t.   Change certainly is underway in Washington, where the incoming Trump administration is putting its players in position with promises of changing, or maybe upsetting, the status quo.    Against that, the National Park Service continues to face long-standing problems with not enough staff or funding, compounded by National Park System damage from hurricanes, tornadoes, sea level rise, wildfires, just about everything under the sun.   We’re going to explore those topics today with Phil Francis from the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks and John Garder and Chad Lord from the National Parks Conservation Association.

As the calendar runs down on the current session of Congress, there are a number of pieces of legislation that would involve or possibly impact the National Park System if they find their way into an omnibus lands bill that gains passage before the session adjourns.   While we haven’t seen exactly what might find their way into an omnibus lands bill, among the candidates are legislation that would turn Chiricahua National Monument into a national park, one that would create a “designated operating partner” to oversee the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, and another that calls for a Benton MacKaye National Scenic Trail feasibility study.   There’s also pending legislation that would approve expansion of Big Bend National Park by about 6000 acres, one that would transform Apostle Islands National Lakeshore into Apostle Islands National Park and Preserve,  and one that, if passed, would forbid any official wilderness designation to be bestowed on Big Cpress National Preserve.   We’re going to take a look at the Big Bend, Apostle Islands, and Big Cypress measures today with Bob Krumenaker, who, during his 40+ years with the National Park Service, was superintendent of both Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and Big Bend National Park and served a stint as acting superintendent of Everglades National Park, which adjoins Big Cypress National Preserve.

The vulnerable red-cockaded woodpecker is known to be found in national park units throughout the southeast.  Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park in Florida, Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee are just a few of the parks that either are, or once were, home to the woodpecker.

Recently the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moved to downlist the red-cockaded woodpecker from being an endangered species to being threatened. While that normally would be welcome news, the decision has been criticized as being premature and ignorant of climate-change threats to the species.  

This week the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick discusses this decision with the southeast program director of Defenders of Wildlife…and the thinking behind that organization’s belief that this decision comes at a questionable time.

Humans like to play, right? We play cards, we play baseball and basketball, we go fishing or take a hike into the mountains. It’s our play time, time to recharge, refocus, relax.   Did you know animals like to play, too? And many times, our playgrounds infringe on wildlife habitat. But how does that affect their behavior? Does it affect their behavior? Today’s guest, Dr. Joel Berger, a wildlife biologist based at Colorado State University but who considers the world’s wild places as his playground, joins us today to talk about our human recreation and the impacts it has on wildlife.

Whether this is your first listen of our weekly podcast or number 299, welcome and thank you for listening. We hope you find these episodes interesting and present information or a side to the parks that you previously didn’t know about.

Frankly, that’s the approach that we try to take at the Traveler. Not only to provide newsworthy information, such as National Park Service funding for hurricane impacts, but also to highlight aspects of the National Park System that you may not have been aware of.

For example, take Jennifer Bain’s story from Oregon Cave National Monument and Preserve, and its collection of purely American Monterey furniture, or Barbara Jensen’s article from Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the Ohio and Eerie Canal Towpath there. Or Sharon McDonald’s piece on the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site in California. 

Today, we’re joined by contributors Kim O’Connell and Lynn Riddick to talk about the unusual, and at times eclectic content that you’ll find on the Traveler.