This year, 2025, likely will go down as the most transitional for the National Park Service. We've seen the loss of nearly a quarter of the permanent workforce, efforts to whitewash history in some parks, and the loss of a grand lodge to wildfire.

The past 12 months have been full of news impacting the National Park Service and national parks, not all of it good. It's been a somewhat tumultuous year, leaving many wondering what the new year will bring for the parks and their employees.

To help us look back over the past 12 months, we've invited Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president for government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, to join us.

A century of seasons has worn the appearance of the log cabin Roy Fure built in present-day Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, but his care of the small cabin, and later National Park Service restoration efforts, have enabled it to stand the test of time.

Dovetail-notched spruce logs still sit tightly together, the corrugated metal roof Fure replaced his sod roof with in 1930 and painted red could use a new coat of paint, but otherwise looks rainproof, and the windmill he erected to generate electricity still stands tall.

Across the 85+ million-acre National Park System there are tens of thousands of historic structures — 19th-century homesteads, Civil War structures, Civil Rights facilities, presidential homes, artworks and more — but not all receive the same treatment as Fure's cabin.

• At Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve in Oregon, the historic, and once charming, Chateau with 23 rooms has been closed since 2018 due to structural issues and a lack of funding to address them.

• In Kansas, the Park Service last year gained title to the First Baptist Church at Nicodemus National Historic Site, but a lack of funding has left the 118-year-old house of worship boarded up.

• At Gettysburg National Military Park the David Wills house, where President Lincoln spent the night before delivering his address, has been closed since fall 2024 when a water line burst and flooded the structure.

Those are just a very small handful of historic structures in the National Park System that are among thousands competing for scarce rehabilitation dollars.

To discuss the situation across the park system we've invited Pam Bowman, the senior director of government relations at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

After more than 50 years as one of the country's landmark environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act has gone from one of the most popular measures before Congress to one fueling demands that it be revised, if not discarded.

The National Parks Traveler is reviewing the Endangered Species Act's work and its record, spotlighting individual species that it's protected, those that it failed, and those that it recovered.

The monthslong series comes as ESA champions worry that the push to weaken the law could consign countless animals and plants to the growing list of flora and fauna that, like the Passenger pigeon, are now found only in books and online.

The National Park System seems to be the perfect background to explore these questions, as its lands are supposedly the best preserved on the federal landscape.

I recently interviewed two wildlife advocates — Jake Li, a vice president with Defenders of Wildlife who spent time working in the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before joining the advocacy group, and Stephanie Adams, director of wildlife at the National Parks Conservation Association.

Though the interviews were done separately, the questions were largely the same. What follows is a merging of those two conversations.

Haleakalā National Park is deceptively wonderful and rich in biodiversity. But if we're not careful, we could lose some of that biodiversity.

Located on the island of Maui in Hawaii, the first thing you notice about this national park is its towering dormant volcano, Haleakalā, which rises from sea level to more than 10,000 feet.

While many visitors simply want to head to the top of the volcano to peer into its crater or enjoy a colorful sunrise or sunset, if you take a little time to get to know this park you'll be amazed by what doesn't first come into sight. For instance, there are more than 300 plant and animal species endemic to Haleakalā — found nowhere else in the world — and many species that are being threatened or endangered with extinction.

Kurt Repanshek headed to Haleakalā this past week with Special Projects Editor Patrick Cone and Assistant Editor Rita Beamish to learn more about the park and its rare and unique species.

It's Thanksgiving Weekend, usually interpreted as a bountiful time of year when we can all sit back and be thankful. But can many who work for the National Park Service feel thankful in the wake of the staff reductions this year?

This year has been hard on the Park Service, what with the loss of roughly a quarter of the full-time workforce and questions around how the agency has long interpreted history. But the Park Service has long struggled with its operations. Funding and staffing never seem to have met the needs of the Park Service to manage its far-flung collection of more than 400 units. We're going to explore the funding and staffing issue of the agency today with John Garder, the senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Association.

Gazing up at mountains from their valleys down below, it's hard, if not impossible, to detect any change on the top of the mountains. But change is ongoing, especially in recent history as the climate continues to warm.

From Tacoma or Seattle in Washington state, the snowy summit of Mount Rainier National Park appears unchanged from how it's always looked. Snowy. But is that truly the case? What would you think if someone told you the top of the summit no longer is 14,410 feet high, that the high point of the park has actually shrunk?

Our guests today are Eric Gilbertson, a mechanical engineer and mountaineer from Seattle University, and Scott Hotaling, a watershed sciences professor from Utah State University, who have measured the thickness of the ice cap on the summit of Mount Rainier. What they have to say may surprise you.

The government shutdown has been record-setting in terms of its length. So, too, has been the time that many employees of the National Park Service have been furloughed without pay.

How has the shutdown affected the parks, and how have the friends groups that support the parks responded? We're going to discuss that today with Chris Lenhertz from the Golden Gate Conservancy, Jacki Harp from Smokies Life, Eric Stiles from Friends of Acadia, and Cassius Cash from the Yosemite Conservancy.

What is a "typical" day at the National Parks Traveler like? When you surf over to the website there's always content there, ready to update you on news from around the National Park System. How is it generated, and who generates it?

Editor Kurt Repanshek and Contributing Editor Kim O'Connell dive into the logistics of running a news operation that's focused on national parks and protected areas.

Though the Revolutionary War didn't officially end until September 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, a key turning point in the war for independence occurred six years earlier in a small corner of today's New York state.

The Battle of Saratoga stretched out from September 19 until October 7, 1777, and marked the first time the British Empire had been forced to surrender. British General John Burgoyne had stretched his forces too thin in marching down from Canada with the intent of capturing Albany and wound up with huge losses in his army of nearly 7,000.

His defeat at the hands of Major General Horatio Gates and General Benedict Arnold greatly raised American hopes to gain independence and convinced France to come to the colonials' aid.

The story of how the British surrender came about is told at Saratoga National Historical Park near today's Stillwater, New York. To help us better understand the battles, we're joined today by Lauren Roberts, the historian at Saratoga County, New York, and Traveler Contributing Editor Kim O'Connell, who recently visited the historical park.

The federal government is shut down, but the national parks – most of them, anyway – are open.

Back during his first term in office President Donald Trump also kept the parks open during the government shutdown that stretched from the end of 2018 into early 2019. That led to some vandalism to the parks and damage to some park resources.

How are things going this shutdown? To explore that question, our guest today is Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president of government affairs with the National Parks Conservation Association.