NPS.gov can come across as a baffling rabbit hole.

One of the very best government websites is the one run by the National Park Service. Sadly, it can also come across as one of the worst.

I say that as a journalist who relies on nps.gov on a daily basis for information. That information could be as simple as when campgrounds open, or as detailed as the state of endangered and threatened species in the National Park System. The problem is that while the information might be there, it's not always in plain sight.

If you're a traveler simply looking for barebones information on a specific park, those under the nps.gov domain usually do a pretty good job of serving up information on weather, places in a park to visit, fees, hiking, boating, fishing, and other recreational endeavors. These sites also can direct you to camping and lodging information. Some of the "wealthier" parks, such as Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, or Golden Gate National Recreation Area, offer much, much more than, for instance, Cumberland Island National Seashore or Appalachian National Scenic Trail.

But if you're digging deeper into a specific topic in a park, or parks, then nps.gov turns into a morass of information that can stymie even well-seasoned Park Service personnel.

"Our web gurus make it difficult for all of us with their tinkering," one employee told me. "Classic NPS information resources obfuscation of information and resources."

A similiar complaint was made to me by someone outside the agency who said they've noticed that some material that used to be readily accessible "simply got moved and many base links were broken."

I experienced that recently while working on a book. Some months ago, while doing research on migratory species and the parks, I had found a webpage within nps.gov that provided great information. But when I went back to double-check the link, it had vanished. During research last week for Endangered Species Day, I again went to nps.gov and found scant information on the hundreds of plant, animal, and insect species that are either threatened or endangered and reside within the park system:

More than a thousand plants and animals in national parks are considered rare or endangered. What does this mean for their future? The lands they call home are protected and managed for their success. Over 200 national parks monitor and study changes to species and their habitats. Discover their stories and learn what they need to survive.

To be fair, many parks offer information on threatened and endangered species on their websites. But with 419 units in the park system, being expected to visit each to come away with an overview of the Park Service's stewardship of these species and to understand the varied issues within this topic is cumbersome and time-consuming at best. A lead page with a thorough system-wide overview of the topic, perhaps background on the Endangered Species Act, and a narrative on how the National Park Service approaches the issue of threatened and endangered species, along with links to more detailed information on "mammals," "birds," "reptiles," "plants," etc., would seem logical. After all, the agency's mission (updated in 2000) is to conserve "unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations." (Emphasis added).

Shouldn't it be readily transparent that we know how the Park Service goes about meeting this mission statement in terms of wildlife, as well as cultural and historical resources within the park system? If the agency needs a model to build upon, the website on the ESA and affected species in the parks that National Parks Conservation Association and Defenders of Wildlife constructed is easily navigable and informative.

Once upon a time there was a nature.nps.gov domain that contained the science-related topics in the park system. Apparently that information has been moved into "new containers," if you will. For instance, if you go to nps.gov and search for "Glaciers," you're sent to this page. And after a brief overview of glaciers, you can click over to a page that lists parks with glaciers. Click on a particular park -- Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, for instance -- and you'll find the rich content on that park's glaciers.

In other words, as we noted above, the information "simply got moved." But that's not always intuitive.

Some information seemingly has vanished. Two years ago we wrote about wildflowers in the National Park System, and pointed out that Great Smoky Mountains National Park had created a pretty cool "Species Mapper" interactive map. Click on that link today and you get this:

The scientific knowledge within the National Park Service is deep and broad and can be a great resource...if it's readily accessible. As can be the agency's other areas of expertise. Did you know, by the way, that the Park Service has a website for its museum collections? I stumbled upon it while searching for the Spite Highway at Biscayne National Park.

"This searchable online database provides access to thousands of images and records from the National Park Service museum collections. NPS museum collections include diverse disciplines and have unique associations with park cultural and natural resources, eminent figures, and park histories," the museum collections site says. "Online visitors can perform simple or advanced searches by keyword, park name, object name, people, places, and date. Visitors can also browse or search collection highlights and park summaries."

Of course, you can't perform those searches, simple or otherwise, if you don't know the webpage exists.

The overriding problem with nps.gov is that there's no clearcut roadmap to the domain, not a site map that you can scroll through to find what you're looking for. The pages are not always intuitive. The same can be said of individual park websites. (But that's another column.) Perhaps there should be a competition among colleges with IT or library programs to come up with the solution, for the scientific, cultural, historic, and institutional knowledge held within the National Park Service and its parks is too valuable to be hidden.

Traveler footnote: While the history held within the National Park System is rich, nps.gov doesn't outwardly have a great grip on presenting it. However, for those seeking to deep dive into park history, there's npshistory.com, a meaty website created by two individuals who have a passion for the National Park System. Dr. Harry A. Butowsky retired in 2012 from the National Park Service in Washington D.C. where he worked as an historian and manager for the National Park Service History e-Library web site (NPSHistory.com aims to build upon this legacy). He is the author of World War II in the Pacific National Historic Landmark Study, six other Landmark Studies as well as sixty articles on military, labor, science and constitutional history. Dr. Butowsky has also taught History of World War I and World War II at George Mason University. His Ph.D. is from Univ. of Illinois. Randall D. Payne is a long-time National Park Service volunteer who lives in the Pacific Northwest.