National Parks Traveler

How To Keep The Traveler’s Lights On

Together, We Can Save “the NPR of National Park News”

By Kurt Repanshek, Founder and editor-in-chief

Since announcing four weeks ago that the National Parks Traveler would be shutting down due to insufficient funding to keep it afloat, I have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of concern for the Traveler's future. I deeply appreciate this outreach, and it is gratifying to know that over the past 18 years so many readers have appreciated our unique journalistic endeavor.

While we don’t want to shutter the media organization whose sole mission is to provide coverage of the National Park Service and the National Park System, it can no longer be done on a shoestring. It requires a reliable revenue flow. To improve both editorial coverage and financial stability, the nonprofit organization needs to employ a small (3-4) full-time staff, continue to commission freelance assignments, and address IT needs and other operational expenses.

Kurt Repanshek, founder and editor-in-chief of the National Parks Traveler/Patrick Cone

In the past, I have issued open pleas seeking your financial support. Now I need your help more than ever if there can be any glimmer of hope to keep the Traveler from being dispatched to the “news desert” of American journalism, another vital media outlet lost.

Doug Leen, of Ranger Doug acclaim, calls the Traveler “The NPR of National Park news; the Lonely Planet virtual guidebook to the NPS Galaxy.”

“Most small independent and publicly supported news outlets are vanishing in America thanks to big money. Kurt keeps the NPS on its toes and the public informed,” says Leen, a once-upon-a-time seasonal ranger who spent decades collecting and preserving Works Progress Administration national park posters so he could donate them to the Interior Department. “I urge everyone who loves NPS news to support National Parks Traveler.”

With roughly 2 million readers and listeners a year, the Traveler has an audience that can provide the stability it needs. If just 4,000 readers and listeners committed by year’s end to recurring monthly donations of $10 — just $120 a year — the lights would burn brightly.

The Traveler has been recognized through the years by the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, the George Wright Society, and the Western National Parks Association for its coverage of the parks and its guardian agency. We’ve provided you with in-depth coverage of climate-change impacts on the parks, invasive species, and the fallout of budget and staffing shortfalls. We’ve explored parks called the crown jewels of the park system as well as overlooked wonders, and we've been the only organization to annually point to threatened and endangered parks.

With your support, and that of your friends, colleagues, and organizations, we can continue to bring you that coverage. But we can't do it without you. If this coverage is important to you, please sign up for recurring monthly donations before year’s end.

In issuing this final plea, I wanted to give you a chance to help decide whether the Traveler has any future beyond this year.