The lack of a Senate-confirmed director of the National Park Service remains to be a demoralizing factor for the agency's workforce, which also has had no specific agenda to follow under the Trump administration.

It has been mentioned so often, that it seemingly has lost its impact: The National Park Service is roughly $12 billion behind in maintaining its infrastructure. And maybe numbness to that backlog is why Park Service planners are continue to work on capital projects.

Climate science is just that, science, which ebbs and flows through the refinement of technology and physical observation. But the Trump administration's refusal to recognize the science its land-management agencies conduct neither ebbs nor flows; you could say it's frozen in place. Sadly, that clamp down is preventing a thorough discussion of what's going on with the glaciers at Glacier National Park.

You might have heard the news. The National Park System was behind a $40 billion bump in the nation's economy last year. What that jubilant news released by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt overlooked was the dire state of the park system.