I'd like to learn more about how climate change may affect our National Parks in this 21st century, and what mitigation and adaptation strategies might be appropriate.

The NPS budget is less than 1/1000th of the Federal budget.  Through the years of cuts apparently to come, how might we raise the stewardship of our Parks higher in the national conciousness?  What changes in law or policy might free the NPS to utilize its limited budget more effectively?

I'd say Features are the best.   The Puzzles don't do anything for me, though they clearly have a big group of fans.  Gear reviews can be found on many other sites, NPT probably doesn't have an advantage there.  The other categories are all good: I'd probably rank them: spot news, book reviews, then travel.

Spot news is probably my favorite, also, but I always check on travel experiences since I would like to know what to expect and hear what others have experienced in the parks.  When you visit a park for the first time you can be overwhelmed with choices and it's nice to know what others find interesting or entertaining.  I enjoy the pieces on the lodges, on hikes, etc.  With budget cuts, we do need to find ways to support the parks through their foundations or whatever it takes.  Time to step up and do more to protect what we have and this site helps.

Kurt,
Your Traveler Site keeps getting better each year. I love your news about the goings on in our parks, but I especially enjoy your stories that tell me what I can and should do at the parks I visit. The readers comments are always an important  part of my reading of your articles. I would like to see more articles about campgrounds in or by the parks. I would also like to see more articles about ranger led activities (these were great articles this past year).
Dave

I'd like to read more about community- and government-led efforts to designate new national parks. As a Californian, I'm particularly interested in hearing about the areas Senator Feinstein wants to designate in the Mojave Desert.

Even if these areas never become part of the Parks department, I'd still like to hear about the areas people want to designate, and why.

I'm with David... I like learning about experiences in the park. I like the "check lists" and just in general, what activities people enjoy in a given park. To list a bunch of hikes is one thing but to give an actual account of the hike is so helpful. I especially like learning about things that aren't the "norm". Example, I had never heard of Horsetail Falls in Yosemite - now hoping to go next year. Some of those things may seem common place to someone who lives near by or visits the park frequently but for someone coming for that one time visit from a long distance, it's really great to know about those things in advance! But I must admit, the articles that aren't necessarily in my line of interest are often the ones I learn the most from. So, keep up the great work with the wonderful variety of articles.

For me the features are main reason to read the Traveler. History and politics are my leading interests. The next best thing are personal accounts about trips to the parks featuring well known or not so well known trails and experiences. I really liked the recent Cholla Cactus garden story as it reminded my on my first vitis to Josha Tree (National Monument, not yet National Park back then) because Cholla Cactus garden was one of my first stops in the park and in desert environment. Your article captured my memories very well. Thank you for it.

Bundling features or reports by topic such a seasons or regions (or maybe some series around the Civil war?) works for me. Please keep up the good work.

In my opinion, the Spot news rely too much on the NPS Morning report and I can read that myself. I understand that they might be useful to provide fresh content almost every day thus pushing the Traveler up in visibility at Google, and they are relativly easy to produce. So just keep them and I will take at least a look at most of them.

In general, thanks a lot to all the authors and everyone else involved, including the techs.

I'd vote for an article or two on what NPS is doing to make itself relevant to younger people. The poor agency has for decades been beset by the demands of elderly curmudgeons, and the organizations that represent them, like the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the Audubon Society, etc., that nothing change. These people and organizations have a crabbed 19th-century view of what the national parks are or should be about. This result to date has meant lots of hiking (an activity that at its best is pleasant but rarely is exhilarating) and commercialized dude-ranch activities in the backcountry and mass vehicular tourism at park gateways and developed areas.

It seems that NPS, wisely and admirably, is aware that the curmudgeons are leading NPS into practical irrelevance and indifference among the general public and is moving away from their model. Witness its plan to build a trail for mountain bikers at Big Bend National Park, which of course has generated howls of execration from the Luddites.

So my question would be, What is the thinking internally at NPS about how to extricate itself from the fuddy-duddies' narrow-mindedness and make itself appealing to people who are not afraid of the future, without sacrificing the essential goal of preserving some of our best wildlands in a natural state?