More sunshine, warmer temperatures, longer days, and birdsong at dawn build our excitement for spring. And no one is more joyous than a gardener. Or in this case, the gardeners at the Darrington School Greenhouse in northwestern Washington state.

There are inequities when it comes to funding units of the National Park System that protect and interpret cultural and historic sites vs. those that are focused on natural resources and sweeping vistas.

Minidoka National Historic Site is not unique in wanting for adequate funding to protect, and interpret, its history, but it's a clear example of the need that exists.

National parks protect immense biodiversity, and science is providing the data and graphics to monitor and protect that biodiversity.

The newly released United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report contains stern warnings for Florida while stressing the critical importance of wetland restoration in mitigating climate change impacts.

Nearly a century after a series of canals was dug through Cape Sable to the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay, work to permanently seal them all is almost complete in another step towards restoration of the "river of grass."

America's move to electric vehicles could run out of juice in the National Park System, where many challenges stand in the way of installing EV chargers.

Fetching as she is, the reconstructed French fortress is not the draw on this blustery day as a fierce winter storm approaches Cape Breton. It’s a 40-minute interpretive walk that quietly beckons because it speaks to how coastal erosion is impacting the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site, its rocky shoreline and one of its centuries-old mass grave.

“A thousand Yellowstone wonders are calling, ‘Look up and down and round about you!’” In an 1885 essay, John Muir waxed rhapsodic about the nation’s first national park, then just 13 years old. Yellowstone’s wonders still were little known except to Native Americans who had been on the land for millennia; East coasters assumed it was a “park” akin to New York City’s Central Park. At its 150th birthday, Yellowstone is an eternity away from that wrongheaded view, and enmeshed in raft of modern-day complexities never envisioned its youth.

More than four decades after a large swath of Big Bend National Park was identified as potential wilderness, there's a grassroots effort under way to convince Congress that now is the time to transform it into official wilderness.

While two river guides, armed with a UV flashlight, searched the beach for scorpions, I wandered in the other direction down the shoreline of the Colorado River to stare into the night sky at the Milky Way and its surrounding twinkling diamonds of light.

In 2018, Great Smoky Mountains National Park began a concentrated effort to tell the stories of African Americans who have lived and worked in the Smokies over the past several centuries. Born out of that focus, the African American Experiences Project aims to collect the stories and history of Black people in the Smokies and to educate the public about their historical presence and contributions dating back to the 1540s.

Three decades after I was first told that Americans were loving their parks to death, some of the patients seem in need of life-support in the National Park System.

More people are leaping into the RV lifestyle every year. They’re exploring national parks in comfort, but all that extra traffic makes spontaneous road trips to the parks largely a thing of the past, at least during the busy summer season. With more rigs on the road than campsites to accommodate them, RVers like me are constantly competing for a scant number of RV-friendly campsites. I learned this lesson the hard way when I arrived at Yellowstone without reservations.

On a July 4th weekend, I slowly circled the Hoh Campground, passing just about every one of its 72 sites in search of an empty, unreserved campsite. With the sinking feeling that my campsite would end up somewhere in the adjoining Olympic National Forest, it was stunning to find a vacant site on a turn in the road and separated from the Hoh River by a line of towering trees.

Less than an hour’s drive southwest of Calgary, Bar U Ranch National Historic Site — the only one administered by Parks Canada to celebrate ranching history — recently received infrastructure funding to preserve key buildings. The investment ensures visitors can have authentic experiences for years to come at a site with the country’s largest collection of historical ranch buildings.

As the Biden administration's 30 by 30 initiative moves forward, it's likely it will rely heavily on the National Park System to succeed.

With its sharp, hooked bill, the kiwikiu is a master at cracking open branches or berries in pursuit of a plump insect meal. Ironically, this olive green and yellow bird, already on the national endangered species list, risks being pushed into extinction by an insect.

Charles "Buffalo" Jones is just a footnote in Yellowstone National Park's history, but his work more than a century ago might have played a role in a current legal drama revolving around whether Yellowstone bison are an endangered species.

A cold day makes Valley Forge National Historical Park a particularly haunting and powerful place to visit.