Your donations help Traveler bring you news, and photos, from Katmai National Park and Preserve and from throughout the National Park System/Rebecca Latson

News is a "need to know type of thing," not a luxury. Don't forget, knowledge is power. And that's why, every day, National Parks Traveler works to bring you information from around the National Park System.

Traveler's inbox fills with news releases concerning national parks and protected areas across the country, alerting us to management, resource, and funding issues. The parks themselves are also a constant source of information. Each park is unique, with its own history and stories, and Traveler works to bring you these stories.

There are also bigger picture stories, such as hurricane recovery at Virgin Islands National Park, the maintenance backlog that limits your access to the parks, and the underground world of caves within the National Park System. Reporting on these takes time, travel and resources for our professional journalists.

While a small grant is currently helping us tell the story of maintenance backlogs, there are many, many other stories that need telling.

* How is oil and gas development impacting the parks?

* What is ocean acidification and plastic pollution doing to park waters?

* How are efforts to restore grizzly bears in the North Cascades National Park Complex faring?

* As goes the health of the Colorado River, how goes the health of the national parks along its riverbanks?

Then there’s the day-to-day news coverage of search-and-rescue missions, wildfires, campground openings, and even the birth of mountain lion kittens.

Some of these stories fall under the category of daily updates from the parks, others are armchair reads that inspire, and maybe even entice you, to push your limits in the landscape of the National Park System.

So please, the next time you pick up a coffee on the way to work or during a break, commit a little bit to the Traveler, too, so we can continue to bring you these stories and keep you informed. Better yet, sign up for a regular monthly donation. Really, news is a necessity.