A kayaking expedition and landing site programs inaugurated the Southern Lake Michigan Water Trail on June 13-14. The new paddling route, which extends 40+ miles between Chicago and Michigan City, includes a 15-mile stretch of the waters and shoreline at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

If you’d like to comment on wilderness resource values and management alternatives in the largest named wilderness in the continental U.S., you’ve still got time, but you’d better hurry. The deadline for public input on the Death Valley Wilderness Stewardship Plan has been extended to June 30.

An exhausted pygmy whale and her calf washed ashore last week near Charleston, South Carolina, and had to be euthanized. The mother whale was starving because she swallowed a plastic bag tossed from a boat.

You can’t let people jump out of your helicopter anywhere you please. You can’t buzz the crowd on the shore. You can’t endanger other visitors when you land your helicopter on a houseboat. And if you keep doing this kind of stuff at Glen Canyon, law enforcement rangers will make your acquaintance and a federal court will help to shape your future.