Though not specifically about national parks, there's a new web portal out in cyberspace that I thought you not only would enjoy, but find useful. It's called the Encyclopedia of Life.
My recent post on decommissioned national parks drew fairly good readership on the Traveler, but it garnered much more outcry on a private listserv delivered to retired National Park Service employees. Which spurs a number of questions, foremost among them being the obvious "Why?"
Valley Forge National Historical Park isn't the only unit of the national park system threatened by development on private lands that fall within its borders. Far from it. The latest case involves Virgin Islands National Park, where development on roughly 1,400 privately owned acres within the park's borders is harming the park's resources.
Wolves, not bullets, should be used to cull the elk herds that move through Rocky Mountain National Park, according to a lawsuit filed against the Interior Department and National Park Service.
More than two centuries after General George Washington and his Continental Army somehow endured a bitterly cold and exacting winter at Valley Forge, the landscape is again in turmoil. On one side is a national historical park, one that helps preserve the memory of America's birth. On the other, an organization whose questionable motives could sully that landscape.
Once upon a time, there was a national park unit centered around fossilized plants. And there was another -- the country's second national park -- that was located on an island in Lake Huron. But no more.
A remote cluster of islands near Hawaii and George Washington's Virginia home, Mount Vernon, have been proposed by Interior Department officials for World Heritage Site designation.