President Trump's long-awaited infrastructure plan and FY19 budget proposal carry few dollars for the National Park System's $11.6 billion maintenance backlog and significant "poison pills" that could lead to environmental harm across the country, according to park and environment advocates.

In a 1973 TV spot, the United States Forest Service sage Smokey Bear admonished that “one careless second with a match and America the beautiful becomes America the ugly.” So what would Smokey say now when a few careless seconds with a pen allowed President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to remove protections from two million acres of precious American wilderness? If courts uphold Trump’s executive orders of last December, they would reduce southern Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments by 85 and 46 percent, respectively, constituting the biggest rollback of federally protected land in American history.

On January 23, a new national park joined Ecuador’s 54 protected areas. Río Negro-Sopladora National Park lies in southern Ecuador’s Morona Santiago and Azuay provinces within the Cordillera Real Oriental mountain range and next to Sangay National Park. The area is dominated by almost-intact Andean páramos – treeless alpine plateaus – and forests that are home to a great variety of animal and plant species.

The Oregon Inlet, Cape Point, Frisco, and Ocracoke campgrounds at Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina will open for the season on Friday, March 30.