Obama administration officials tout that the president has protected nearly 550 million acres of public lands during his tenure, but observers say those numbers tell an uneven story of how President Obama has stewarded the environment, and add that the Democrat can accomplish much more before he leaves the White House.

While comparatively few cases of Zika virus have been identified in the United States, the National Park Service has been working to keep visitors, and employees, on top of the situation and is recommending that everyone visiting National Park System sites in Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico take precautions to ward off mosquitoes.

A plan to crisscross 110 square miles of swampy landscape in a search for oil promises to test the National Park Service's ability to balance the unimpairment of resources with the "enjoyment of privately owned oil and gas interests" at Big Cypress National Preserve, a nearly three-quarters-of-a-million-acre wildland that nurtures endangered species and filters a good portion of the sheet of water that nourishes the "river of grass" on its way into neighboring Everglades National Park.

We stand on the cusp of the National Park Service’s second century, at an intersection of retrospection and promise. It’s the perfect point from which to look back on the first 100 years of the management of the world’s greatest park system, and to examine how it can be improved moving forward into the future.