As a birder and naturalist, I have a love/hate relationship with roads and parking lots in national parks. On the one hand, it’s not difficult to agree with Ed Abbey that all pavement is the opposite of progress. Roads kill things outright and bring more tourists, a certain percentage of which will be destructive in their own way. Then I stop and think about the best birding spots I’ve found in the parks – and a majority of them of were either in a parking lot or within sight of some kind of pavement.

Everglades National Park is our only national wetland park, and one of the largest aquascapes in the world. Perhaps more than any other U.S. national park, Everglades' treasures are hard to defend. Lying at the southern end of an immense watershed the size of New Jersey, Everglades National Park is caught between the largest man-made water project in the world upstream and a rapidly rising ocean downstream.

Another park and a new vendor are selling entrance passes online as the National Park Service tests a variety of electronic services as part of a pilot program. Annual and seven-day passes to Everglades National Park are being sold in advance at Smart Destinations at no additional cost.

In a bid to see lodging facilities established at Flamingo in Everglades National Park by September 2018, the National Park Service is offering a $5 million enticement to the concessionaire that wins the contract. The money would be used to pay for construction of lodging and visitor facilities at Flamingo.