Nearly two decades after Congress passed the the National Park Air Tour Management Act that called for the plans to police the airspace over the National Park System, the Federal Aviation Administration and National Park Service are promising to create some plans, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Recent wet weather has left the Trillium Gap Trail at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in somewhat of a mess, prompting park staff to close the foot path through July 11 to let it dry out.

The National Park Service more than a century ago was directed to manage national parks so as to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." Today the agency in places seems to be losing the battle when it comes to plant and animal species considered either "threatened" or "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act.

Bits and pieces of the past, from a chest of drawers that served as an 1894 wedding present to men's trousers and even a seed collection, reside in the Collections Preservation Center just outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park.