How's your national park being managed? It's a good question, one that at times can be hard to find answers to. At Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, though, managers have distributed a 20-page publication for those interested in what was accomplished in 2009 and what continuing issues are being confronted.

Plans by the state of Indiana to build a hardened stone seawall along a portion of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore don't sit well with lakeshore officials, who cite a number of problems, including the lack of permits from the National Park Service and requisite environmental studies.

Not many of us are old enough to have attended the 1933 World's Fair. But if you head to Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore next weekend, you'll be able to go back in time.

Change is under way in the Great Lakes, the source of 84 percent of North America’s fresh water and more than 20 percent of the world’s supply. It is a progressive sweeping change that threatens to greatly transform the ecosystems of these inland seas by warming their waters and supplanting native species with harmful invasives. And it is a change that ultimately may threaten the viability of the common loon and dozens of other birds that depend on the lakes.