If you ever questioned whether the National Park Service is hamstrung by an insufficient budget, all you need do is look at news from the past week.

A lottery opens Thursday for tickets to the National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony late next month on the Ellipse at President’s Park in Washington, D.C.

The National Park Service is preparing to begin a test an experimental laser removal treatment of the biofilm affecting the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, most evident on the dome. The project will clean a test area of 1,000 square feet on the northeast side of the memorial that will allow the National Park Service to evaluate the effectiveness of the technique. The results of this cleaning test will be used to determine how the remainder of the biofilm on the memorial’s dome and pediment might be cleaned.

Drones can offer incredible vantage points for photographers, but they also can be a danger to aircraft. And so when a drone appeared in the air near Glen Aulin in Yosemite National Park, a park helicopter had to land rather than risk collision.