With a wetland meadow literally eroding away in Sequoia National Park, the National Park Service is asking whether wilderness restrictions should be bypassed in order to restore natural qualities to the ecosystem.

Famous naturalist John Muir said, “The Big Tree (Sequoia gigantea) is Nature’s forest masterpiece, and . . . the greatest of living things. . . . No description can give any adequate idea of their singular majesty, much less their beauty.”

Books with ties to national parks are too numerous to count. But we did receive a fair number in 2015, and found many of them worth your while. Let's take a look back through Traveler's Fireside Reads for 2015.

My first partner in my first job with the National Park Service was a dark bay mare. I was extremely popular with the kids when I’d show up at the General Sherman Tree or Lodgepole Campground in Sequoia National Park riding Sweets. So you can imagine the shock and horror I felt last August when I learned that three NPS horses were on a feedlot in Colorado, waiting to be shipped to a slaughterhouse in Mexico.