While most often we hear about fish, bird, or animal species needing Endangered Species Act protection, today a group is asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to extend that protection to a tree, the whitebark pine.

Glacier National Park includes just over a million acres of superlative Rocky Mountain terrain, and the park offers an interesting combination of front-country access and backcountry solitude in what has been called "the core of the Crown of the Continent ecosystem." Glacier will celebrate its centennial on May 11, 2010, and some supporters are saying it's time to finally formalize wilderness designation for key portions of the park.

While Mount Rainier National Park officials tore down their reminder of Mission 66 "parkitecture," at Glacier National Park a coffee shop from that era has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

It took a while, but the National Park Service has signed off on a plan that prevents railroads from routinely using explosives to clear avalanche chutes above tracks that run along the southern border of Glacier National Park.