National Parks Traveler Podcast
National Parks Traveler is the world's top-rated, editorially independent, nonprofit media organization dedicated to covering national parks and protected areas on a daily basis. Traveler offers readers and listeners a unique multimedia blend of news, feature content, debate, and discussion all tied to national parks and protected areas.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | See You In the Parks!
06/28/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | See You In the Parks!
For 21 years, the National Parks Traveler has taken you around the National Park System and kept you informed on how the National Park Service and Congress have managed your national parks. We’ve gone underground to describe for you the wonders of Wind Cave, Jewel Cave and Mammoth Cave, hiked into cypress domes at Everglades National Park to marvel at the park’s flora and fauna, and bucked the rapids of the Colorado and Green Rivers through Canyonlands National Park and Dinosaur National Monument. We’ve also followed the political and governmental contortions that have impacted the parks, along with the hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and climate change. In short, the Traveler has worked to be your window into all things national parks, serving both as your daily parks newspaper and feature-length magazine. This is our last episode. To look back at 21 years of Traveler, Kurt Repanshek invited Associate Editor Rita Beamish and Contributing Editor Kim O’Connell to join him for a conversation.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Wilderness Lost
06/21/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Wilderness Lost
Across the United States, from Alaska to Puerto Rico, there are about 112 million acres of officially designated wilderness. That amounts to about 5 percent of the country’s land mass. It might appear to be even smaller when you consider that more than half of those 112 million acres protected as wilderness are in Alaska. To say that wilderness is at risk from the human imprint isn’t hyperbole. While there are millions of acres of proposed, recommended, and potential wilderness across the country, Congress acts extremely slowly on these matters. Indeed, it was back in 1989 when America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act was first proposed in Congress to protect 8 million acres in Utah as official wilderness. The clock continues to tick on that proposal. Without official designation as wilderness, lands can be impacted by motorized and mechanized activities, from logging and mining and energy development to off-road-vehicle recreation. But the threats to both unofficial and official wilderness might be growing, as the Trump administration has called for a review of wilderness management on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and even the National Park Service. To explore what’s at stake with wilderness in America under these proposals, we have Kevin Proescholdt, the conservation director for Wilderness Watch, a nonprofit advocacy organization, and Bob Krumenaker, chairman of Keep Big Bend Wild, a nonprofit advocating for official wilderness designation in Big Bend National Park and a long-time National Park Service manager joining us today. Public comment on the Interior secretary’s directives is being taken through mid-August. Here are links to the public comment pages: BLM NPS FWS
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Don't Erase History So Fast
06/14/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Don't Erase History So Fast
It was a little more than a year ago when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked the public to help him identify interpretive materials in the National Park System that disparaged Americans past or living or which contained content that detracts from viewpoints of scenic grandeur. Well, it appears that the public didn’t share his concerns. Recent Freedom of Information Act requests have turned up nearly 36,000 comments in response to Secretary Burgum’s mission "to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing." The folks at the Center for Western Priorities recently filtered through the nearly 36,000 comments that were received by Interior, and found that just 47 – that’s right, only 47 comments – called for a sign to be removed or supported Burgum’s request to tidy up history. Our guests today are Kate Groetzinger and Lilly Bock-Brownstein from the Center for Western Priorities, and they’ll explain how they filtered those comments and what they found.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | ESA's Future
05/31/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | ESA's Future
Since this past December here at the Traveler we’ve been bringing you a series of stories on the Endangered Species Act and the threatened and endangered species it’s intended to keep from going extinct. For me, it’s been an eye-opening series because of what our editors and writers have learned about threatened and endangered species — from birds to trees and even to grasses — and the work being done to help them recover. It’s certainly not an easy task, and one that often takes decades before you can see progress. In today’s podcast, I sit down again with Jake Li, the vice president for conservation policy at Defenders of Wildlife, to get his take on efforts in Congress to rewrite the Endangered Species Act in ways that might not be so beneficial for threatened and endangered species. I think you’ll find it to be a very insightful conversation. We recorded this conversation in mid-May, right before Endangered Species Day.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Rethinking Public Lands Stewardship
05/24/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Rethinking Public Lands Stewardship
Public lands stewardship has most definitely changed under the second presidential administration of Donald Trump. Land-management agencies such as the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management have lost thousands of employees, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is on a mission to turn the country’s public lands into a cash cow of sorts. As the political tenure in Washington D.C., swings wildly back and forth like a massive pendulum when it comes to our public lands, there is an effort under way to provide a roadmap for public lands stewardship in the United States that stretches far into the future. Ground Shift is a new nonprofit organization working to, as they put it, “develop creative, durable, and transformative ideas to shape the next century of public land and water stewardship in the United States.” To better understand this organization and its goals, our guests today are Lynn Scarlett, who was a deputy Interior secretary during the administration of President George Bush, and Tracy Stone-Manning, who directed the Bureau of Land Management under President Joe Biden.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Cook Inlet's Beluga Whales
05/17/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Cook Inlet's Beluga Whales
A fast-track proposal to develop a gold mine near Alaska’s Cook Inlet and Lake Clark National Park and Preserve is alarming scientists, environmental groups and local communities because of the devastating effects it is expected to have on the region’s critically endangered beluga whales. Cook Inlet is home to a small and genetically distinct population of beluga whales that has struggled for decades from habitat loss, industrial activity, pollution, and underwater noise. Supporters of the mining project say it will bring jobs, economic growth and profit to Native Alaskans. This week Traveler’s Lynn Riddick talks with Cooper Freeman, Alaska Director of the Center for Biological Diversity. His organization along with many others argue that the gold to be extracted isn’t worth the cost of threatening a species already vulnerable to extinction and forever desecrating a magnificent landscape.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Southern Campaign of the American Revolution
05/10/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Southern Campaign of the American Revolution
America’s 250th birthday is coming up this summer, festivities will be held all over the country, and history buffs will be delving into the various nooks and crannies of the National Park System to see where they can visit sites of Revolutionary War battles. Don't overlook South Carolina and its three park sites that preserve Revolutionary War battlefields – Kings Mountain National Military Park, Cowpens National Battlefield, and Ninety-Six National Historic Site. The state of South Carolina takes so much pride in these three sites that some of its license plates proclaim that the Revolutionary War was won in South Carolina. But was it? Today we’re going to pose that question to James Taub, the associate curator at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Print Ain’t Dead
05/03/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Print Ain’t Dead
We’re living in somewhat tumultuous times in the print media industry. Well-familiar titles are either disappearing, shrinking drastically, or shifting over to the internet. On top of that, the advent of Artificial Intelligence has some readers wondering how much human effort and talent went into the piece they're reading. Today we’re going to be talking about a throw-back, a publication that has come and gone a bit over the past six decades, but which has a hallowed space among publications for its long-form journalism that dives into mountain culture, environmental issues, and outdoor adventure. The Mountain Gazette has published such literary notaries as Hunter S. Thomas, Ed Abbey, John Fayhee, Sadie Stine, Royal Robbins and so many others. And it’s back. Our guest is Mike Rogge, the owner and publisher of Mountain Gazette. He'll help us stroll down memory lane a bit and look at the current state of outdoor journalism.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Chief Storyteller
04/26/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Chief Storyteller
National parks provide us with so many services, from providing us with inspiration, allowing us to leave our stress behind for a few hours or a few days, offering a recreational outlet, and enabling us to pursue hobbies from photography to other artistic endeavors, and looking for wildlife. The parks also allow us to go back into history through living history programs and interpretation, provided both by rangers and by organizations that produce interpretive materials. They also serve as a great background for storytellers. Today our guest is a former ranger who held the informal title of Chief Storyteller. Tom Medema until recently was Associate Director for the National Park Service, with a focus on interpretation in the parks. We’ll discuss all things interpretation and inspiration tied to the National Park System.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Wildlife Crossings
04/19/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Wildlife Crossings
Across the United States, there are many thousands of collisions between vehicles and wildlife each year, killing people and animals and causing millions of dollars in property damages. Some solutions revolve around creating bridges specifically for wildlife, from elk and mountain lions to even turtles and salamanders. It’s been estimated that collisions with wildlife in the United States kill around 200 people and injure more than 26,000 per year. Building wildlife crossings can reduce those collisions by up to 97 percent. Back in 2021 the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided $350 million to be doled out as grants over five years on building such crossings. But the funding runs out this year, and the National Parks Conservation Association has been urging Congress to not just renew the program, but see that it provides $200 million a year going forward. To explain the problem and associated costs with the lack of wildlife crossings today's guests are Bart Melton, senior director of NPCA’s wildlife program, and Renee Callahan from ARC Solutions, a nonprofit that works to facilitate new thinking, new methods, new materials and new solutions for wildlife crossing structures.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Polluting Parks With Light
04/12/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Polluting Parks With Light
You might not entirely appreciate the wonders and majesty of national parks unless you venture out after dark and gaze up at what often is referred to as the other half of the national park system. The view can be quite dazzling, with planets, stars, the Milky Way, and for the lucky, a comet or shooting star. Sadly, not every park offers such dazzling views. Light pollution reaches more than a few national parks, and can really infringe on your nighttime enjoyment of the parks. Gavin Heffernan is among those park travelers who are troubled by light pollution. He’s a California-based photographer with a unique long-form time lapse style. And he’s hoping this approach brings a fresh awareness to the wonders of night skies in the national parks and creates advocacy to fight light pollution and the damage it wreaks on natural habitats.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Florida’s Ailing Reef
04/05/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Florida’s Ailing Reef
Warming oceans, pollution, more potent hurricanes, anchor drops, dredging and trawling. The Florida Reef struggles with a lot of impacts today. In fact, only about 2 percent of the reef that stretches some 350 miles from Biscayne National Park past Everglades National Park and down to Dry Tortugas National Park is covered with living coral. For several months now at the National Parks Traveler we’ve been building an ongoing series of stories and podcasts focused on impacts to the Florida Reef and whether it can be saved. Today our guest is Dr. Erinn Fuller, an associate vice president for research, senior scientist, and coral health and disease program manager at the Mote Aquarium in Florida. Dr. Fuller is on the forefront of efforts to offset impacts to the Florida Reef and restore its corals. She’ll explain the various impacts to the reef and the work being done to offset them.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Managing Capitol Reef's Visitors
03/29/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Managing Capitol Reef's Visitors
Capitol Reef National Park in Utah is one of the Mighty Five, as the state likes to say in its tourism promotions, and while it’s somewhat off the beaten path, visitors are finding it. In 2024, visitation to the park was a record 1.4 million, a number that likely increased in 2025 and will continue to increase for the foreseeable future. Cognizant of the rising tide of visitation, the National Park Service staff at Capitol Reef has been working on a visitor use management plan intended to better manage growing visitation. Our guest today is Sue Fritzke, a former superintendent of the park and a member of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | 1,000 Western Wonders
03/22/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | 1,000 Western Wonders
What do you do, where do you go, when you pull into your favorite national park and can’t find a place to park or a trail without crowds? Those are good questions probably going through many people’s minds as the national parks become more and more popular with more and more people. Mike Oswald might have the answers you’re looking for, at least for the Western half of the country. Oswald is the writer and publisher behind Your Guide to the National Parks, a thick, fact-filled guidebook to the 63 national parks in the country. This year he’s veering outside of the parks with a new book titled, simply, Public Land, 1,000 Western Wonders.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Congaree’s Big Trees
03/15/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Congaree’s Big Trees
Congaree National Park is an often-overlooked unit of the National Park System. Indeed, only about 250,000 visitors set foot in Congaree each year. Those who do are awestruck by the size of the trees there, as the park contains the highest concentration of champion-sized trees anywhere in North America. Our guest today is Professor Kimberly Meitzen from Texas State University. Before arriving at Texas State, she studied at the University of South Carolina, where she fell in love with Congaree, its floodplain, and its big trees.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Bats in the Parks
03/08/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Bats in the Parks
A growing majority of bat species are in serious trouble, largely because of white nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that resembles a white fuzz on infected bats. As the disease has spread across the country, it’s decimated bat populations – killing upwards of 99 percent of some populations – and turned up in many national parks. As part of the National Parks Traveler’s Threatened and Endangered Species Project, contributing writer Kim O’Connell has been looking into the situation with bat species.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Big Bend's Big Wall
03/01/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Big Bend's Big Wall
Big Bend National Park lately has drawn a lot of national attention, and not in a good way. Recently the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced that it wanted to build some sort of border wall along all or part of the 118 miles of border the national park shares with Mexico. Is that a good idea? Will it adversely impact the park? Can it even be done? To discuss those and other questions, our guest today is Bob Krumenaker, whose long Park Service career included a stint as Big Bend’s superintendent. Bob also is chair of the Keep Big Bend Wild organization that is pushing to see a large portion of the park designated as official wilderness.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Revisiting the ESA
02/22/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Revisiting the ESA
To put some perspective on the National Parks Travelers' monthslong coverage of threatened and endangered species, we’re going to go back in time a bit today to replay a podcast in which we discussed the ESA — and possible changes to it — with Jake Li, a vice president with Defenders of Wildlife, and Stephanie Adams, director of wildlife at the National Parks Conservation Association.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Cumberland Island Visitor Use Controversy
02/15/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Cumberland Island Visitor Use Controversy
At Cumberland Island the National Park Service currently is crafting a visitor use management plan that critics say poses a great threat to the national seashore’s official and potential wilderness. To get an understanding of what’s at risk, we’ve invited Jessica Howell-Edwards, the executive director of Wild Cumberland, which advocates for the seashore’s wilderness area and ecosystems, to join us.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Florida Coral Reef Rescue
02/08/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Florida Coral Reef Rescue
The Florida Reef stretches from Biscayne National Park south past Everglades National Park and down to Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida. It’s roughly 350 miles long, and is the only coral reef in the continental United States. When it comes to reefs around the world, the Florida Reef is the third largest. But, unfortunately, it’s under a lot of pressure. It’s dealing with pollution, ocean warming, damage inflicted by anchors, and disease. Perhaps the most serious disease infecting the reef is Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, which can be fatal to corals. Our guest today is Beth Firchau, who works for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Part of her role is to manage the association’s safe coral program, and part of her role is AZA’s coordinator for the Florida Reef Tract Rescue Program. And part of her work involves a network of aquariums across the United States that are holding samples of corals from the Florida Reef.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Saving Whitebark Pines
01/31/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Saving Whitebark Pines
Whitebark pines are a Western icon that the National Park Service has designated as a “vital sign” species because they are critical to ecosystem functions. But they are at risk of extinction due to climate change, beetles, and a fatal fungus from Eurasia. Our guest today is Dr. Elizabeth Pansing, the director of forest and restoration science for American Forests, a nonprofit organization that strives to create healthy and resilient forests. This program was made possible in part by the Park Foundation.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtles
01/25/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtles
What is the fate of the critically endangered Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle? This smallest of the sea turtle species glides among the sea grasses and coral reefs of the Gulf of Mexico, and nests predominantly along the shores of Mexico, with a growing number of turtles nesting on Padre Island National Seashore in Texas. Hopes for this sea turtle’s recovery weigh heavily on the national seashore’s programs and budgeting, which are also threatened and endangered. Dr. Donna Shaver, one of the world’s foremost sea turtle experts, nurtured the seashore’s sea turtle science program for the past 22 years. However, for the past five years she’s been battling to save the program, and her position, at Padre Island National Seashore. National Park Service officials would not allow us to discuss the plight of the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle with Dr. Shaver. Instead, the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick talks this week with research scientist Nathan Putman. He’s involved in studies of the Kemp’s Ridley to understand more about this intriguing species.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Yellowstone’s North Entrance
01/18/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Yellowstone’s North Entrance
During a typical summer day at Yellowstone National Park roughly 3,000 vehicles enter through the North Entrance and head down to Mammoth Hot Springs so their passengers can begin their park adventure. Up until June 2022 their route took them along the Gardner River. But that all changed on June 13, 2022, when a once-in-500-years rainstorm, falling on top of snow cover, sent waters rampaging down the Yellowstone, Lamar, and Gardner rivers. Those flood waters took out sections of both the northeast and north entrance roads in the park. While the gaps in the Northeast Entrance Road were patched relatively quickly, the North Entrance Road through Gardiner Canyon remains closed to traffic. Instead, vehicles are temporarily using the Old Gardiner Road, a stagecoach route that was relatively quickly rehabilitated to handle vehicle traffic. Since the flood, the National Park Service has been looking for a permanent route from Gardiner Montana, to Mammoth Hot Springs that would avoid going all the way through the Gardiner Canyon. Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly joins us today to explain the decision-making that has gone into finding that route.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | The Fate of the Honeycreeper
01/11/2026
National Parks Traveler Podcast | The Fate of the Honeycreeper
A dramatic battle is being waged on the flanks of Halealakā National Park to save rare Honeycreeper birds that exist only in Hawaii. It’s believed that the 50-odd known living or extinct species of honeycreepers all evolved from a single colonizing ancestor that arrived on Hawaii, the world's most remote island group, some three to five million years ago. Threats to the birds began to surface around 500 A.D., when Polynesian colonists began to settle on the Pacific island chain. They began to clear most of the low elevation forests, inadvertently eating away at the birds’ habitat. It’s also thought that the Polynesians introduced the Pacific Rat to the islands, a predator that ate the birds’ eggs. The arrival of Europeans in the late 18th century accelerated the destruction of the birds’ forest habitat. Along with loss of habitat, the honeycreepers are falling victim to avian malaria, which is carried by mosquitoes, and which is almost always fatal to the birds. Today only 17 species of honeycreepers survive in the state, some with fewer than 500 birds remaining, and it’s believed that many will be pushed to extinction within a decade if nothing is done. In a bid to slow, if not reverse, the spread of avian malaria, the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project is working to disrupt the reproduction of mosquitoes. Traveler associate editor Rita Beamish and Editor Kurt Repanshek recently sat down with Dr. Hanna Mounce, program director of the project, to learn about its work.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Year in Review
12/28/2025
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Year in Review
This year, 2025, likely will go down as the most transitional for the National Park Service. We’ve seen the loss of nearly a quarter of the permanent workforce, efforts to whitewash history in some parks, and the loss of a grand lodge to wildfire. The past 12 months have been full of news impacting the National Park Service and national parks, not all of it good. It’s been a somewhat tumultuous year, leaving many wondering what the new year will bring for the parks and their employees. To help us look back over the past 12 months, we've invited Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president for government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, to join us.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Historic Preservation in the Parks
12/21/2025
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Historic Preservation in the Parks
A century of seasons has worn the appearance of the log cabin Roy Fure built in present-day Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, but his care of the small cabin, and later National Park Service restoration efforts, have enabled it to stand the test of time. Dovetail-notched spruce logs still sit tightly together, the corrugated metal roof Fure replaced his sod roof with in 1930 and painted red could use a new coat of paint, but otherwise looks rainproof, and the windmill he erected to generate electricity still stands tall. Across the 85+ million-acre National Park System there are tens of thousands of historic structures — 19th-century homesteads, Civil War structures, Civil Rights facilities, presidential homes, artworks and more — but not all receive the same treatment as Fure's cabin. • At Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve in Oregon, the historic, and once charming, Chateau with 23 rooms has been closed since 2018 due to structural issues and a lack of funding to address them. • In Kansas, the Park Service last year gained title to the First Baptist Church at Nicodemus National Historic Site, but a lack of funding has left the 118-year-old house of worship boarded up. • At Gettysburg National Military Park the David Wills house, where President Lincoln spent the night before delivering his address, has been closed since fall 2024 when a water line burst and flooded the structure. Those are just a very small handful of historic structures in the National Park System that are among thousands competing for scarce rehabilitation dollars. To discuss the situation across the park system we’ve invited Pam Bowman, the senior director of government relations at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Threatened and Endangered Species Intro
12/14/2025
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Threatened and Endangered Species Intro
After more than 50 years as one of the country’s landmark environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act has gone from one of the most popular measures before Congress to one fueling demands that it be revised, if not discarded. The National Parks Traveler is reviewing the Endangered Species Act's work and its record, spotlighting individual species that it's protected, those that it failed, and those that it recovered. The monthslong series comes as ESA champions worry that the push to weaken the law could consign countless animals and plants to the growing list of flora and fauna that, like the Passenger pigeon, are now found only in books and online. The National Park System seems to be the perfect background to explore these questions, as its lands are supposedly the best preserved on the federal landscape. I recently interviewed two wildlife advocates — Jake Li, a vice president with who spent time working in the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before joining the advocacy group, and Stephanie Adams, director of wildlife at the . Though the interviews were done separately, the questions were largely the same. What follows is a merging of those two conversations.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Endemic Haleakalā
12/07/2025
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Endemic Haleakalā
is deceptively wonderful and rich in biodiversity. But if we're not careful, we could lose some of that biodiversity. Located on the island of Maui in Hawaii, the first thing you notice about this national park is its towering dormant volcano, Haleakalā, which rises from sea level to more than 10,000 feet. While many visitors simply want to head to the top of the volcano to peer into its crater or enjoy a colorful sunrise or sunset, if you take a little time to get to know this park you'll be amazed by what doesn't first come into sight. For instance, there are more than 300 plant and animal species endemic to Haleakalā — found nowhere else in the world — and many species that are being threatened or endangered with extinction. Kurt Repanshek headed to Haleakalā this past week with Special Projects Editor Patrick Cone and Assistant Editor Rita Beamish to learn more about the park and its rare and unique species.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Staffing and Funding the Park Service
11/30/2025
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Staffing and Funding the Park Service
It’s Thanksgiving Weekend, usually interpreted as a bountiful time of year when we can all sit back and be thankful. But can many who work for the National Park Service feel thankful in the wake of the staff reductions this year? This year has been hard on the Park Service, what with the loss of roughly a quarter of the full-time workforce and questions around how the agency has long interpreted history. But the Park Service has long struggled with its operations. Funding and staffing never seem to have met the needs of the Park Service to manage its far-flung collection of more than 400 units. We’re going to explore the funding and staffing issue of the agency today with John Garder, the senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Association.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Shrinking Mount Rainier
11/16/2025
National Parks Traveler Podcast | Shrinking Mount Rainier
Gazing up at mountains from their valleys down below, it’s hard, if not impossible, to detect any change on the top of the mountains. But change is ongoing, especially in recent history as the climate continues to warm. From Tacoma or Seattle in Washington state, the snowy summit of Mount Rainier National Park appears unchanged from how it’s always looked. Snowy. But is that truly the case? What would you think if someone told you the top of the summit no longer is 14,410 feet high, that the high point of the park has actually shrunk? Our guests today are Eric Gilbertson, a mechanical engineer and mountaineer from Seattle University, and Scott Hotaling, a watershed sciences professor from Utah State University, who have measured the thickness of the ice cap on the summit of Mount Rainier. What they have to say may surprise you.
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