With the summer vacation season not too far off, no doubt many National Park Service Superintendents are trying to figure out how to manage the crowds and avoid impacts to natural resources in the park system.
With Memorial Day weekend just two weeks away, and Congress in its usual battles over how to fund the federal government, we wanted to take a look at how the funding situation looks for the Park Service. To help understand the financial setting across the National Park System, we’ve asked Phil Francis, from the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks to provide some insights.

Smokies Life, which most of you who closely follow Great Smoky Mountains National Park know was previously known as the Great Smoky Mountains Association, produces educational and informational materials for Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This week we’re joined by Laurel Rematore, the chief executive officer of Smokies Life, to discuss the name change as well as how her organization lends a big hand to the Park Service staff at Great Smoky.

Have you ever closely inspected the landscape when you’re touring the National Park System, particularly in the West? You never know what you might find.

Back in 2010 a 7-year-old attending a Junior Ranger program at Badlands National Park spied a partially exposed fossil that turned out to be the skull of a 32-million-year-old saber-toothed cat.

If you’ve ever visited Petrified Forest National Park you’ve no doubt marveled over the colorful fossilized tree trunks. There are also fossilized trees on the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, but nowhere near as colorful.

For this week’s episode we’ve invited Vince Santucci, the National Park Service’s senior paleontologist, to discuss the many fossil resources that exist across the National Park System, from coast to coast and north to south.