The Secret Lives of Parks

Neotropical migratory songbirds spend the winter in Central and South America and travel each spring to their breeding grounds in the U.S. and Canada. These species are teeny creatures on average, of…

In late June, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that the state was moving forward on plans — negotiated without public or Tribal input — to build a tent-based immigration enforcement …

Earlier this month, the National Park Service had a major victory in a place you’ve probably never heard of and didn’t know was in danger. The focus of this good news is a humble warehouse on the out…

Over a decade ago, an explorer conducting surveys at Grand Canyon National Park noticed what appeared to be an opening in a red rock cliff face high above him in the park’s remote backcountry. His te…

Multiple staffing crises are harming the National Park Service, including mass layoffs, a hiring freeze, forced retirements and delays in onboarding seasonal employees — and a new reduction in force …

On April 18, the National Parks Conservation Association will host a 10-day silent auction. As part of this fundraiser, The Secret Lives of Parks cohost Jennifer Errick is offering to produce a podca…

To celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service in 2016, journalist Conor Knighton visited all 59 capital-N, capital-P parks in one year — turning that experience into a series of "On the Tr…

The Clara Barton National Historic Site in Glen Echo, Maryland, was the first national park site created to honor a woman and one of just 13 such sites across the country. Barton lived and worked in …

Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah is the original Jurassic Park, created 110 years ago to protect a trove of more than 1,500 fossils, including the Allosaurus, the Diplodocus, the Stego…

“Half the park is after dark.” This phrase was coined by the astronomer and artist Tyler Nordgren in 2010 as part of a series of posters he created of nightscapes at public lands. National parks are …

The Mojave Desert of Southern California is a place where creatures move and grow at a slow pace. In this vast, harsh landscape, the desert tortoise has served as a hard-working hero that has helped …

Have you ever dreamed of living on the road and exploring national parks for months at a time? One Minnesota couple uprooted their lives to go on a year-long adventure with their twin daughters, buil…

If you enjoy having time off on the weekend, you can thank the woman who standardized the 40-hour workweek and made the concept possible. Frances Perkins also created Social Security and unemployment…

Since childhood, award-winning author Kevin Grange has been fascinated with one of the most fearsome and misunderstood predators on the continent: grizzly bears. His passion has taken him to remote a…

Our pets are family, and when we travel, it only makes sense that we want to bring our dogs with us. Many national park sites are ideal places for our canine companions, with accessible trails and pr…

Last month, several hundred people gathered in Greenwich Village to celebrate the opening of a new visitor center at Stonewall National Monument and to honor the movement Stonewall set in motion as t…

On the remote Sea Islands of South Carolina, golf courses and gated developments are changing the rural character of some of the first African American-owned lands in the country.

The Gullah/Geechee a…

They say the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas... but what about the middle of the day? Not just any day—in this episode, we experience the recent total solar eclipse at Ly…

At first glance, American Samoa feels like an idyllic, tropical South Pacific paradise where life has changed very little in the past century. But residents have been struggling with the pronounced e…

The Colorado River flows through some of the most spectacular landscapes in the Southwest, provides drinking water to more than 40 million people, and is one of the most important sources of water fo…