National Parks Traveler Podcast | North American Bird Declines
True birders are some of the most determined and persistent hobbyists out there. If you want to call bird watching a hobby. For many, it’s more like a passion. Many look forward to “Big Day” competitions, where individuals and teams strive to see how many different bird species they can spot in a 24-hour period. Many birders log their sightings and identifications in eBird, a smartphone application created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. The good news is that millions of birders use this app. The concerning news is that their bird sightings over a recent 14-year-period point to population declines in 75 percent of North American bird species. To learn more about this news, we’ve invited Dr. Amanda Rodewald from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Cornell University to join us today.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Walt Dabney and Public Lands
It’s fair to say that the nation’s public lands, those managed by the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land-management agencies are at risk under the Trump administration. There’s no hyperbole in that statement if you pay attention to what the administration already has done in terms of downsizing those agencies’ workforces, and when you listen to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum say he wants to open more public lands to energy development and mining. Federal lands in the United States are owned by all Americans, but at various times there have been efforts to wrench those lands away from the government to give to the states or sell off. Walt Dabney spent his professional career protecting public lands during his decades-long stint with the National Park Service and then as director of the Texas State Parks. Now he is working to educate Americans on their vested interest in those lands and what could be lost if Congress or the White House tries to get rid of them.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | Congressman Jared Huffman
The first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term might be the most tumultuous first 100 days of any president. He certainly came in prepared to move his agenda forward, no matter what barriers to it existed. We don’t usually discuss presidential politics, but President Trump has released a blizzard of executive orders and directives touching all corners of the federal government, including the National Park Service. What we have seen so far is the loss of perhaps 2,500 Park Service employees, and along with them some crucial institutional knowledge. Any day we expect to hear of a further reduction in force of the Park Service. The president and the Republican Congress have also taken aim at environmental laws and regulations, determined it seems to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, among others, and there’s been talk about selling off federal lands. And, of course, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has made it clear he wants to see more coal mined and more oil and gas reserves tapped. The administration also is taking aim at agency responses to climate change, and the president has ordered the militarization of federal lands – including national park lands – along the country’s southern border with Mexico. To get a take on what’s going on and what the impacts might be, we’re joined today by U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | National Park Science At Risk
There has been much upheaval in the National Park Service this year, with firings, then rehires, and staff deciding to retire now rather than risk sticking around and being fired. There have been fears that more Park Service personnel are about to be let go through a reduction in force. While Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has ordered the Park Service to ensure that parks are properly to support the operating hours and needs of each park unit,” that message said nothing about protecting park resources. Among all this upheaval the question that goes begging is whether the Interior Department is as concerned about protecting natural resources, including wildlife, as it is about seeing that visitors have a good national park experience? Our guest today is Dr. Michael Soukup, who during his National Park Service career served as the agency’s chief scientist. When he joined the Park Service in 1975 Dr. Soukup, a distinguished coastal ecologist, biologist and researcher, brought a clear vision for natural resource stewardship that would be embraced throughout the NPS and supported by visitors and local citizens. He was directly responsible for launching the Natural Resource Challenge, a $100 million funding initiative that brought the protection of natural resources of the parks to the forefront.
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National Parks Traveler Podcast | George Wright Society
George Melendez Wright was a brilliant young scientist with the National Park Service back in the 1920s and 1930s. You could say he was ahead of his time, in that he wanted the Park Service to take a holistic role in how wildlife in the parks was managed. While Wright tragically left the world too young when he was killed in a car crash in 1936, his name lives on today in the George Wright Society, a nonprofit organization that is focused on stewardship of parks, protected & conserved areas, cultural sites, and other kinds of place-based conservation. Our guest today is Dave Harmon, executive director of the society. We’ll be back in a minute with Dave to learn more about the society and the role it plays.
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