National Parks Traveler Podcast · Kurt Repanshek

National Parks Traveler Podcast | November NewsMatch Fundraiser

·42 min·2 clips

Corals taken from the Florida reef are being preserved in a Denver refuge 2,000 miles inland.

1. National Parks Traveler focuses on November NewsMatch fundraising and the daily work of covering national parks, including a fatality in Zion National Park and shuttle-service stories at Acadia National Park and Zion National Park. 2. Kurt Rebenschack is the National Parks Traveler host, and Kim O'Connell is the contributing editor from Arlington, Virginia, who helps explain how the newsroom gathers and files so many park stories. 3. The episode asks what a typical day at the Traveler looks like and uses that question to show why national parks reporting requires constant background work, field reporting, and quick response to breaking news. 4. Kurt says he has spent 20 years with the Traveler and nearly 21 years in journalism, after earlier work that included talking to presidential candidates, helping wildlife biologists pull bears from a den, and going down an MX missile silo. 5. Kim says journalism is different every day and that the job still centers on storytelling, whether the subject is a presidential candidate, a backcountry ranger, or a fiddle maker. 6. Kurt describes a single workday that moved from a fatal accident in Buffalo National Park to shuttle-service coverage and then to a letter signed by roughly 450 former National Park Service staff. 7. The same day also included coverage of two Rocky Mountain National Park visitor centers kept open with local funding, plus the Trump administration's push-through of rights-of-way for the controversial Ambler Road in Alaska. 8. Kurt says the White House East Wing demolition was a quickly breaking story because the public was not notified when demolition began. 9. Kurt notes that the White House and its grounds are part of the national park system and says the National Park Service is often furloughed and limited by strict orders from the Trump administration. 10. Kim says her request for comment from the Park Service and the Department of the Interior about the East Wing demolition had gone unanswered for days. 11. Kurt and Kim connect the reporting difficulty to the federal government shutdown and to a broader clampdown on access for journalists covering the administration. 12. Kurt says the Great American Outdoors Act has funneled billions of dollars into the national park system for backlog maintenance projects. 13. He adds that the program sunsets at the end of this year, while a bipartisan group of senators is working on a follow-up bill for the parks, the Forest Service, and the BLM. 14. The episode raises the practical question of who will oversee maintenance projects if Congress extends funding while the administration cuts the federal workforce. 15. Kurt previews a December reporting series on threatened and endangered species across the national park system from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands. 16. Kim says she will write about the history of the Endangered Species Act and the red-cockaded woodpecker, while also preparing a feature on bats and their threats. 17. Kurt and Kim discuss staghorn and elkhorn corals, with Kurt citing a report that says they are functionally extinct in Florida because of warming water and disease. 18. Kurt also describes coral refuges in Denver, including a visit to the Butterfly Pavilion, and says there are about 40 such refuges across the country. 19. The tone is conversational and explanatory, with Kurt and Kim trading experiences while staying focused on reporting logistics, conservation policy, and fundraising. 20. People interested in national parks reporting, conservation policy, and NewsMatch support would likely stay with it, while listeners wanting a short entertainment segment would probably skip it.

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