Grizzly bears will soon emerge from hibernation and the National Park Service has offered humorous but also serious advice on how to stay safe.
Grizzly bears will emerge from hibernation beginning this month and the National Park Service has advised hikers to exercise common sense and avoid temptation.
“If you come across a bear, never push a slower friend down… even if you feel the friendship has run its course,” the NPS joked via X.
From a more serious followup tweet: “What about your other friend? Seeing a bear in the wild is a special treat for any visitor to a national park. While it is an exciting moment, it is important to remember that bears in national parks are wild and can be dangerous.”
If you come across a bear, never push a slower friend down…even if you feel the friendship has run its course.
The NPS then tweeted a link that offers tips for those who plan to enter bear country. They include carrying bear spray, hiking in groups, making noise on trails, maintaining a safe distance from bears you see, and avoiding surprise encounters by remaining on trails.
If you do come face to face with a grizzly bear, don’t run. Instead, talk calmly to the animal while remaining in place because fleeing could trigger an attack response. Also, be prepared to use the all-important bear spray.
Grizzly bear images courtesy of the National Parks Service
“Remain still; stand your ground but slowly wave your arms,” the NPS advised. “Help the bear recognize you as a human. It may come closer or stand on its hind legs to get a better look or smell. A standing bear is usually curious, not threatening.”
For other NPS tips, click here. The information could keep you and your loved ones safe in the wilderness.
Ah, the passage of time. While scary for some, time passing is also a cause for celebration. Birthdays and anniversaries are occasions for relishing in longevity. Even the National Park Service (NPS) celebrates anniversaries. On August 25, 2016, the NPS commemorated its centennial with a year of fun events. But don’t worry if you missed out. In a country full of gorgeous national parks, there’s always a new event on the way.
This year, several NPS sites are celebrating anniversaries. If you want to plan a trip to a national park, monument, or scenic parkway this year, try visiting these five destinations on their birthdays. Enjoy the stunning scenery while participating in a historic moment.
In what could be termed a humorous, late-night, “ribbiting” post, the National Park Service issued a warning about the Sonoran desert toad.
In what could be termed a humorous, late-night, “ribbiting” post, the National Park Service issued a warning about the Sonoran desert toad that should go without saying: don’t lick this toad.
Which begs the question: Would anyone consider licking any toad?
One night last week, the NPS posted a photo of the Sonoran desert toad captured by a motion sensor camera at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona. The NPS took the occasion to describe the toad, which is also known as the Colorado River toad—one of the largest toads found in North America, measuring nearly 7 inches.
“What sound does it make?” the post reads. “Its call has been described as a ‘weak, low-pitched toot, lasting less than a second.’
“These toads have prominent parotoid glands that secrete a potent toxin. It can make you sick if you handle the frog or get the poison in your mouth. As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking. Thank you.”
Like the NPS, readers had fun with their responses, with some giving examples of their experiences with the toad, some issuing their own warning, and others praising the humor of the park’s writer, adding their own “toot” in some cases. (Click on NPS to read the entire post.)
A few examples:
“You might as well call a hearse because I’m about to pet that thing.”
“Don’t lick the toads? There goes my weekend plans.”
“The fact that people need to be reminded not to lick things found in national parks is disturbing.”
“So licking one would make me…croak? I’ll hop right [to] that!”
“But I thought that kissing toads turned them into princes!! Oh, wait. That is frogs. Never mind!”
“NPS really bringing the high-quality content required for this age. Hats off to you. Toot.”
“I followed because I love national parks, but I stay for you. You, the writer of the most hilarious national park posts I’ve ever seen. Keep them coming. I actually learn something every time.”
“Thank you for making nature so relatable and FUN!”
“PSA: Dogs love them. They are absolutely poisonous to them. Go out with your dog at night to keep them from munching on something deadly.”
“When I first moved to Arizona, during our first monsoon season was the first time I ever heard one. I legit thought there was a dying duck somewhere. It was 10pm and my son and I ran around the neighborhood with flashlights looking for an injured duck.”
“I am ribbit-ted by this photo and this toad-ally fun and educational post.”
Three men pleaded guilty to what an Alaskan judge described as “drunken capering” at the famous Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park.
Three men who left the safety of a viewing platform to wade into the river to photograph brown bears at the famous Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park in Alaska were sentenced to jail and each fined $3,000.
“These individuals behaved carelessly and put themselves at great risk,” Mark Sturm, superintendent of Katmai National Park and Preserve, stated in a press release. “Brown bears are fierce, territorial predators, especially when concentrated in order to feed on migrating salmon. Things could have easily ended very badly.”
Brooks Falls is located on the Brooks River and is a popular summer destination to view salmon leaping over the 6-foot falls as bears congregate and feed on them, sometimes catching the salmon in mid-air.
A viewing platform at the falls was built in 1982 to provide separation between people and bears, and visitors are instructed by the National Park Service to remain in designated viewing areas.
On Aug. 9, 2018, David Engelman, 56, of Sandia Park, New Mexico, and Ronald J. Engelman II, 54, and Steven Thomas, 30, both of King Salmon, Alaska, decided to leave the platform and wade into the river to get photos. David Engelman was seen on the livestream camera taking selfies of himself in front of the feeding brown bears.
The three pleaded guilty to their illegal actions and their punishment was announced Monday by the Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Alaska.
David and Ronald Engelman each received a one-week prison sentence and one-year probation. Thomas was sentenced to 10 days in prison and one-year probation.
The $9,000 in fines were directed to be paid to the Katmai Conservancy, a nonprofit that will administer the funds to the park for law enforcement and other purposes.
Also, the three are prohibited from entering any national park for one year.
From the DOJ:
In imposing the sentences, Magistrate Judge Scoble stated concerns of deterring others, the economic impact of tourism to Katmai National Park if someone had been injured or a bear killed for injuring one of the men. The court also noted the dangerousness of their conduct as well as the impact on those who witnessed the actions of the defendants and had their experiences in the park ruined by their actions. Magistrate Judge Scoble characterized the defendants’ actions as “drunken capering, and a slap in the face to those who were there.”
“The conduct of these three individuals not only endangered other visitors and wildlife officers at Brooks Falls, they also potentially endangered the life of the bears.” said U.S. Attorney S. Lane Tucker for the District of Alaska. “We are committed to working with Alaska’s National Park Service to ensure everyone who visits our parks can have a safe experience in seeing these magnificent animals in their natural habitat.”
Photo of David Engelman wading in the river, and generic photos of the viewing platform and bears in the river at Brooks Falls courtesy of the National Park Service.
Death Valley lived up to its reputation as the hottest place on Earth by setting several heat records over the summer of 2020, the fourth-hottest summer on record following 2018, 2017 and 2016.
Death Valley lived up to its reputation as the hottest place on Earth by setting several heat records over the summer of 2020, the fourth-hottest summer on record following 2018 (104.2 average day-and-night temperature), 2017 (103.5) and 2016 (103.3).
Death Valley National Park reported that in the meteorological summer (June-August) Death Valley saw an average day-and-night temperature of 102.7 degrees, and August and September experienced the hottest day or night ever recorded for that month, joining May in that category.
The temperature reached 130 degrees in August, the highest recorded in the park since 1913. May’s highest was 122 and September’s highest was 125.
“Death Valley National Park is known for its extreme temperatures, and this year certainly didn’t disappoint when it comes to heat!” said Superintendent Mike Reynolds.
“It is exciting to live and work in a place that is literally the hottest place on Earth. I’m proud to work with a resilient team of employees who have chosen to embrace the heat and carry out the mission of the National Park Service here.”
Heat highlights in 2020 to date:
35 days over 120 degrees (normal is 18.4)
8 days over 125 degrees (normal is 2.9)
6 nights over 100 degrees (normal is 0.5)
130 degrees on 8/16 was the hottest temperature recorded in the park since 1913, and possibly the hottest temperature in the world since 1931. A final verification process will be overseen by a climate extremes committee.
August’s average daily and nightly temperatures rank it as the second hottest August on record; however, August’s daily high temperatures averaged to be 118.8, which sets a record as the hottest average high temperature for the month.
August 17 had a high of 127 and low of 104 low degrees, for an average of 115.5, which is tied for the hottest average daily temperature ever recorded.
Heat records were set for both daily high, and highest daily low temperatures across many of the hottest months of the year: 6 in May, 1 in June, 1 in July, 12 in August, and 3 to date in September.
Many tourists, especially those from Europe, come to Death Valley just to experience the heat. Those who living in this extreme environment requires adjustments by park staff and the local communities. The park listed some of those:
The park has a strict heat-safety work policy, requiring cool-down and hydration periods after working in extreme heat conditions.
As the coolest hours of the day are usually 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., local residents usually get up pre-dawn to walk their dogs and get exercise.
Ground temperatures add heat to water pipes, resulting in extremely hot water coming from the tap naturally. To adjust for this, residents turn off their hot water heaters and use them as a reservoir to cool water down to room temperature, so tepid water comes from turning on the hot water faucet, and hot water comes from the cold faucet settings.
There are stretches of roadways where signs are posted recommending that air conditioning be shut off to avoid car engines overheating. As vehicles leave the extreme heat of the lower valleys and climb over mountain passes, overheated engines are a real risk. This summer saw two vehicle fires as a result of overheated engines, and numerous vehicle breakdowns. Turning off air conditioning might be uncomfortable but reduces the exertion of the engine.
Death Valley reminds tourists that the park continues to experience temperatures of over 110 degrees and will continue to have 100-degree-plus temps into October, so it recommends to plan and prepare to be safe when visiting.
Dubbed the “Summer of Kittens,” mountain lions enjoyed an historic population boom in the mountains scorched by fire near Los Angeles. The National Park Service shares cute photos.
In what officials are calling the “Summer of Kittens,” mountain lions enjoyed an historic population boom in the mountains scorched by fire near Los Angeles nearly two years ago.
Thirteen kittens were birthed by five cougars in the Santa Monica Mountains and Simi Hills between May and August.
P-67’s litter.
The National Park Service reported Wednesday that it was the first time this many mountain lion dens have been found in such a short period of time during the 18 years biologists have been studying cougars in this region. The previous high found in one year was four dens.
“This level of reproduction is a great thing to see, especially since half of our mountains burned almost two years ago during the Woolsey Fire,” said Jeff Sikich, a wildlife biologist who has been studying the mountain lion population at Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
“It will be interesting to see how these kittens use the landscape in the coming years and navigate the many challenges, both natural and human-caused, they will face as they grow older and disperse.”
Biologists track the mothers’ movements via telemetry and visit the dens when she is off hunting for food, feeding or just resting. In less than an hour, the biologists perform a health check, determine the sex, take measurements and weights, obtain biological samples and place a numbered ear tag on each of the kittens, to help identify them in the future. All are returned to the den before the mother returns.
P-54’s litter
Litter 1: A 4-year-old mountain lion known as P-54 gave birth to males P-82 and P-83 and female P-84; this was discovered on May 14. The suspected father is P-63, one of two male radio-collared mountain lions living in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Litter 2: On June 19, biologists discovered P-19, whom they have studied for 10 years, had given birth to females P-85, P-86 and P-87. It was her fifth litter.
P-19’s litterP-19’s litter
Litter 3: On July 6, biologists found that P-65 had birthed a female and two males, P-88, P-89 and P-90. The likely father is P-54, who spent three days with the mother in March. It’s believed to be P-65’s first litter.
“This three-and-a half-year-old cat was one of the 11 mountain lions the park service was tracking when the Woolsey Fire broke out on November 9, 2018,” the park service stated. “She survived the fire and maintained her home range within the overall burn perimeter, although we know from tracking data that she has been utilizing smaller unburned patches within it.
“On August 21, 2019, she became the second radio-collared female mountain lion to cross the 101 Freeway and move northward into the Simi Hills. She later crossed the freeway again on November 6, 2019 and returned to the Santa Monica Mountains.”
P-65’s litter
Litter 4: On July 7, P-67 was found to have birthed female P-91 and male P-92 in Simi Hills, marking only the second time biologists have discovered a litter of kittens in this area. P-67 was originally tagged as a kitten in 2018 in Simi Hills to mother P-62.
Litter 5: Finally, on Aug. 6 biologists learned that P-80 gave birth in the Santa Monica Mountains to P-93 and P-94. They estimated that the kittens were 32 days old. The likely father is P-63 as he traveled with the mother for four days in early April. P-80 also “had her kittens within the Woolsey Fire perimeter but in an unburned area in the southeast corner that still supports healthy mature chaparal,” the forest service stated.
P-67’s litterP-80’s litter
The National Park Service has been studying mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains since 2002. It does so to determine how they survive in a fragmented and urbanized environment.
Gil Hanse, Tom Doak and Beau Welling offer renovation services to help restore historical public-access courses in Washington D.C.
The renaissance of community-oriented golf in America continues apace.
In June the National Park Service, the agency that controls the three federally owned golf courses in Washington D.C. – Langston, Rock Creek and East Potomac – awarded the right to negotiate a new lease on the properties to a recently established non-profit, the National Links Trust.
The NLT’s co-founders, Will Smith and Mike McCartin, are well-known in golf architecture circles. The pair met in the Landscape Architecture graduate program at the University of Georgia, and both served as shapers for Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf in the 2000s. Though they assembled a strong team of corporate and community leaders, partnered with Troon Golf on the management side and convinced star architects Doak (East Potomac), Gil Hanse (Rock Creek) and Beau Welling (Langston) to offer their restoration services pro bono, they still believed theirs was a dark horse bid.
When the National Park Service chose their proposal, McCartin said, “We went from the ‘This is so amazing and exciting’ phase to ‘Oh man, there’s so much to do.’ We have to put our heads down and make it all happen.”
It’s worth noting Smith and McCartin are both D.C. natives with a keen understanding of how the federal courses are woven into the fabric of the community. In the past, it was common to see urban golf projects that envision rewarding investment with a major championship windfall, sometimes at the expense of the clientele the course had previously served. Even if locals get a break on green fees, McCartin pointed out, “When you’re charging visitors $300, you have to cater to the $300 golfer, and it changes the welcoming, inclusive nature of the place.”
In contrast, the NLT centers affordability and accessibility at the heart of its plans.
Historical photo of Rock Creek Golf Course in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of National Links Trust)
“We look at these courses as gateways to golf for people who have never played,” McCartin said. “You hear it so often from people who grew up in the area – East Potomac, Langston and Rock Creek are the places where they first learned to play, where they explored golf and grew a love for the game. That’s such a key component of a healthy golf ecosystem. If you take that away, there’s a loss of culture and history that’s developed around these courses, but it’s also bad for the health of golf generally, to not have places that are natural starting points.”
Smith and McCartin concede that they face a significant fundraising challenge in the years to come—the three complexes need millions of dollars of repairs to overcome years of deferred maintenance. But they are confident the NLT’s nonprofit structure will prove attractive to donors.
“We believe that the greater golf community, both in D.C. and nationwide, will support us in this mission,” Smith said. “They’ll see that restoring these places, and the programming we want to surround these places with, will have such a great benefit to the community and the game of golf.”
The First Tee is already on board, as is “Golf. My Future. My Game.,” a nonprofit working to foster greater diversity in the golf industry. There’s a strong chance an Evans Scholars-style caddie program will emerge as a source of employment for local youths. Environmental groups, such as the Anacostia Watershed Society, are also on board.
The NLT’s plans for the architectural rejuvenation of the D.C. courses are catnip for golfers. Two of the three courses have serious pedigree: Rock Creek was laid out by William Flynn of Shinnecock Hills and Cherry Hills fame, while East Potomac, a reversible Walter Travis design on an island in the Potomac River, boasts vintage aerials to fire the imagination of any design aficionado. (It’s no surprise that Doak, designer of The Loop – the lauded reversible layout at Michigan’s Forest Dunes – was drawn to this latter project.)
It’s not yet clear in what sequence the renovations/restorations will take place. McCartin and Smith suspect the most bang for the initial buck might be found at Rock Creek, which boasts a prime location yet is the worst-performing of the three facilities and where the back nine has been closed since last summer.
East Potomac, for its part, has jaw-dropping potential, but its restoration would best be handled in concert with repairs to a damaged, century-old sea wall. As an engineering and environmental-mitigation task, East Potomac is likely to dwarf its sister courses in both expense and complexity.
Langston holds plenty of promise as well, as a portion of its back-nine routing tracks out onto an island in the Anacostia River where the clearing of invasive vegetation would unlock an array of appealing vistas.
McCartin said that regardless of how the projects unfold, though, “Our goal is to provide continued access to each of the properties at all times, to the extent that we can.”
Historical photo of Langston Golf Course in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of National Links Trust)
Elevating the quality of golf without a corresponding rise in green fees is a proposition any golfer can get behind. But the D.C. courses always have held significance beyond the game itself. All three are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a reflection of the crucial part they played in the battle against Jim Crow. Black golfers fought for equal access to the D.C. facilities – East Potomac began its existence as a segregated, white-only course—from the beginning.
According to the National Park Service, “African American activism on the golf course had local and national impacts,” spurring Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration to desegregate the entire national park system in 1945. PGA Tour star Lee Elder – the first Black man to play in the Masters – gave lessons at Langston as a young man and managed the course for a few years in the late 1970s. The NLT and NPS share the mission of preserving and educating the next generation on the immense cultural and historical influence of these facilities.
The NLT still needs to finalize the terms of its lease with the government, but after that happens, projects could begin as early as this fall.
Shortly after Barack Obama entered office in 2009, he compared the American ship of state to an ocean liner rather than a speedboat – “It doesn’t turn around immediately.” Change may happen slowly in the nation’s capital, and it may take as much as a decade for the golf community to see the full impact of the National Links Trust’s transformation of Rock Creek, Langston and East Potomac. In this case, patience is required.
