A decade ago, the Missoula Parks and Recreation Department used to hold hayrides on U.S. Forest Service land in Pattee Canyon. Now an insurance problem keeps the city government from sending children’s programs into the surrounding Lolo National Forest. A complicated permit system restricts many other educational and nonprofit groups’ ability to get kids into the woods.
— Missoulian
This past weekend, Harlan Kredit celebrated his 40th season as a summer park ranger in Yellowstone National Park. Here are some of Kredit’s reflections on working in Yellowstone over the last four decades.
— Bozeman Daily Chronicle
“I wanted to be the first to view a country on which the eyes of a white man had never gazed and to follow the course of rivers that run through a new land.”
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK – On Wednesday, children waded in a small eddy just 50 yards from the edge. Some playfully teetered on a log that separated the eddy from the river’s torrent. Upstream, a man swam across Emerald Pool and back, crossing the Merced River current and ignoring warnings and prohibitions posted nearby. This just three weeks after three people were swept over Vernal Fall, to their deaths.
— Fresno Bee
OKLAHOMA CITY — Seven Oklahoma state parks that were supposed to shut down this fall because of budget cuts will remain open. Responsibility for the troubled parks will be assumed by municipal and tribal governments.
— Oklahoma NewsOn6.com