National Parks

CODY, Wyo. -- Small communities around Yellowstone National Park are raising almost $200,000 in private donations to do what the park cannot this year because of budget cuts: Open on time for spring visitors.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The towering giant sequoias at Yosemite National Park would go unprotected from visitors who might trample their shallow roots. At Cape Cod National Seashore, large sections of the Great Beach would close to keep eggs from being destroyed if natural resource managers are cut.

The two primary breeding females from the best-known wolf pack at Denali National Park -- a pack viewed by tens of thousands of visitors each year -- have been killed, one of them by a trapper operating just outside the boundary of Alaska's premier national park.

The incident has raised an outcry among Alaska conservationists. They're demanding an immediate halt to wolf trapping in what was formerly a buffer zone northeast of the park, an area made famous as the scene of the abandoned school bus in Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild."

SALT LAKE CITY -- Some of southern Utah's national parks will offer programs for viewing an annular solar eclipse later this month.

LOS ANGELES -- House Republicans are backing legislation in Congress to give the Department of Homeland Security control of more than 50 national parks and forests within 100 miles of the U.S. borders.

The legislation involves a sweep of land along the frontier with Canada and Mexico, but exempts state land, private property and federal holdings used for mining, livestock grazing and timber harvesting. The new authority would carve through 54 national parks, including Joshua Tree, Saguaro, Acadia and Glacier.

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. -- Like so many others who visit the Grand Canyon each year, Jennifer and John Stambaugh of Illinois toted bottled water as they took in the views recently.

These bottles came from the tour company that bused them here from Las Vegas, but many visitors buy bottled water from shops in the park.

Concerned about the volume of plastic bottles in recycling bins and trash cans, not to mention discarded along roads and trails, the National Park Service is banning bottled water sales here as of March 10. The Stambaughs were unaware of that plan, but it made sense to them.

A new study by Michigan State University shows that Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the top national park in the U.S. for visitor spending.

The "Economic Benefits to Local Communities from National Park Visitation and Payroll" estimates that in 2010 the park's 9 million visitors spent more than $818 million in neighboring communities -- double the $415 million generated by Grand Canyon National Park, the second-ranked park in the study.