A century of seasons has worn the appearance of the log cabin Roy Fure built in present-day Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, but his care of the small cabin, and later National Park Service restoration efforts, have enabled it to stand the test of time.

Dovetail-notched spruce logs still sit tightly together, the corrugated metal roof Fure replaced his sod roof with in 1930 and painted red could use a new coat of paint, but otherwise looks rainproof, and the windmill he erected to generate electricity still stands tall.

Across the 85+ million-acre National Park System there are tens of thousands of historic structures — 19th-century homesteads, Civil War structures, Civil Rights facilities, presidential homes, artworks and more — but not all receive the same treatment as Fure's cabin.

• At Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve in Oregon, the historic, and once charming, Chateau with 23 rooms has been closed since 2018 due to structural issues and a lack of funding to address them.

• In Kansas, the Park Service last year gained title to the First Baptist Church at Nicodemus National Historic Site, but a lack of funding has left the 118-year-old house of worship boarded up.

• At Gettysburg National Military Park the David Wills house, where President Lincoln spent the night before delivering his address, has been closed since fall 2024 when a water line burst and flooded the structure.

Those are just a very small handful of historic structures in the National Park System that are among thousands competing for scarce rehabilitation dollars.

To discuss the situation across the park system we've invited Pam Bowman, the senior director of government relations at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

After more than 50 years as one of the country's landmark environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act has gone from one of the most popular measures before Congress to one fueling demands that it be revised, if not discarded.

The National Parks Traveler is reviewing the Endangered Species Act's work and its record, spotlighting individual species that it's protected, those that it failed, and those that it recovered.

The monthslong series comes as ESA champions worry that the push to weaken the law could consign countless animals and plants to the growing list of flora and fauna that, like the Passenger pigeon, are now found only in books and online.

The National Park System seems to be the perfect background to explore these questions, as its lands are supposedly the best preserved on the federal landscape.

I recently interviewed two wildlife advocates — Jake Li, a vice president with Defenders of Wildlife who spent time working in the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before joining the advocacy group, and Stephanie Adams, director of wildlife at the National Parks Conservation Association.

Though the interviews were done separately, the questions were largely the same. What follows is a merging of those two conversations.

Haleakalā National Park is deceptively wonderful and rich in biodiversity. But if we're not careful, we could lose some of that biodiversity.

Located on the island of Maui in Hawaii, the first thing you notice about this national park is its towering dormant volcano, Haleakalā, which rises from sea level to more than 10,000 feet.

While many visitors simply want to head to the top of the volcano to peer into its crater or enjoy a colorful sunrise or sunset, if you take a little time to get to know this park you'll be amazed by what doesn't first come into sight. For instance, there are more than 300 plant and animal species endemic to Haleakalā — found nowhere else in the world — and many species that are being threatened or endangered with extinction.

Kurt Repanshek headed to Haleakalā this past week with Special Projects Editor Patrick Cone and Assistant Editor Rita Beamish to learn more about the park and its rare and unique species.