During a typical summer day at Yellowstone National Park roughly 3,000 vehicles enter through the North Entrance and head down to Mammoth Hot Springs so their passengers can begin their park adventure.

Up until June 2022 their route took them along the Gardner River. But that all changed on June 13, 2022, when a once-in-500-years rainstorm, falling on top of snow cover, sent waters rampaging down the Yellowstone, Lamar, and Gardner rivers.

Those flood waters took out sections of both the northeast and north entrance roads in the park. While the gaps in the Northeast Entrance Road were patched relatively quickly, the North Entrance Road through Gardiner Canyon remains closed to traffic. Instead, vehicles are temporarily using the Old Gardiner Road, a stagecoach route that was relatively quickly rehabilitated to handle vehicle traffic.

Since the flood, the National Park Service has been looking for a permanent route from Gardiner Montana, to Mammoth Hot Springs that would avoid going all the way through the Gardiner Canyon. Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly joins us today to explain the decision-making that has gone into finding that route.

A dramatic battle is being waged on the flanks of Halealakā National Park to save rare Honeycreeper birds that exist only in Hawaii.

It's believed that the 50-odd known living or extinct species of honeycreepers all evolved from a single colonizing ancestor that arrived on Hawaii, the world's most remote island group, some three to five million years ago.

Threats to the birds began to surface around 500 A.D., when Polynesian colonists began to settle on the Pacific island chain. They began to clear most of the low elevation forests, inadvertently eating away at the birds' habitat. It's also thought that the Polynesians introduced the Pacific Rat to the islands, a predator that ate the birds' eggs.

The arrival of Europeans in the late 18th century accelerated the destruction of the birds' forest habitat.

Along with loss of habitat, the honeycreepers are falling victim to avian malaria, which is carried by mosquitoes, and which is almost always fatal to the birds. Today only 17 species of honeycreepers survive in the state, some with fewer than 500 birds remaining, and it's believed that many will be pushed to extinction within a decade if nothing is done.

In a bid to slow, if not reverse, the spread of avian malaria, the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project is working to disrupt the reproduction of mosquitoes. Traveler associate editor Rita Beamish and Editor Kurt Repanshek recently sat down with Dr. Hanna Mounce, program director of the project, to learn about its work.

This year, 2025, likely will go down as the most transitional for the National Park Service. We've seen the loss of nearly a quarter of the permanent workforce, efforts to whitewash history in some parks, and the loss of a grand lodge to wildfire.

The past 12 months have been full of news impacting the National Park Service and national parks, not all of it good. It's been a somewhat tumultuous year, leaving many wondering what the new year will bring for the parks and their employees.

To help us look back over the past 12 months, we've invited Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president for government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, to join us.