National Parks Service

The National Parks Service plans to relocate the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the nation's oldest and tallest brick lighthouse, once it can be strengthened for the move. The black and white striped 208-foot-tall lighthouse at Cape Hatteras, N.C., is threatened by wave action since sand dunes have eroded and can no longer protect it. When the lighthouse was built in 1870, it was 1,500 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. It currently is 160 feet from the ocean.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday recommended designation of the San Gabriel River watershed and most of the San Gabriel Mountains as a national recreation area, making the popular playground eligible for additional law enforcement, interpretive signs, hiking trails, trash collection and other services. Salazar's long-awaited recommendation to Congress seeks to balance a crush of tourists with conservation. The designation would transform the 655,000-acre range, portions of the San Gabriel River and Rio Hondo corridors and Puente-Chino Hills into a unit of the National Park system co-managed by the National Park Service, federal officials said.

David E. Gackenbach, a low-key career federal parks official who oversaw a large expansion of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in Los Angeles and Ventura counties in his five years as superintendent, is retiring, a spokeswoman said Friday. Gackenbach, 51, took a voluntary buyout offer from the National Parks Service and is expected to depart next month, said spokeswoman Jean Bray. A replacement has not been named. Gackenbach could not be reached for comment.

Political leaders and outdoors enthusiasts expressed dismay Thursday over new details about an Interior Department recommendation for changes in federal management of a popular region of the San Gabriel Mountains. "The proposal raises many questions, and I want answers from the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service as to why this hybrid came about," U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) said in an interview. The Interior Department announced Wednesday that it is recommending to Congress that the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service collaborate in the region, which includes a portion of the Angeles National Forest stretching from Sylmar to roughly five miles west of Interstate 15. Under the proposal, the region essentially would remain national forest land managed by the cash-strapped Forest Service.

An environmental group that once supported congressional efforts to overhaul the National Park Service is now distancing itself from the Republican-sponsored plan, warning that it could have a devastating impact on Ventura County's two federal parks. However, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who has signed onto the legislation as a co-sponsor, contends that the National Parks and Conservation Assn.

The sailors who served with and beside Capt. Ken Walden had nothing but good to say of him. He had a marvelous sense of humor. When morale was low, he could be counted on to boost it. And he worked at least as hard as anyone he supervised; he didn't let colon cancer interfere with his job commanding the missile range at Point Mugu, until there was no choice. Walden, a highly decorated Vietnam vet, died in 1989 at the age of 47.

The operation of a 16-year-old program that annually teaches tens of thousands of children about the outdoors has been taken over permanently by the National Park Service, officials said Wednesday. Since the program's inception in 1981, funds had to be raised every year to support the William O. Douglas Outdoor Classroom in Franklin Canyon Park, said John Diaz, president of the program's board of directors. But a bill sponsored by Rep. Howard L.

It was February, 1776, and as revolution brewed among English colonists on the East Coast, a Spanish explorer named Juan Bautista de Anza was leading 240 settlers to establish what would become the city of San Francisco. Despite hunger, Indian uprisings, disease and desertion, the Spanish had no time to waste, fearing the expansion of Russian colonization from the Aleutian Islands southward.

A proper response must be made to Michael McCalley's charge that the National Park Service is a "Gestapo-like organization" (letter, May 2). I have never encountered or observed a park ranger treating visitors without professional respect and helpfulness, in any of my visits to over 40 national park units in the last five years. I have seen park visitors bring their own problems to a park and deliberately break clearly posted park rules, commit damage to the environment, or bring harm to property or others.

If you're a Civil War buff or you're planning a trip to a Civil War site, a new  National Park Service website can help you. Even if you're not going anywhere, the website is fascinating to browse, from its lists of places to visit to its facts to the people who played major roles in the war. I'm not sure it's as popular as the recently released 1940 Census data that slowed traffic on that site to a crawl this week,...

ANACAPA ISLAND - Just as factories brag about their accident-free days, Channel Islands National Park is showing off this rugged island's rat-free decade. To get rid of Rattus rattus , officials had a helicopter shower one-square-mile of Anacapa with poisonous green pellets in 2001 and 2002. On Wednesday, they ferried a boatload of reporters and scientists to the square-mile chain of three islets and declared victory. "The last thing we needed was a project that got only 99.9% of all the island's rats," said Kate Faulkner, a National Park Service biologist.

POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE - To hear Kevin Lunny tell it, he's just a little guy, draining his life's savings to stand up to a heartless federal agency bent on closing down his family's oyster farm here. It's a compelling tale, a years-long soap opera replete with allegations of scientific misconduct and government overreach. Tea party activists have taken up his cause, citing it as an example of government quashing free enterprise and environmentalism run amok. Lunny also has the support of powerhouse conservative law firms representing him pro bono, and Cause of Action, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group with ties to the conservative Koch brothers.

Yosemite Valley would have more camp sites and parking spaces - and the number of daily visitors would not be reduced - under a National Park Service plan intended to ease congestion in one of the country's most scenic spots. The proposal is the agency's third attempt to produce a legally acceptable management plan for the Merced River and the ever popular valley that it flows through. Environmental groups have twice sued the agency, winning court orders that compelled the park service to draw up new blueprints.

The National Park Service , the agency that overseas 397 national parks, battlefields, monuments, historic sites, seashores and even scenic byways, turns 96 on Saturday. Some parks are older than that -- Yellowstone, the nation's oldest park, was created in 1872 -- and some are much younger. Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve , for example, is little known even though it stretches 8.4 million acres in Alaska's Brooks Range. It became a national park and preserve in 1980.

If you're a Civil War buff or you're planning a trip to a Civil War site, a new  National Park Service website can help you. Even if you're not going anywhere, the website is fascinating to browse, from its lists of places to visit to its facts to the people who played major roles in the war. I'm not sure it's as popular as the recently released 1940 Census data that slowed traffic on that site to a crawl this week,...

One day deep in the administration of George W. Bush — a time of tumult among environmentalists and conservationists — Roger Kennedy found himself shaking his head and sighing. The Endangered Species Act was in the cross hairs of a Republican Congress and his beloved National Park Service, which Kennedy directed from 1993 to 1997, was under assault. Kennedy was disgusted by the partisan bickering. When had stewardship of the environment become a political football, he asked, posing a rhetorical question to a reporter.

Robert S. Chandler, who dealt with complex problems as superintendent of many of the country's largest national parks and took the lead in implementing the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in the late 1970s and early '80s, has died. He was 74. Chandler, a resident of Tehachapi, Calif., died Dec. 23 of multiple myeloma at a hospital in Bakersfield, said his son, Alan Chandler. In a 38-year career with the National Park Service that began in 1958 and included serving as superintendent of the Grand Canyon, Olympic and Everglades national parks, Chandler was known as an effective leader who worked with local communities and state and government officials on tough issues.

The National Park Service is launching a study of sites in California and other states associated with the life and work of labor leader Cesar E. Chavez for possible designation as a national historic landmark or addition to the national park system. "The life of Cesar Chavez and people like him who have worked to make this country a better, more perfect union deserve to be recognized as part of the history of America," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday. "As stewards of the history of this great nation we look forward to working with the Chavez family, the United Farm Workers and communities throughout California and Arizona to determine how best to preserve this great legacy."

One of roughly a half-dozen mountain lions living in the Santa Monica Mountains was killed Tuesday trying to cross the 405 Freeway near the Getty Center at the start of the morning rush hour. Circumstances of the death, apparently from a collision with a vehicle, were not known, and the California Highway Patrol said it had no record of an emergency call reporting an animal-related incident in that area Tuesday. "We believe it may have made such a daring crossing attempt possibly because it was being flushed out of the area it was in by another male lion," said Woody Smeck, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

A closer inspection of the earthquake-damaged Washington Monument found about half a dozen more cracks, and the structure will be fenced off while engineers decide how to repair it, the National Park Service said Wednesday night. The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials reopened one day after the East Coast's rare 5.8 temblor, but the Washington Monument will remain closed indefinitely. Finished in 1884, the monument is one of the capital's most popular tourist attractions, with about 1,700 visitors going inside each day. It is the world's tallest obelisk, standing more than 555 feet high.