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The National Park Service relies on four primary nonprofit partners to serve a growing number of Smokies visitors and care for a vast and varied park.

“I've hiked many trails before, but until I was with this group, I'd never slowed down to really see the details,” said participant Amanda Hollinger.

In November 2011, when a pregnant beaked whale drifted ashore on New Zealand’s Waiatoto Spit, Ramari Stewart, an Indigenous whale watcher, noticed that the whale looked slightly different to those usually stranded. It measured about 5 meters (17 feet) long, and after its skeleton was prepared and featured in the National Museum of New Zealand, […]

There are now 21,183 known species in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and new ones are always likely to be discovered during bioblitz events.

View Comments Warren Bielenberg spends a lot of time photographing Southern Appalachian butterflies in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But he willingly admits that his journey of butterfly discovery didn’t begin in earnest until he retired from 34 years as a park ranger and began volunteering in the park’s popular Cades Cove. “One day there was a family of three with a little girl, maybe 11 or 12 years old, near a group of blue butterflies along the road,” said Bielenberg. “I went over and said they looked like pipevine swallowtails. But then the little girl immediately correct...