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Robert Ratcliffe & Kim Heacox on Wednesday's Access Utah

The National Park Service turns 100 on August 25, 2016 and today we’re kicking off a series of programs focusing on America’s national parks.

In the first part of the program today, we’ll talk with Robert Ratcliffe Chief of the National Park Service’s Conservation, Recreation and Community Assistance Programs. We’ll talk about the National Park Service’s plans for the centennial, including the Every Kid in a Park campaign. Later in the program our guest is writer, photographer, and conservationist Kim Heacox. He has lived in Alaska for 25 years and has written four books for National Geographic, most recently The National Parks: An Illustrated History.

For more information about the U.S. National Park Service, please visit the following:

National Park Service Offical Website

Every Kid In a Park Campaign

NationalParks.org

crowdrise.com/everykidinapark

Bob Ratcliffe is the Chief of the National Park Service’s Conservation, Recreation and Community Assistance Programs. Bob oversees national technical and financial assistance programs that work with communities and partners to create, manage and conserve parks, trails, rivers, greenspaces and recreation places - beyond National Parks. These innovative programs help fulfill the NPS mission in working with partners to extend the benefits of parks, recreation and conservation to communities across the country.

Kim Heacox is the author of several books, including Alaska Light and the memoir The Only Kayak: A Journey Into the Heart of Alaska. His photography has also appeared in National Geographic magazine. He has made numerous journeys to Arctic Svalbard and Antarctica, and spends much of his time writing about and photographing life in Earth's polar regions. His novel, Jimmy Bluefeather, won the 2015 National Outdoor Book Award for literary fiction.

Two books Kim Heacox mentioned during his live interview Wednesday:

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr

Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, Carl Safina

Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.