Category Ranking
Best National Parks for Wildlife Viewing in Spring
Top parks for wildlife viewing during spring, ranked by a composite of activity quality and seasonal conditions.
Updated
Channel Islands National Park
California's Galápagos lies 12 miles offshore with 145 endemic species. Sea lions, island foxes, and rare seabirds inhabit five islands.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
America's most-visited park offers 850 miles of trails, historic farmsteads in Cades Cove, and the continent's salamander capital.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
A 600-foot limestone cavern beneath the Chihuahuan Desert, carved by sulfuric acid rather than water, where 400,000 bats spiral out at dusk.
Everglades National Park
America's largest subtropical wilderness—a slow-moving river creating sawgrass marshes, mangrove islands, and alligator habitat.
Dry Tortugas National Park
Seven coral islands 70 miles west of Key West, anchored by Fort Jefferson—a massive 19th-century fort that was never finished or fired upon.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Roosevelt's badlands preserve eroded buttes, wild bison, and the solitude that turned a politician into America's conservation president.
Yellowstone National Park
The world's first national park sits on a supervolcano where half of Earth's geysers erupt on schedule and bison herds cross roads freely.
Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park
Two active volcanoes shape terrain from tide pools to alpine desert. Walk across recent lava flows and through rainforests on ancient rock.
Grand Teton National Park
The Tetons rise 7,000 feet without foothills—granite and glaciers visible from every corner of Jackson Hole. Thirteen peaks top 12,000 feet.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
Texas's highest peaks rise from a 265-million-year-old fossil reef in the Chihuahuan Desert, holding more species than any Texas park.