Climate Change and our National Parks

“To waste and destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them.”

- Theodore Roosevelt

 You needn’t hear it from DTE for you are presumably aware already, but it is worth repeating. The debate is over, global warming is a reality. And in times of great change and uncertainty, the steps taken now will be the fewer steps needed to take under duress.

 This is certainly a school of thought that the National Park Service is subscribing to. There is not a place in the world that better motivates people to protect the earth than within the boundaries of our treasured national parks. A days worth of National Park experiences is a memory that lasts a lifetime. No one forgets the first time they witnessed Old Faithful explode to the sky in a display usually reserved for Hollywood movie sets, or the first time the vastness of the Grand Canyon took their breath way. The feel of being so close to a monster of a mountain like Mt. Rainer or the uncanny feeling of aloneness one can only experience in the unbounded wilderness of Alaska’s premier national parks.

 Our national parks are places our parents took us, and places their parents took them. It is indescribable to think that they may be places we don’t take our kids. Through action and education there is great hope for these great wonders of our country. And the forward thinking of the National Park Service will be the education that spurns action.

 The clearest evidence of climate change is within Glacier National Park in Northwestern Montana. Grinnell Glacier, a massive blanket of glacial ice that once covered 500 acres has shrunk to a mere third its size. Exposed rock now shows in 73 percent of the area once covered by glacial ice and scientists say by 2030 Glacier National Park may be sans its namesake, glaciers.

 This is the obvious and most talked about evidence of climate change on our national parks but the effects are far reaching and just as catastrophic. “A climate disrupted by human activities poses such sweeping threats to the scenery, natural and cultural resources, and wildlife of the national parks that it dwarfs all previous risks to these American treasures,” says Stephen Saunders, director of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organizations.

Rising sea levels are a major source of concern for several national parks and national recreation areas. Florida’s Everglades N.P. would be vulnerable to larger tropical storms and high sea water would devastate the forests that serve as the barrier between the freshwater and saltwater ecosystems in that park causing irreversible damage. Olympic National Park, on the westside of our magnificent state, is in danger of losing its ancient petroglyph sites that lie along the coast.

There is 59 miles of beach habitat in Golden Gate National Recreation Area that is at risk, as are historic sites like Jamestown, Virginia, which is part of the Colonial National Historical Park and the Jean Lafitte National Historic Park near New Orleans.

Rising temperatures create graver fire danger for parks such as Yellowstone in Wyoming Montana and Idaho, which in turn leaves parks more susceptible to lengthy closures. Up to 90 percent of the Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park in southeastern California are threatened and predicted to be extinct by 2100 due to its relatively low climate tolerance which affects its ability to disperse seeds. The already scorching Death Valley N.P. in California and Nevada would become practically uninhabitable for much of the year.