“Conserving the nation’s 63 national parks is a rare point of political convergence in a sharply divided country”
CALIFORNIA – Glacier National Park’s ice fortress in Montana is crumbling.
The giant trees of Sequoia National Park in California’s Southern Sierra Nevada mountains are ablaze.
Even the tenacious cacti of Saguaro National Park in southern Arizona are struggling to endure a decades-long drought.
Since their creation, national parks have embodied the pioneering spirit of America in their vast expanses and breathtaking landscapes.
But today, the climate crisis imperils the very symbols of many parks, leaving them facing a future where their names could be cruel ironies.
Deep within Montana’s Glacier National Park, the once majestic Grinnell Glacier is now greatly diminished.
After a grueling trek, visitors are met with a stunning sight: a serene lake of pale blue water, nestled among towering peaks.
But as beautiful as it is, the very presence of this lake is testament to the ravages of a fast-warming planet.
Just a few decades ago, this landscape was entirely frozen.
Now the glacier itself is relegated to a small hollow, sheltered from the Sun, at the edge of the lake created through its own melting.
As he straps on his crampons, student Ryan Bergman marvels at what still remains of the ice body.
“I want to know this stuff is here for years to come,” says the 22-year-old, who has embarked on a two-month journey to explore a dozen parks.
He dreams of one day returning with his own children to see the same sights.
But time is running out.
The park has already lost 60 percent of its namesake glaciers since the 1850s, and scientists predict their complete disappearance by century’s end.
Philosophical shift
Families from all over America and abroad flock to these natural wonders to create memories that will last.
Conserving the nation’s 63 national parks is a rare point of political convergence in a sharply divided country. With tens of millions of visitors to these sites every year, it’s also an economic imperative.
President Joe Biden’s government recently announced nearly $200 million to help them adapt — funding made available through his signature climate law.
Yet despite these efforts, the reality is that not everything can be saved.
This sobering truth has sparked an identity crisis for the federal agency charged with their protection, the National Park Service.
It was brought into existence by a 1916 law that called to preserve these treasured sites “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
But it’s now “pretty clear that it’s not achievable in many places,” admits John Gross, an ecologist with the NPS climate change response program.
“It’s certainly possible that the parks could lose the iconic feature for which they’ve been named.”
The climate crisis has thus brought about a profound shift in the organization’s philosophy: It’s no longer taboo to modify a park’s natural state to stem further degradation.
Chopper rides for bull trout
Where battles have already been lost, strategic interventions are now underway to try to win the war.
On the shores of Glacier’s Lake McDonald, Chris Downs, the park’s head of aquatic resources, shares the story of the massive effort it took to rescue the beleaguered bull trout.
The fish is a native species threatened by warming waters, which are driven in part by reduced ice melt in later summer.
It is also facing competition from non-native lake trout, which were introduced for fishing and are better suited to the changing conditions.
Fifty years ago, bull trout outnumbered their invasive counterparts by a five-to-one margin. Today, the situation is reversed.
In 2014, a decision was made to relocate the native species to cooler, upstream waters where they had never previously been found.
Downs recalls workers transporting dozens of fish in backpacks filled with ice packs, with thousands more from fish farms slated to be whisked away to their new habitats via helicopter.
“They’re growing really well” in their new home, says the biologist.
Critics call it a manipulation of nature. Downs calls it a “necessity.”
Also as a result of climate change, the park ia conducting DNA testing of threatened whitebark pines, identifying those most resilient to drought for planting at targeted locations as part of a restoration plan.
