When conservation meets climate chaos certainties dissolve. What will we call Glacier National Park when the glaciers have vanished? How will Sequoia National Park ensure their namesake giant sequoia trees survive amidst drought in a landscape of dead and dying Sierra Nevada forest? If conservation is defined as retaining historic habitats and populations, can we even practice this science in the Anthropocene Era? The National Park System’s Climate Change Response Program (CCRP) is examining policy and programs to cope with the collapse of conservation objectives due to climate change and using the Park System’s national platform to inform the public.
Lyell Glacier in Yosemite National Park is now technically not a Glacier but an Ice Patch and even this likely will vanish in our lifetime. (1883 photo: USGS/Israel Russell;2015 photo: NPS/Keenan Takahashi)
Parks managed by the NPS were intended to represent the environment at the time when each park area was first visited by white men, defined by the NPS as “primitive.” Yet, in the 144 years since Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, was established the parks have been altered by logging, mining, grazing, and development of roads, bridges, and tourism facilities. Humans have hunted wildlife to near extinction, and in some cases locally extirpated animals such as the grizzly bear in California. Not much primitive landscape remains. Despite this, over the past century park officials have determinedly worked to restore primitive habitats and conserve remnant fragments as reminders of what was here before white people. But now the age of man is reaching out from our past to shape the present and threaten the future.
View north of the Skagway Alaska waterfront area shows thickening of vegetation on the slopes, alteration of the shoreline and tidal area by dredge and fill operations, as well as residential and commercial development and infrastructure improvements. [Top photo, July 26, 1897 by Frank La Roche. Bottom photo, August 15, 2013 by Ronald D. Karpilo, Jr. and Sarah C. Venator (NPS).]
Objectives and concepts underpinning conservation planning don’t match up with what is happening in the world. Ecologists are learning that animal population shifts in response to climate change don’t always follow conventional expectations. Some bird species are moving downslope instead of upslope and north. Animal species are shifting range in response to climate change faster than the plants they need for survival. Glacier National Park might be glacier-free in four years. National seashores face sea level rises and coastal erosion. Giant sequoias that survived millions of years are threatened by drought, low snowpack, and warming temperatures in the Sierra Nevadas.
Sequoia tree in Kings Canyon National Park pre-drought in 2006 (photo by Jim Brekke)
Understanding how climate change is affecting parks now, what might happen in the future, and priorites for conservation have been evaluated by the CCRP since 2009. One such study reported in October 2016 found that spring is occuring earlier than historic averages in 75 percent of the parks and identified some consequences. For example, the peak bloom of flowers is earlier relative to the arrival or hatching of birds and insects who depend on the flowers. Another on-going result is that invasive exotic plants are favored by the early warming and crowding out native plants. Even tourist events are affected. The annual Cherry Blossom Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. has evolved from a single day to a multi-week celebration.
“The bottom line is not just that parks are susceptible to climate change. In fact, they have already changed,” said Jake Weltzin, an ecologist with USGS and a co-author on the study. “Many park managers are already managing in an extreme environment.”
While scientists and land managers are studying the situations on-the-ground and envisioning what might occur and how this can be handled, park staff are bringing climate change realities into public programs and social media.* Interpreters incorporate visual evidence of climate change in their parks and the science involved in programs for both park staff and visitors. National parks teach us about the past, show us what has happened since then, and through science interpretation explore future possibilities. Although the National Park System no longer attempts to return their lands to a primitive state, they are ensuring that people learn first-hand about climate change.
* NPS Climate Change Response resources
