- Water playing hard to get. Hawaiian national parks are seeing more frequent tropical storms but an overall decline in precipitation. Meanwhile, national parks in the Southwest are seeing intensified droughts and changes to the climate composition. Last year, Death Valley recorded rainfall when the temperature was 119 degrees F. Even parks that aren’t as characteristically arid are seeing the effects of drought. Young giant sequoias, the iconic tree in California’s King’s Canyon, rely on regular rains to develop sturdy roots which support the trees for thousands of years. If warm, drier years continue, the older trees may succumb to disease or pests without hope of replacement.
- Disappearing glaciers. Glacier National Park is soon to be Glacier-less National Park, possibly as soon as 2030. Since 1910, the park has lost nearly three-fourths of its active glaciers. Although Glacier has seen perhaps the most drastic loss, many of the more northern national parks also have glaciers that are all seeing serious glacial retreats. Think Glacier Bay National Park, Denali, Yosemite, Kenai Fjords, Mount Rainier, and more.
- Fire in the mountain. Last year, Yosemite and Glacier both saw wildfires sweep across the parks. California’s Ferguson Fire, which burned almost 100,000 acres over a month, caused Yosemite to temporarily close –the first time since 1990. Montana’s Howe Ridge Fire, which “only” destroyed a little over 14,000 acres, was caused by lightning strikes at the same time temperatures in the park reached 100 degrees F for the first time in recorded history. Many of the parks are experiencing longer drought seasons and warmer weather, making wildfires more likely to start burning and harder to put out. In 2017, the U.S. Forest Service spent over $3 billion on fire-suppression management.
- Changing climes. National parks have long served as a haven for plants and animals, but now, climate change is causing mass migrations. Vegetation is shifting distribution, with many alpine plants moving up in elevation to find cool relief from warming temperatures. However, long-living plants are limited by their slower life cycles, and plants like the Joshua tree have nowhere to go. Literally. Joshua trees are predicted to lose up to 90 percent of their range by the end of the century. One potential solution for smaller, more portable species is assisted migration: the manual relocation of animals or plants to habitats that might be a better fit for the species’ requirements. Bull trout in Glacier National Park successfully underwent assisted migration to a higher-elevation lake where the water was cooler and there were no invasive fish with which to compete. However, it’s easier to move fish than giant sequoias.
- Invasive explosion. While many plants and animals are losing ground, pesky invasive species are capitalizing on climate change and expanding their territory. Yosemite has lost great swaths of forest to bark beetles, which the trees can usually defend against by producing beetle-trapping pitch. During times of drought, however, trees’ water reserves are too low to effectively fight back. Beetles are far from the only problem. The NPS estimates that 1.4 million acres of its land are inhabited by exotic invasive plants.
- Holocene extinction. Who better to be the poster child of extinction in national parks than the humble, yet adorable pika? Pikas are round-eared rabbit cousins native to mountainous regions including the Great Basin and southern Utah. NPS launched the project, Pikas in Peril, to help bring awareness to the impending extinction of plants and animals in parks. Small mammals like the pika are especially vulnerable to climate change-induced extinction because they inhabit cooler, high altitude areas which are seeing warming at unprecedented rates. Hawaii’s parks, by far, have the most to lose in terms of U.S. biodiversity. A whopping 44 percent of the nation’s endangered plant species are endemic to Hawaii, and around 100 species have already gone extinct.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 6 reasons national parks need saving and not just celebrating on Apr 26, 2019.