How climate change may be threatening national parks

Park officials are already looking to invest more money and effort to research and monitor the changes. The idea, says Jonathan Jarvis, regional director, Pacific West Region of the National Park Service, is that the parks may serve as the proverbial “canaries in the coal mine” – predictors of things to come for other populations and ecosystems.

As a result of climate change, national parks are seeing extended fire seasons, species migration, and increased snow melt, he says.

Researchers and park officers outlined some of their concerns this week to a congressional subcommittee at a special hearing on the “Impacts of Climate Change on America’s National Parks” here in Twentynine Palms, Calif. M. Rebecca Shaw, director of conservation for the Nature Conservancy of California, told the panel, “An explosion of studies in the last five years has documented observed climate impacts on species distributions, wildfire frequency and intensity, pest outbreaks, and sea-level rise.”

“Keeping wildlife populations, rivers, forests, deserts, and our national parks healthy will allow us to support nearly 6.5 million existing jobs and continue to generate $88 billion in state and national tax revenue,” Cipra told the panel, pointing to a 2006 study by the Outdoor Industry Association, which found that fishing, hunting, hiking, and other outdoor pursuits contribute $730 billion annually to the US economy.

The congressional subcommittee also heard from John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, who denies that global warming exists. “These scientists know that if they do research and the results are in no way alarming, their research will gather dust on the shelf and their research careers will languish,” said Mr. Coleman.

Nevertheless, committee chairman Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D) of Arizona said he is proposing substantial funding to help mitigate the effects of global warming on national parks. “You’ve got to hear the other side of this argument, no matter how overwhelming the evidence is to the contrary,” he said. “And then you have to move on and deal with it, anyway.”

National parks can be both a warning system and a laboratory, providing an opportunity to study climate-change effects and communicate them to the public, says Michael Bean, director of the Wildlife Program at Environmental Defense.

For one, parks are relatively unaffected by other threats of major development, making it easier to isolate climate-change effects. “Parks are well studied … so there is a considerable baseline of knowledge on which can be based assessments of change,” he says.

Perhaps most important, “people care about parks and pay attention when something they’ve grown accustomed to is suddenly different. So they serve as a good classroom for information,” adds Mr. Bean.

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