US national parks in crisis as climate change threatens iconic natural features

The Manila Times

US national parks in crisis as climate change threatens iconic natural features  Glacier National Park's ice fortress is crumbling. The giant trees of Sequoia National Park are ablaze. And even the tenacious cacti of Saguaro National Park are struggling to endure a decades-long drought. Since their creation, US national parks have embodied the pioneering spirit of America with their vast expanses and breathtaking landscapes. But today, the climate crisis is endangering the iconic features of many parks, leaving them to face a future where their names could be cruel ironies.   Video by AFP   Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe  Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net    Follow us:  Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook  Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram  Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter  DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion    Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital    Check out our Podcasts:  Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify  Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts  Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic  Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer  Tune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein   #TheManilaTimes  #worldnews  #climatechange

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 It's Bigunsku, you know, snow on top of the mountains.

00:06 That is actually my daughter's Indian name.

00:08 She's constantly asking me, she's like, mommy,

00:11 what happens when there's no more snow

00:12 on top of the mountains?

00:13 Does my Indian name change?

00:15 And I was like, no, then we adapt, baby.

00:17 I was like, you know, then we adapt.

00:18 I said, just like, you know, our ancestors

00:20 adapted to this new world.

00:21 To Tomei and Edmo and the members

00:23 of her Native American tribe, these ice-covered mountains

00:27 in Montana's Glacier National Park are sacred.

00:31 The eastern half of the park was once Blackfeet territory,

00:35 and the tribe remained steeply connected to it.

00:38 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

00:43 But to her ancestors, these mountains

00:45 would now be almost unrecognizable.

00:49 Since the 1850s, when the park was still Native American land,

00:53 60% of the glaciers have disappeared.

00:58 By the end of the century, scientists predict all of them

01:02 will be gone.

01:02 So this would have been all white, all covered.

01:08 You probably wouldn't have been able to see those rocks.

01:11 You would see waterfalls just spewing.

01:14 Like, we could just drive in our car,

01:15 and our parents would just drive under,

01:17 and we'd all get wet.

01:19 Now it's just like, maybe, maybe a trickle.

01:22 Grinnell Glacier, one of the park's most famous attractions,

01:26 is now a mere shadow of its former self.

01:28 I just finished school last year,

01:33 so I'm taking this year to just go see my Panasma Park.

01:37 Where solid ice stood before is now a lake.

01:41 Even so, some 3 million people still visit the park every year,

01:45 rushing to see what is left of the glaciers

01:48 before it's too late.

01:49 It makes me really scared.

01:50 Like, I want to come with my family here at some point.

01:53 I don't want a family yet.

01:55 So I want to know that this stuff is here for years to come,

01:59 and I want to come when I'm older.

02:00 And I see lots of groups of older people coming,

02:03 and I'm texting my friends like,

02:04 "Oh, that's going to be us in like 50 years."

02:06 And, you know, I don't want to come to a no glacier here.

02:10 For thousands of years, the glaciers here

02:12 have naturally advanced and retreated.

02:15 But the glaciers have been here for a long time.

02:18 They're still melting,

02:19 and they're not as hot as they used to be.

02:22 But scientists say the fast melting in recent decades,

02:25 caused by rising temperatures,

02:27 is increasingly attributed to human-caused climate change.

02:30 A 2018 study found that national parks

02:35 are warming twice as fast as the United States as a whole,

02:39 mainly because they are located in more vulnerable areas,

02:43 like the Arctic, the mountains, and the dry southwest.

02:47 Often referred to as the crown jewels of America.

02:51 As well as 360 other protected sites.

02:55 It all began in 1872 with the creation of Yellowstone.

02:59 150 years later, the US National Park System

03:03 now spans across more than 85 million acres,

03:07 attracting more than 300 million visitors every year.

03:10 The mission of the agency that manages and maintains them

03:15 is to leave the parks unimpaired

03:17 for the enjoyment of future generations.

03:20 But a warming world is already bringing unprecedented change,

03:24 harming plant and animal habitats,

03:27 and contributing to more extreme weather events

03:29 within park boundaries.

03:31 Often because our policies focus on

03:35 maintaining historical conditions,

03:37 maintaining natural conditions,

03:39 our default mode is to resist change.

03:41 We're not going to deny the impacts of climate change

03:45 you know it is, it's transforming ecosystems.

03:47 In a lot of cases, we're just going to have to accept those changes,

03:50 but we're going to call it out and say that that's what we're doing,

03:55 not act like we're just going to be able to continue to resist

03:58 everywhere all the time.

03:59 Like at Glacier National Park,

04:01 some of these protected areas may even lose the very thing

04:05 that gave them their name.

04:07 To the untrained eye,

04:09 changes to this desert landscape are still almost imperceptible.

04:13 But in the southwestern state of Arizona,

04:15 Saguaro National Park is facing an uncertain future.

04:19 This one is about six feet tall,

04:22 and it would be just around 50 years old.

04:25 Or about 21 inches.

04:28 And it's probably about 30 years old, roughly.

04:35 Biologist Don Swan is on the lookout for a young saguaro cactus,

04:40 an increasingly rare sight in this desert.

04:43 All right, here's one.

04:45 About six inches tall.

04:49 So it's about, this one's about 17 years old.

04:54 Since the mid-1990s, we haven't had very many young saguaros surviving at all.

04:59 This dotted line is the Palmer Drought Severity Index,

05:03 and it basically is a reflection of how dry the desert is.

05:06 The problem for saguaros is when they're little,

05:08 they can't store very much water.

05:10 Under ideal conditions, saguaros can live for up to 200 years.

05:16 But a decades-long drought hitting the area

05:18 is putting their long-term survival at risk.

05:22 As some of the older specimens die out,

05:24 and with few young saguaros surviving,

05:27 the park could in the future look very different.

05:31 And it's not just drought threatening the saguaros.

05:35 Buffelgrass, an invasive and fire-prone species, has moved in,

05:39 putting the iconic cacti in even more danger.

05:43 To protect them, volunteers and park staff

05:46 are putting out the grass, one tuft at a time.

05:50 The biggest risk that buffelgrass poses to this ecosystem is the fire risk.

05:55 As you can see, the biomass above ground is so thick,

05:59 and it is very dry for much, much of the year,

06:02 and it can ignite quite quickly and quite easily.

06:06 I went camping, and I slept right next to a saguaro,

06:10 and I just woke up the next morning,

06:12 and I fell in love, absolutely in love with saguaros,

06:14 and just connected with them so much that I knew I had to do something

06:19 to work to save them, to help protect them from the invasive plants that

06:23 are so badly invading the park.

06:28 1,700 miles away, near the city of Chicago,

06:32 Indiana Dunes National Park is also intervening to mitigate damage.

06:38 The park is grappling with erosion that is

06:40 harming its rich plant communities.

06:43 Already an issue due to its proximity to an industrial port on Lake Michigan,

06:47 erosion of its sand dune complex could rapidly get worse.

06:51 The dunes should be sort of this nice, gentle slope that comes up.

06:56 Anytime you see those cutoffs like that, that's a scarping sign,

07:01 so that's a sign of erosion right there.

07:04 The fact that we are seeing this mature cottonwood tree--

07:08 The biggest problem we're seeing is that the storms start up

07:12 in late October into November, and the ice

07:15 is now not coming on until mid to late December, even into early January.

07:20 So there's a very strong disconnect where the winds can pick up,

07:24 the waves can pick up, and they can do a lot of damage

07:27 to our dunes and our shorelines before we even see any sign of having

07:31 an ice shelf develop.

07:32 In order to protect habitats further inland,

07:35 the beach in front of Mount Baldy, the most famous dune in the park,

07:39 is rebuilt every year.

07:41 In November 2023, 80,000 tons of sand were placed along the shoreline.

07:47 I believe our goal is to minimize the impact as much as possible.

07:53 And what beach nourishment does, again, is it provides

07:57 sort of a first line of defense.

07:59 It's a temporary fix.

08:03 There is a huge need for more research and more science.

08:07 Climate change is an unknown.

08:10 It's changing the game completely.

08:14 Over the years, the US government has extended protections

08:17 to millions of acres across the country,

08:20 and has recently earmarked almost $200 million in funding

08:24 for climate restoration and resilience projects at national parks.

08:29 But the ravaging effects of climate change are already creating issues

08:33 that no amount of money will be able to solve,

08:37 forcing the parks to rethink what can be saved and what cannot.

08:43 And while Glacier National Park may eventually have to give up

08:46 on its glaciers, and the saguaros at Saguaro National Park

08:50 may someday be gone, the parks, home to incredible biodiversity,

08:55 will continue to play a crucial role for years to come.

09:00 Glacier National Park, for example, has huge scenic value,

09:05 huge cultural values.

09:06 It's a wildlife sanctuary.

09:08 Even without those iconic features, those national parks are areas

09:12 with huge cultural significance, both to the indigenous populations

09:16 as well as to Americans and people all over the world right now.

09:19 They still maintain huge value.

09:22 [Music]

09:28 [Silence]

09:35 [Mouse click]

09:36 [Bell ring]

09:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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