That's according to a report released Tuesday by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Called “Losing Ground: Western National Parks Endangered by Climate Disruption,” the report details threats to Yellowstone Park's grizzly bears, Glacier Park's vast ice fields and all the wild forests in between.
“Global warming is hitting the West and its national parks particularly hard,” said the council's Theo Spencer, who called climate change the “single greatest threat” to America's parks.
Imagine Joshua Tree without its Joshua trees, Glacier without its glaciers, Cascade without its cascades, Saguaro without its saguaros, Mesa Verde not so verde.
The report gathers data from scores of scientific studies regarding climate and parks, using their combined weight to call for action at the federal level. Local and state governments, Spencer said, already are responding to climate change in an effort to safeguard regional economies.
Now, he said, federal leaders must also take notice, particularly those at the highest levels of the National Park Service. Those civil servants have an obligation to protect the nation's parks, Spencer said, and the report calls on a concerted NPS effort to identify trouble spots, speak out about climate change impact, and take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the parks themselves.
Already, crews in Glacier have turned away from petroleum diesel for their vehicle fleet, choosing instead to run a soybean-based biodiesel. Glacier's gasoline fleet, likewise, runs on a corn-based mixture. Even the historic Red “Jammer” Buses run primarily on propane, reducing emissions by 93 percent.
Such programs were pioneered in Montana's other national park, Yellowstone, where biodiesel first proved itself by operating well in extreme temperatures and at high elevations, and without requiring changes to either pumps or vehicles. There, carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by 522 metric tons in 2005.
Any additional fuel costs have been defrayed through grants, Glacier staff said, and the blends have greatly increased engine life, saving budgets in the long term.
But those efforts are miniscule. According to the many scientists cited in the “Losing Ground” report, it's the atmosphere that is pushing big changes for Western parks.
In Yellowstone, for instance, higher temperatures are thought to be triggering the spread of beetles from low-elevation lodgepole pine stands into alpine reaches where white bark pine grows.
And as goes the white bark pine, so go Yellowstone's grizzlies, which rely heavily upon the nutritious seeds found in white bark cones.
Elsewhere, the report concludes, wildfires are burning hotter, longer and across more acres. Trout streams are warming, and water flows are slowing. Vegetation is marching up once-icy mountainsides, biology is changing, habitat is shifting.
Those making their living near the tops of peaks have nowhere to go, and scientists say alpine species such as pikas are being pushed toward extinction.
These are not predictions of things to come. These are measurable effects that are already taking place - that have been taking place for years, documented in the many studies that make up “Losing Ground.“
The first half of 2006 was the hottest on record, and researchers in Glacier say all the hottest years on record have come in the past decade. Studies of corals and ancient tree rings suggest these are the hottest times in more than a millennia, as far back as science can reliably look.
Since 1850, Glacier's ice coverage has shrunk by more than 80 percent, and best estimates indicate the last of the glaciers will melt away by 2030, a short 24 years away.
All this matters to parks because it will affect vegetation, wildlife and visitors, according to Tuesday's report. But it matters far beyond the parks because one-fifth of the terrestrial world is covered by mountains, and half of all the world's drinking water comes from those high reaches, not to mention the water for agriculture, fisheries and industry.
That's especially troublesome in the drought-prone American West, where researchers say climate is warming twice as fast as in the East.
Parks such as Glacier are perfectly poised to provide a sort of “canary in the coal mine” early warning system.
The glaciers there are remote, and so they're not overly impacted by any immediate human presence. They react quickly to heat, they tend to reflect big changes instead of seasonal fluctuations.
And they're disappearing, replaced by trees. That's a big change, scientists say - from a reservoir of midsummer meltwater to roots that drink up what water is left - and it's already being noticed downstream.
The fate of Glacier's glaciers is likely already sealed. But Spencer and the authors of the recent report agree the future of, say, Yellowstone's grizzlies is not yet known.
“We have time,” he said, “but our window is closing.”
If the nation fails to act, said Stephen Saunders, “we are in danger of polluting our parks to death.”
Saunders, now with the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and a principal author of the report, served as deputy assistant secretary of the Interior under the Clinton administration. The nation's parks have a powerful popular and political pull, he said, and a message from Yellowstone and Yosemite would likely be heard far and wide. After all, some
70 percent of Americans say they've been to a national park.
And if the public responds, he said, the federal government will, at some point, have to follow.
“They should be speaking out more than they ever have before,” Saunders said of the NPS.
To many, climate change might still seem an abstraction; but the parks, Spencer said, are not. People have seen the parks, he said, and they've seen the early impacts of a changing climate, even if they didn't know what they were seeing at the time.
Couching global warming in terms of parks, he said, “brings it home to people.”
And it's people, finally, who will make the difference, he predicted, not just for the parks but for places far-flung from these protected parcels.
“Responsible and prudent action by all levels of government,” the report concludes, “can make the difference in preserving not just the national parks of the American West but natural ecosystems and the quality of people's lives worldwide.”
Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at mjamison@missoulian.com
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