New
Photos Show The Impact Of Climate Change On National Parks
Climate change threatens many beloved US national parks, including Yellowstone.
Ellen Pabst dos Reis/Getty Images
- Climate change poses a threat to US national parks like Yellowstone.
- Warmer temperatures and extreme weather impact both ecosystems and visitors.
- Advocates hope witnessing changes to the parks will inspire visitors to help protect them.
Each year, over 300 million visitors explore the hundreds of parks that make up the US National Park system. These spaces offer unparalleled views of mountains and forests, immersing people in the sights and sounds of nature that are often missing from their everyday lives.
But the national parks are in trouble. "Most of our parks have multiple assaults on them," Chad Lord, senior director of environmental policy and climate change with the National Parks Conservation Association advocacy group, told Business Insider.
From hotter, drier weather to invasive species to more powerful storms, many of the country's parks are experiencing dramatic changes. For example, warming temperatures are making glaciers disappear from Glacier National Park.
From Alaska to Florida, here are six examples of how the climate crisis is changing national parks.
Glacier National Park is a geological marvel.Grinnell Glacier at Glacier National Park in 1938.
TJ Hileman/Glacier National Park Archives
Montana's Glacier National Park sprawls over 1,500 miles, encompassing mountains, valleys, and glacial lakes. Even if you've never visited, you might recognize the park's Going-to-the-Sun Road, which was featured in the 1980 movie "The Shining."
Throughout the park, grizzly bears graze on huckleberries. Little rodent-like pikas, lynx, and Harlequin ducks are also adapted to the area's chilly weather.
Glacier National Park's glaciers are melting.Over the past 80 years, Grinnell Glacier has shrunk enormously due to warming temperatures.
Lisa McKeon/USGS Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center
The park once held 80 glaciers. In 2015, NPS estimated only 26 were left. Satellites have captured the remaining few as they continue to shrink.
Warming temperatures are driving the glaciers' disappearance, which will impact the plants and animals that live there.
For example, mountain goats rely on snow patches to stay cool during the summer. In the winter, the snow helps keep tiny mouse-like rodents, called pikas, insulated from the bitter cold.
Denali National Park has breathtaking views.A bus takes visitors along Denali Park Road.
Kent Miller/NPS Photo
Together the Denali National Park and Preserve are larger than New Hampshire, stretching nearly 9,500 square miles of Alaskan terrain. Winter days there are short and cold, with temperatures as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit.
The park originally began as a way to protect Dall sheep. Today, an estimated 2,000 big-horned sheep brave the chilly climate. Red foxes, snowshoe hares, and dozens of bird species are also around, in addition to grizzlies, wolves, and moose. Even a small wood frog, the park's only amphibian, can survive the subarctic environment.
Part of Denali's road has been impassable for years.About half of Denali Road is obstructed by a landslide that keeps moving.
WeeBee Aschenbrenner/NPS Photo
In the 1960s, the Pretty Rocks landslide began cracking the road leading to the park. In 2014, the landslide was moving a few inches every year. By 2021, it was moving a few inches per hour. The road is now closed at about its halfway point, cutting off vehicle access to sites like Wonder Lake.
While the annual average temperature of the park was once well below freezing, it's now close to 32 °F, according to NPS. The warmer weather and melting permafrost is making the landslide move more quickly. The road is cut into a rock glacier, "and little bits of climate warming are causing this big kind of slump, and the road is falling off the cliff," said Cassidy Jones, a senior visitation program manager with NPCA.
The trees are tall and mighty at Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks.Sequoias can be hundreds of feet tall and very wide, making some of the largest on Earth.
Marji Lang/LightRocket via Getty Images
At Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, visitors can enjoy over 1,300 square miles of trails, trees, foothills, and lakes. Groves of sequoia trees dominate some parts of the landscape, including the famous General Sherman tree towering almost 275 feet high. With its 100-foot circumference, it's one of the largest trees by volume in the world.
Closer to the ground, vivid flora like Evalyn's jewel flower grow and kingsnakes slither. Gophers, skunks, and squirrels scamper about, along with larger mammals like black bears, mule deer, and mountain lions. The parks span a range of habitats, making it a bird-watcher's paradise.
A 2021 fire ravaged swaths of the Sequoia National Park.Thousands of sequoia trees burned during recent California fires.
Joe Suarez/NPS
In 2021, lightning struck several areas, igniting what became the KNP Complex Fire. A year earlier, the Castle Fire also ravaged Sequoia National Park. Fires over those two years killed between 8,400 to 12,000 sequoias. Some of the trees were thousands of years old.
Forest fires aren't uncommon, but the sequoias were already vulnerable after a lengthy drought. A combination of low humidity and high temperatures can be a dangerous combination when fires erupt. "Fires have gotten bigger and hotter," Jones said.
Sequoias have long been able to withstand fires, she said. "It tells you something different is going on in terms of just the way the fire is behaving, in the amplification of fire weather," she said.
Yellowstone is the US's first national park.Bison sometimes stop traffic in Yellowstone National Park.
William Campbell-Corbis via Getty Images
Covering 3,500 miles, most of it in Wyoming, Yellowstone became the US's first national park in 1872. It's home to Old Faithful, as well as many more geysers and hot springs.
Visitors sometimes have to halt their vehicles for bison crossing the road, and moose, bobcats, badgers, bats, and the many other species that live in the park.
However, warmer temperatures are speeding up snowmelt, changing vegetation, and leading to less water in some areas — all of which will likely force some wildlife to relocate. Every year, pronghorn antelope migrate through the park, a journey that's already risky as they cross over roads and fences. A lack of water and food could alter their path.
Yellowstone experienced extensive damage during a flood in 2022.Flooding caused widespread damage in Yellowstone in 2022.
Jacob W. Frank/National Park Service via Getty Images
A mix of rain and snowmelt caused severe flooding in June 2022. The rushing water damaged roads, structures, and trails. NPS called it an unprecedented, 500-year flood. While the disaster was rare, warmer temperatures are increasing snowmelt and rain is falling instead of snow. Floods could become more common as the climate continues to change.
Death Valley has breathtaking views, day and night.Despite its desert climate, Death Valley is home to many species of plants and animals.
George Rose/Getty Images
Along the California-Nevada border, Death Valley draws visitors keen to see the salt flats, sand dunes, and craters. It's 3.4 million acres of wilderness, making it one of the largest national parks in the country. At night, its remote location and aridity make it ideal for stargazing.
The scorching desert climate might not seem hospitable to many kinds of life. Yet jackrabbits, bats, tortoises, and roadrunners have all thrived in the park.
Death Valley is getting hotter by the year.Death Valley's summers are getting hotter.
J. Jurado/National Park Service
Extreme heat is nothing new for Death Valley. But in recent years, temperatures regularly soar past 125 degrees Fahrenheit in July. Plus, triple-digits can extend into October, and the nights don't get as cool.
The sizzling weather can be dangerous for visitors and residents, and plants and animals have difficulty coping, too. Some animals may start migrating to cooler climates, but some species may not survive. For example, the extremely rare Devils Home pupfish population, found only in Death Valley, has been in decline since the 1990s.
The Everglades host a wealth of biodiversity.A satellite image of Ingraham Lake in the Everglades in 1984.
Google Earth
Located in Southern Florida, the Everglades National Park is a patchwork of unique ecosystems, from mangroves to pinelands. With 1.5 million acres of land, it has space for estuaries, giant cypress trees, and marshy rivers.
With so many habitats, a huge range of species create the delicate web of life that is the Everglades. Dozens of species of lizards and snakes scuttle and slither, while ducks, doves, and nighthawks mingle not far from flamingos. River otters and manatees also swim through different parts of the park.
Sea-level rise threatens the Everglades' Cape Sable.Cape Sable sits at the bottom of the Everglades.
Google Earth
Elevated temperatures, more-intense hurricanes, and rising sea levels are among the challenges the Everglades face. When salty seawater seeps into the park's coastal landscape, it can harm rare tropical orchids and other vegetation that can't cope with increased salinity.
Cape Sable lies at Florida's southwestern tip. Sea levels have risen at an accelerated pace over the last 100 years, according to NPS. Hurricanes and tropical storms have washed seawater into what was once freshwater marshes and lakes. The incursion threatens not only mangrove forests but wildlife like the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, which is only found in this unique habitat.
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