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
An aerial view shows the eastern edge of Glacier National Park from St. Mary, Montana, on October 20, 2023. In picturesque Glacier National Park , near the US-Canada border in Montana, biologist Dawn LaFleur is working to save an at-risk pine species.UNITED STATES — 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.
After a grueling trek, visitors are met with a stunning sight: a serene lake of pale blue water, nestled among towering peaks. It was brought into existence by a 1916 law that called to preserve these treasured sites "unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." It is also facing competition from non-native lake trout, which were introduced for fishing and are better suited to the changing conditions.
Also as a result of climate change, the park is conducting DNA testing of threatened whitebark pines, identifying those most resilient to drought for planting at targeted locations as part of a restoration plan.A 2018 study revealed national parks are warming at twice the rate of the rest of the country, because they are mainly located in climate-sensitive regions like mountain ranges or in Alaska, near the North Pole.
Around 80,000 tons of sand, excavated from a quarry, are used to replenish the beach at the foot of the most famous dune in the park: Mount Baldy, a popular summer spot for vacationing tourists from Chicago. Compounding the issue are warmer lakes, which fuel more intense storms, and increasingly severe rainwater runoff.
This solution however sparked controversy as the obstacles worsened the degradation of dunes further along the shore. During this period, a non-native plant, buffelgrass, began to colonize the park. This invasive weed, introduced from Africa as livestock fodder, fuels fires that have ravaged saguaros in the past, as in 1994 and 1999.
As a result, "since the mid-1990s, we haven't had very many young saguaros surviving at all," says Don Swann, another biologist at the park. If current trends continue, "then at a certain point... we won't have saguaros in Saguaro National Park," he says.Beyond the ecological devastation, the loss of saguaros and glaciers has far-reaching cultural consequences.The Tohono O'odham people consider saguaros their ancestors, and rely on their fruit to make ceremonial syrup.
Her personal connection to the land is palpable: the Native American name of one of her daughters, Iitspigoonskoo, means "glacier."
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