Glacier National Park will soon have none left. The giant trees of Sequoia Park are burning. Even the cacti in Saguaro Park are suffering from drought.
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In many ways, America’s national parks symbolize the United States, its wide open spaces and its breathtaking landscapes. Cherished by the country’s inhabitants, they embody the American myth in the eyes of the world.
But climate change today threatens the very emblem of many parks, which risk finding themselves one day badly named.
In Glacier Park, in the heart of Montana (northwest), one of the most admired, Grinnell, is only a shadow of itself.
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After hours of walking to reach it, the hiker is rewarded with the sight of pastel blue waters, surrounded by sheer sections of mountain.
But as beautiful as it is, this lake symbolizes by its very presence the ravages of climate change. Only a few decades ago, only ice could be found here.
The Grinnell glacier is today entrenched in a hollow, sheltered from the sun, at the edge of this lake formed by its melting.
Before putting on his crampons to cross the frozen surface, young adventurer Ryan Bergman remains amazed: “Views like this are spectacular!”
The 22-year-old student, who took two months to visit around ten parks, dreams of returning with his children one day, without suspecting the extent of the tragedy that is playing out.
The park has lost about 60% of its glaciers since the 1850s. By the end of the century, scientists say, all of them should be gone.
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New philosophy
Americans often come with their families to create memories in these wild nature settings.
The defense of the 63 national parks is one of the rare subjects on which everyone agrees, whatever their political side. With tens of millions of visitors per year from all over the world, they also represent an economic challenge for the tourism sector.
Joe Biden’s government recently announced that it would dedicate nearly $200 million to their adaptation, via its major climate law.
The leading world power has the means to try to save what can be saved. But she can’t do everything.
This observation causes an identity crisis for the agency responsible for their protection, the National Park Service (NPS).
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Its original mission, enshrined in a law of 1916, is to preserve these jewels “intact” for “future generations”.
Today, however, “it is quite clear” that this objective “is no longer achievable in many places,” recognizes John Gross, ecologist in the NPS climate change response program.
“It is entirely possible that parks will lose the iconic element that gave them their name.”
The climate crisis has therefore led to a real change in philosophy.
To modify
Where the battle has already been lost, radical measures are now being employed: it is no longer taboo to modify the natural state of a park to limit the damage.
On the banks of Lake McDonald, Chris Downs, head of aquatic resources at Glacier Park, recounts the epic undertaking to save Salvelinus Confluentus, a species of native fish that lives in cold water.
Partly deprived of the melting ice at the end of summer, the water in the lakes has warmed, threatening the survival of the species, he explains. At the same time, the fish are subject to competition from trout introduced for fishing and better adapted to the changes.
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Lake McDonald, the largest in the park, had almost five times as many native fish as trout introduced for fishing in 1969. Fifty years later, the trend has reversed.
In 2014, the decision was made to move the Salvelinus Confluentus to cooler waters, upstream, where they had never been seen.
Dozens of fish were transported “in backpacks” with ice packs to their “shelter,” recalls Chris Downs. Thousands more, from farms, will be transferred by helicopter in the following years.
“They are growing very well” in their new lake, says the biologist. Skeptics criticize manipulation of nature. He opposes a “necessity”.
This same necessity leads the park to conduct DNA analyzes to replant, higher in the mountain, threatened whitebark pines, selecting those most resistant to drought.
Resist
According to a 2018 study, national parks are warming twice as fast as the rest of the country because they are mainly located in Alaska or in high mountains, areas more sensitive to global warming.
“Significant transformations linked to anthropogenic climate change” are observed, underlines John Gross.
In the Dunes National Park in Indiana (northeast), beaches are submerged and dunes are collapsing.
Unlike the condemned glaciers, here we still resist: every year, we fill in a damaged site in this protected area which stretches on the southern shore of the immense Lake Michigan.
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On this November day, the battle against erosion is symbolized by the comings and goings of two large excavator trucks.
Some 80,000 tons of sand, excavated from a quarry, reconstruct the beach located at the foot of the park’s most famous dune, Mount Baldy, very popular in the summer with residents of the Chicago region.
“The goal is to keep the beach as it has always been” in order to preserve the shore and the dune behind it, Thomas Kanies, project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, told AFP.
This park has the particularity of being surrounded by industries (steel mills and even coal-fired power stations) while sheltering incredible biodiversity.
The proximity to Michigan City’s industrial port is the main culprit of erosion, Kanies said, because the pier blocks the flow of sand along the coast.
The situation remained manageable until now, but global warming has “completely changed the situation,” Erin Argyilan, geologist at the NPS, told AFP.
“Bandage”
The ice that normally forms on the lake in winter “is the first line of defense to protect the dunes from big waves,” explains the expert.
“The big problem is that the storms start at the end of October and the ice doesn’t arrive until the end of December,” she explains, in front of a partially washed away dune.
Other factors are at play, such as warmer lake water in winter, which fuels stronger storms. Or the runoff of rains that have become more intense. One last phenomenon intrigues the researcher: by freezing and thawing more frequently, pieces of dunes end up collapsing.
“Our goal is to minimize the impact as much as possible,” continues Ms. Argyilan while conceding that the delivery of sand by truck is only a temporary “band-aid”.
More invasive solutions have been employed.
In 2020, the water in the lake, which reaches its peak every thirty years, is at its highest and violent storms are raging.
In one of the villages that dot the park, houses threaten to collapse. The inhabitants then erected gigantic blocks of rock to protect them from erosion.
Problem: this dike in turn prevents the sand from reaching further to the dunes.
A project by local residents aiming to extend it is today opposed by activists.
“We can’t destroy the beach just to save a few houses,” says Betsy Maher, of the Save the Dunes association, illustrating the cruel dilemma posed here by climate change: to protect nature or humans.
Titanic task
At the other end of the country, in Saguaro National Park, the approximately two million cacti of the same name – the largest in the United States – form in places like a forest, arms pointing towards the sky.
Here, the changes are not yet noticeable.
But behind their apparent good health, these emblematic cacti of Arizona and yet adapted to ultra-arid environments, are threatened by a drought which has lasted for around thirty years.
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In 2020, and again last year, an extremely small amount of rain fell in the summer, normally a monsoon period.
During this time, a plant colonized the park, likely to fuel fires devastating the saguaros, such as in 1994 and 1999.
The intruder is an invasive weed, Cenchrus ciliaris, native to Africa and introduced into the country to serve as fodder.
This species, which covers the mountainsides in straw-yellow clumps, “is very dry most of the year and can catch fire quickly and easily,” emphasizes Frankie Foley, biologist for the park.
Every weekend, volunteers meet under his direction to weed. Armed with pickaxes, they dig with all their might. A titanic task given the immensity of the park.
Long term
The drought has become so intense here that the saguaros are having difficulty replenishing themselves.
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When young, these cacti cannot store much water because they grow very slowly — at 15 years old, they are only about ten centimeters long.
As a result, “since the mid-1990s, we have seen very few young saguaros survive,” worries biologist Don Swann.
This trend follows the drought curve, he explains, equipped with a meter to measure a baby saguaro, of which he only finds a specimen after ten minutes of searching.
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For the moment, the problem is invisible, due to the longevity of the old cacti still standing, which can live for around 200 years.
But according to a decennial census, in 2020, the number of saguaros was only slightly higher than in 2010 and Don Swann expects it to decline in 2030.
“The big worry we have in the long term, if we don’t see more young people arriving, (…) is that at some point we will no longer have saguaros in Saguaro National Park.”
Electroshock
The loss of these cacti, like that of the glaciers, would have both an environmental and cultural impact.
Native Americans of the Tohono O’odham tribe consider saguaros to be their ancestors. From their fruits, they make a syrup for ceremonies.
In Montana, to the Blackfeet Nation, glaciers are “sacred.” “We were placed here thanks to this water,” says its climate change manager, Termaine Edmo.
Under the leadership of this committed woman, where the land dries up at the foot of the mountains, wooden fences are installed to retain the snow, dams imitating those of beavers built in the rivers.
Eloquently, the Native American name of one of his daughters means “glacier.”
“She asks me all the time, Mom, what will happen if there is no more snow up in the mountains? Will my name change? says this 35-year-old mother. “I tell him, ‘no, my angel, we will adapt, like our ancestors did’.”
Could these disappearances serve as an electric shock for Americans, still largely disinterested in the climate cause?
National parks are “natural classrooms” for “seeing the consequences of climate change,” agrees Wylie Carr of the NPS office.
Along the trails, signs multiply. “How many glaciers for the next generations?” asks one of them.
With the hope that this awareness will be transformed, in each visitor, into conviction – then into action.
