Signs Of Global Warming Found In National Parks, Say Ecologists

Early signs of global warming, including receding ice glaciers and trees growing at higher elevations, are evident in America’s national parks, the World Wildlife Fund said Tuesday.

The conservation group analyzed dozens of studies and computer models to determine whether early indicators are visible on America’s ecological landscape.

“Global warming is a problem already … in our most cherished national spaces, the national parks,” the study concludes.

Among the early evidence of a warming trend, the study said, were the accelerated melting of ice at parks in Alaska and Montana and melting of permafrost at the Denali National Park in Alaska and Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada.

“Detailed monitoring of Montana’s Glacier National Park shows that it has almost lost some of its smaller glaciers during the last 30 years, and massive melting has been recorded for the (larger) glaciers” in the park, the analysis said.

It also said changes have been observed in marine ecosystems at a number of federal coastal reserves. Rising seas have had an impact on Everglades National Park and Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge in Florida and destroyed marshland at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, the study said.

Forests also are signaling change, possibly linked to global warming, he study aid. For example, historically stunted spruce trees high in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado have shown “vertical growth unseen in centuries.”

The wildflower meadows at Mount Rainier National Park and the Olympic National Park are being invaded by trees. The study suggests this is in part due to a changing climate at these higher elevations. As warming persists, these alpine meadows can be expected to be lost gradually to shrubs and trees that shift from lower elevations, the study said.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said in a statement that the World Wildlife Fund report “lays out an array of scientific observations and predictions” about the possible impact of climate change on national parks.

“All Americans must understand if climate changes as many prominent scientists have predicted, resources that we all cherish will be harmed, and some may be lost forever,” said Babbitt.

“Even if portions of the changes predicted in this report come to pass, national parks will be forever changed,” he said.