Peace Park endangered, groups say

HELENA – Glacier National Park in Montana and adjacent Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada should be declared endangered by the United Nations because climate change is melting glaciers and threatening the parks’ environment, a dozen organizations argue in a petition.

The Rocky Mountain parks, together known as Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, are covered by a 1995 treaty as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Now they should be designated as a World Heritage Site in Danger, the groups say.

Mechtild Rossler, chief of the U.N. World Heritage Committee’s European and North American section in Paris, said the organization had received the petition, but has not yet reviewed it.

Glacier park has 27 glaciers, down from about 150 in 1850, said Dan Fagre, who coordinates global change research for the U.S. Geological Survey at West Glacier, Mont. The USGS says the mean summer temperature at Glacier park has risen by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.

“We haven’t seen any warming to this degree as far back as we can go, and we can go back about 500 years,” Fagre said.

Erica Thorson, an Oregon law professor who wrote the petition submitted Thursday to the World Heritage Committee, said the effects of the temperature increase “are well-documented and clearly visible in Glacier National Park, and yet the United States refuses to fulfill its obligations under the World Heritage Convention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Endangered status would require the committee to find ways to mitigate the effects of climate change, Thorson said. Better fuel efficiency for automobiles and stronger energy efficiency standards for buildings and appliances would be among the ways to reduce pollution that contributes to global warming, the petition says.

The proposal was called “a ridiculous idea” by S. Fred Singer, a retired University of Virginia environmental sciences professor who established a research nonprofit called the Science and Environmental Policy Project.

Singer disputes that greenhouse gases are warming the environment and that governments can curb glacial erosion by stiffening pollution controls. Of 20 major world glaciers that began shrinking around 1850, he said, about half had stopped shrinking by the end of the 20th century, and some were growing.

However, other scientists have projected that the glaciers at Glacier park will vanish entirely by 2030 if current trends continue.

“The United States and Canada must immediately reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to slow the damage,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity.

The petition is one of four to be discussed next month at a Paris meeting on climate change and sites that hold World Heritage status through the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Other sites being considered for endangered status are Belize Barrier Reef in Central America; Huarascan National Park in Peru; Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal; and Great Barrier Reef in Australia.