Climate Change and the National Parks

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How climate change is now impacting national parks, and how it might in the future, has been a hot topic this year. On Thursday a teleconference was held to discuss the latest report on this issue. Here's the audio version.

Prepared by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, the 54-page report touched on many of the same impacts mentioned earlier this year in the National Park Conservation Association's climate change report, Climate Change and National Park Wildlife, A Survival Guide for a Warming World, as well as in a 2008 report issued by NRDC and RMCO, Hotter and Drier: The West's Changed Climate.

As with the previous reports, this latest one also pointed to rising sea levels, vanishing forests, receding and even disappearing glaciers, habitat loss, drought as well as unusually potent downpours, and wildfire as climate-change-driven threats -- and actual impacts currently being noticed -- to wildlife and natural and cultural resources in the national parks. Its recommendations also sounded familiar: Provide corridors for plants and animals to use in escaping warming temperatures; reduce emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane; enlarge existing national parks and create new ones for habitat preservation; reduce non-climate-related stressors to the environment, such as pollution and development, and; educate the public on climate change and its threats.

If you've got time -- the call ran about an hour -- you might find portions of this conference interesting.