Profile of Glacier National Park in Peril |
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On April 7, 2010, RMCO and Natural Resources Defense Council released Glacier National Park in Peril: The Threats of Climate Disruption. Glacier is one of the 25 national parks identified as most vulnerable to the effects of a changed climate in our October 2009 report, National Parks in Peril. This new profile details and documents the particular ways in which Glacier is vulnerable. According to a new analysis done by RMCO for this profile, the last decade in Glacier National Park saw exactly double the temperature increase for the planet as a whole. The effects of this warming threaten Glacier National Park’s resources, from glaciers and snow-capped mountains to wildlife and forests, as well as the Montana jobs and tourism revenue the park generates. Drawn by the park’s scenery, wildlife, and other resources, two million people a year visit Glacier, making it the 11 th most visited national park in the U.S. Nearly three-quarters of the visitors are from out of state. Almost one-third of all summer visitors to Montana are drawn primarily by the park, and 56 percent of the park’s visitors are returnees. Spending by Glacier visitors may approach $1 billion annually and supports more than 4,000 Montana jobs. The report asks, why put at risk Glacier’s spectacular resources, as important as they are to Montana’s economy? The news release on the issuance of the report is here. (The news coverage was very extensive; see here.) An audio copy of the teleconference with reporters at which the report was released can be listened to here. You can download the full profile in one large file, or in parts. Full report (23 MB - large!) Cover (1.8 MB) Part 1: Front material through page 10. (3.4 MB) Part 2: Page 11 -- Figure 2, Photographs of Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park taken from the same point over seven Part 3: Pages 12-20. (4 MB) Part 4: Page 21 -- Figure 3, Projected changes in the plant communities of the Blackfoot-Jackson Basin, Glacier National Park. (2.7 MB) Part 5: Pages 22-29 (4.3 MB) References (1.8 MB) Joining the teleconference releasing the report, Rhonda Fitzgerald, innkeeper of the Garden Wall Inn in Whitefish, Montana said, “All the available research tells us that visitors come to Montana primarily for its spectacular unspoiled natural beauty. Tourism is Montana’s Number 2 industry, bringing over $3 billion into the state each year, and Glacier National Park is one of the top reasons people visit Montana. Ensuring that the pristine condition of the Crown of the Continent and its intact ecosystem will be maintained is essential to the economic health of Montana’s tourism industry.” Daniel B. Fagre, a research ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center in West Glacier, also joined the teleconference to answer questions about a new USGS information sheet reproduced in the profile, documenting that of the 37 named glaciers in Glacier National Park, 12 are now so small -- less than 25 acres -- that USGS no longer considers them glaciers. Below that size threshold, ice typically is stagnant and does not move, which glaciers do. That new USGS information sheet had not previously been publicly reported on. |
Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park, showing |
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