The National Park Service, NPS for short, is an agency of the United States federal government that manages all U.S. national parks.
The NPS is charged with a dual role of preserving the ecological and historical integrity of the places entrusted to its management.
It has spent a century of shooing away hunters, tending to trails and helping visitors enjoy the wonder of the natural world.
They have been tasked with slowing the all-out assault climate change is waging against national parks across the nation. Many of America’s national icons are at risk.
A national monument dedicated to abolitionist Harriet Tubman, could be eaten away by rising tides in Maryland. The land once walked by Pocahontas and Captain John Smith in Jamestown, the first English settlement in the US, is surrounded by waters rising at twice the global average and may be beyond rescue. Climate change affects these precious sites in a variety of ways. Rising temperatures could mean no more glaciers in Glacier national park, no more Joshua trees in Joshua Tree national park.
The sad thing is that no matter how much effort we put into preventing climate change, some change is inevitable.
It found that four in five of America’s national parks are now at the extreme end of temperature variables charted since 1901. Alaska is the region most threatened by this catastrophic situation.