Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

The (Air Pollution) Picture Improves at National Parks

March 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Moro Rock steps

I used to live in California’s Central Valley, and as a result could hop up to Yosemite or Kings Canyon/Sequoia national parks a dozen or so times a year. Aside from its giant trees, Sequoia has a particularly august feature, Moro Rock, a gigantic chunk of granite with stairs—lots of stairs—that allow you to reach an amazing vista point looking out over the Southern Sierra Nevada and into the Central Valley. Except that the air quality usually was so bad that in addition to breathing lots of dreck as you huffed and puffed the steps, when you did make the top it was next to impossible ... Read More

More like this: Environment, The 101
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Climate Change Threatens Great Lakes’ Parks

July 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

"Climate change is a huge, transforming, all-encompassing threat to the national parks," Stephen Saunders, founder and president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, told our Melinda Burns last year. Just how climate change will affect national parks around the world has been on the minds of environmentalists and park managers for some time. When their concerns reach the public — that of the threat to the country's most iconic parks — melting glaciers at Glacier National Park, for example, or rising water levels at the Everglades are usually invoked. But the latest in a series ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Environment
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What Does a U.S. Government Shutdown Mean?

April 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The federal government has been coy, even with its own employees, about exactly what a government shutdown would look like — who'd have to work and who wouldn't, which services would be considered essential and which ones eligible for suspension. Administration officials may be hoping that if they don't talk too much about the alternative, a budget agreement will materialize in Congress by Friday night. But government's last big shutdown spanning New Year's in 1995-96 — at 21 days, the longest hiatus in D.C. history — offers a glimpse of what could happen come this weekend. This list ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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Climate Change Could Spell Disaster for National Parks

September 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
National Parks, Climate Change

Glacier National Park in Montana, one of the 10 oldest parks in the United States, is celebrating its centennial this year, but its glaciers won't be around for another 100 years: They will melt away by 2030, if not sooner, because of global warming. In California, Joshua Tree National Park is preparing to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2011, but the trees themselves, iconic symbols and "life centers" of the Mojave Desert, are projected to die out this century. Joshua trees need winter freezes to flower and produce seed, and the Mojave is heating up. Other parks, including Virginia's ... Read More

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Viewing Poisons at Our National Parks

September 6, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

America's national parks are heralded as pristine pockets of natural beauty, but that news hasn't stopped airborne pollutants from accumulating at alarmingly high rates in parks in the West. Eight years ago, spurred by reports of contaminants found in alpine and polar ecosystems far from where the pollutants originated, National Park Service leaders assembled an interdisciplinary team of researchers drawn from experts at several universities, government agencies and research groups. Their effort was dubbed the Western Airborne Contaminant Assessment Project. The team collected data on ... Read More

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Observatories in a Remote National Park

June 1, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
mmw_kiriobservatory

High above two coastlines, Kristian Beadle looks for clues about the climate. Location: Sierra San Pedro Martir, an alpine national park in the middle of the Baja peninsula, at a campsite surrounded by pine trees and chunks of snow, 8,000 feet above sea level. Conditions: Cold! The sun just set behind the trees and a chill is setting in. The open-air fire is keeping our feet warm. Discussion: From the top of the astronomical observatory, we could see the outline of the Sea of Cortez to the east and faint glimmers of the Pacific Ocean to the west. "It has been a little hazy these ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Voyage of Kiri
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U.S. Revisits Its World Heritage Roots

March 28, 2009 • By • 7 Comments

This January, for the first time since 1995, the U.S. Department of the Interior nominated two new sites for inclusion on the United Nation's World Heritage List of places of "outstanding universal value," a kind of Nobel Prize in the world of preservation. The two sites are George Washington's Mount Vernon estate on the Potomac River, and the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Last year, the Interior Department developed a new tentative list of 14 sites for nomination, replacing a 1982 list that had been gathering dust. U.S. contributions to ... Read More

More like this: Culture & Society, Environment
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Off-roaders Leaving Environmentalists in the Dust

May 23, 2008 • By • 1 Comment

Off-roaders may be winning the battle for access to public lands, and there's not much environmentalists can do about it, according to a new study from the University of Idaho. Because of their traditions and built-in policies, the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are inherently predisposed to favor motorized recreation, said Patrick Wilson, an associate professor of natural resource policy in the university's department of conservation social sciences. Historically, Wilson said, the managers of public lands have focused on such uses as ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Science & Environment
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