In Focus Today
(2007-08-24)
Joshua Tree national park may one day be without its namesake as the Joshua Trees migrate out of the park because of climate change. (Courtesy of USGS)
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Experts are saying that many of our national parks are endangered by global warming. Billions of dollars have been dedicated to the restoration of areas like the Everglades in Florida.
According to the National Parks Conservation Association's Mark Wenzler: "If you have to single out one park that's most at risk it's got to be the everglades because in fact, close to a third of southern Florida could be under water by the end of the century and that would completely obliterate that ecosystem. I would say that it's not that the investments we're making now aren't worth it because they are shoring up the ecosystem and they're going to help it withstand that sea level rise to a greater extent than it could have before. But certainly there's a tremendous amount of investment that's going to go to waste."
As for the risks that global warming poses for our parks in the Southwest, like the Saguaro National Park in Arizona or Joshua Tree, Wenzler says, "It's interesting to think that those parks, as hot as they are already, are going to suffer from additional heat but they will because the saguaro have adapted to live in a certain climate range and other species are kept out by that range. And as that range changes more species like invasive grasses will be able to move in. We see that happening now. And you really don't have anything in those ecosystems right now that burns, in fact there have been very few fires in those ecosystems. But as these invasive grasses move in and dry out you're going to see increasing amounts of wildfires that put the saguaro at risk.
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