You are here

Essay | National Parks As An Impediment To The Sixth Mass Extinction

Share
Sitting on the precipice of extinction: A wolverine at Glacier National Park/NPS file, Erik Peterson

Sitting on the precipice of extinction: A wolverine at Glacier National Park/NPS file, Erik Peterson

Editor's note: The first article in an occasional series on how national parks might serve as an impediment to the sixth mass extinction.

National park landscapes are some of the most biologically diverse in the United States, but they are not immune from degradation. 

There’s a common thread among an otherwise little-connected collection of wildlife species: the passenger pigeon, Ivory-billed woodpecker, woodland caribou, Puerto Rican shrew, sea mink, California grizzly bear, Eastern cougar, and the Southern Rocky Mountain wolf. These are just a handful of the 100+ species that are now missing, or soon will vanish, from the nation’s national parks, the “biological islands” that Congresses and presidents have set aside for special protection throughout U.S. history.

At a time when conservationists are calling for 30 percent of the world to be protected for nature, and when the E.O. Wilson Foundation warns, “the world’s incredible biodiversity is shrinking fast,” existing national parks – and potential parks -- can play a key role in preserving nature and slowing the sixth mass extinction. But it could be a hard won goal, as national parks and lands worthy of national park designation are being hemmed in by development and resource extraction. These are some of the battlegrounds that are key to nature’s future.

What happens when faunal species go extinct? How might parks be impacted by the loss of species now on the precipice of being lost? Can the National Park System really slow the sixth mass extinction? How can the National Park Service act now before species vanish or parks become too small? 

These are simple questions, but their answers can be quite complex.

Already the toll from the loss of species throughout the National Park System has been significant. Three decades ago, researchers noted that parks such as Yosemite and Mount Rainier had lost a quarter or more of the species originally found there. Smaller park units might have lost as much as 40 percent of their original species.

Today’s research on the impacts of climate change indicates it is all but inevitable that we will see the collapse of many more wildlife species than had been expected. Wolverines could blink out. Polar bears. Pikas. Staghorn corals. Salmon. Leatherback turtles. That's a short list.

Can staghorn corals survive warmer oceans?/NOAA

Can staghorn corals survive warmer oceans?/NOAA

With many species relying on the parks for survival, where do things stand today in the National Park System? What plant and animal species are we missing, and what are we in danger of losing? What can be saved? Why do we care when species are lost? Should we care?

What’s in it for Americans – those who visit the parks, live near them, and rely on ecosystems the parks nurture? How do Native Americans, whose cultural practices, beliefs, and history have many connections with species at risk, view the ongoing collapse? What public lands out there should be added to the National Park System to protect nature?

National parks and other protected areas are key to slowing that rate of extinction. In the United States, lands managed by the National Park Service are biological outposts that can help prevent the loss of plants and animals to anthropogenic extinction. From Everglades to Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon to Yellowstone, Joshua Tree to North Cascades, these and their sister parks offer habitat, and in some cases refugia, for species being squeezed out of place by human actions responsible for habitat loss, pollution, and introduction of invasive species.

“I believe that protected areas such as national parks and national forests are the best targets if nature is to be protected,” wrote Kenyan conservationist Richard Leakey in 2018.

Joshua Tree National Park is getting too warm for its namesake trees/NPS file

National parks contain some of the best-protected habitat for many species, in large part due to the Park Service’s mission to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein” for future generations. And as human populations grow and encroach on habitat, parklands are expected to offer much-needed sanctuary for plant and animal species.

But even these places are being pressured, immeasurably more now than how the Park Service’s proponents possibly could have imagined in 1916 when the agency was established. Climate change, energy development, even something as seemingly harmless as park visitation, are impacting the parks and their wildlife. Many parks are being hemmed in and transformed into biological outposts. Some of those outposts are withering.

That ecological constriction carries its own pitfalls, unfortunately. Many large animal species – elk, bison, mule deer, bears, for example – are either migratory or have large home ranges that take them outside of parks. If they lose that ability to move, the odds of their extinction rise.

“The future persistence of many mammal populations within western North American parks, as well as the probability of extinct populations recolonizing the parks, is highly dependent upon human activities and land-use practices adjacent to the parks,” says Dr. William Newmark, a conservation biologist who has done extensive research on patterns of species extinctions in national parks in the United States and Tanzania. “In the long term, however, a net loss of species will most likely continue, particularly if habitat adjacent to the parks is extensively modified. Areas considerably larger than most parks in western North America will need to be managed if the historical mammal faunal assemblages within the parks are to be reestablished.”

Economic and political winds have pulled and pried and pushed the parks and their natural resources at times into unnatural settings. There have been pressures to dull science and cater to economics or philosophies that run counter to the Park Service mission. What should be amended to the Park Service’s century-old mission statement is a mandate that these places be left “unimpaired for the survival of their native species.”

The accumulation of insults against wildlife and their habitats risk turning these natural places into being nothing more than open-air zoos with park rangers as their keepers responsible for regularly inserting fresh genes to avoid toxic inbreeding and removing invasive species.

National parks need help if they are to succeed in helping slow the sixth mass extinction, and the general public and stakeholders must be alerted to issues that could impair parks and hasten species extinction. Some parks are being overrun in a search for oil and gas, climate change is creating problems ranging from sea level rise to more frequent and devastating wildfires, invasive species are wiping out native species.

Just as threatening, if not more so, is the growing biological isolation of some parks as they are hemmed in by development. To protect and strengthen species populations, there must be greater connectivity between and beyond national parks to allow for population growth and assured genetic diversity.

But does the will exist to do so?

Featured Article

Comments

This is a good article and I appreciate seeing it extend and broaden the discussion of how, if we want to save wildlife species, we have to save their gene pools, which entails sustaining their populations at levels that prevent further genetic losses in short evolutionary timeframes.  A major part, not all but a major part, of sustaining those populations entails sustaining sufficient habitat.  Protected areas, including parks, can indeed play an invaluable role in that process.

You mention the E.O. Wilson Foundation's warning that "the world's incredible biodiversity is shrinking fast" and you remind us that existing and potential parks can play a key role in "slowing the sixth mass extinction."  I agree.  You point out that "conservationists are calling for 30 percent of the world to be protected for nature" and I'm with you 100% there as well.  However, just as an aside that you might find interesting, I would offer this news item from last October (https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/10/03/naturalist-e-o-wilson-on-the-fight-...) in which Dr. Wilson was interviewed in anticipation of a then upcoming conference.  Dr. Wilson made the original call along these lines, which was to save 50% of the planet for nature, and I hate to see us relinquish almost half of that goal so soon.  In the interview, Dr. Wilson was asked about that original preservation call and about his rationale for wanting to save that amount of the planet for nature.  He responded...

That comes from a study that I did quite a few years ago, and which has since been substantiated, concerning the area of a reserve put aside for wildlife and the number of species that can live there indefinitely.  For example, if you save 10 percent of an area for native wildlife, animals and plants, you might be able to save 50 percent of the biodiversity.  This is from field data, and it's substantiated by careful analytic work that I did with another scientist 50 years ago.

Now, suppose we decided to save 85 percent of the plant and animal species. How much land would you need?  The answer is one-half.  By saving one-half, we can save 85 percent of the biodiversity.

So, I don't know exactly how much biodiversity can be saved or lost by protecting 30% of the planet and any amount of biodiversity saved is certainly a good thing; but, what you fight for ultimately effects what you get.


Thanks, Kurt, for this insightful and timely article.

Less than 7% of the United State land base is now safeguarded in national parks and non-national park wilderness areas. If we include other less-protected reserves, the number could be increased to perhaps 10-12%.

But if we are serious about meeting even the conservative target of 30% by 2013 by the Convention on Biological Diversity https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2020/01/12/un-convention-on-biodiver... we need much more protected land and water.

Based on research by RESTORE: The North Woods, we could double the size of the National Park System by adding 100 new parks and park expansions, most from existing public lands. This would bring the national park and non-park wilderness total to almost 14% of the U.S. land base -- perhaps 20% if we include other reserves.

If we got really serious and designated all qualified potential national park and wilderness lands, we would approach the 30% target. We could reach 50%, but it would be much more difficult and require rewilding of many degraded "working" landscapes and marine areas and the creation of reserves that have less-than-national park levels of protection. But these areas would still provide important biodiversity benefits.

Of course, a major expansion of parks and wilderness would not only help to mitigate species extinctions, but it would also sequester vast amounts of carbon to fight climate change and provide healthy green space near large cities that are seriously lacking in such areas. New parks and wilderness would also provide major economic benefits, in many cases to rural communities that now depend on boom-and-bust, ecologically destructive, resource extraction.


Whenever the importance of our environment and wildlife is raised I hear a wide variety of comments. Some say it's a sob story to get more money, some say we need the land for development, and then there are those that say wildlife will survive no matter what we do. Of course my thoughts are okay, keep your head buried in the sand!  It saddens me that people only seem to care about one species - homo sapiens.  I think without all the others we wouldn't be here.  I've been going to national parks as an adult since 1979 and I'm afraid my opinion is they aren't able to compete with being underfunded and the onslaught of abusive tourists. I am so thankful for the Environmentalists, National Park Rangers, and NP Staff  who are working to preserve our national parks.  I hope they find the energy to continue fighting for all of us - bless you and thanks so very much.


Thanks, Kurt, for bringing this issue to the forefront again. Protect all existing undeveloped land and implement restoration on damaged lands that have enough ecological integrity to be restored. Stop the human development footprint in its tracks. We have done way too much damage already, it needs to stop. And yes, by all means, give as much land as possible national park status. And in some areas, keep the humans out, let the wildlife truly prevail.


Add comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

The Essential RVing Guide

The Essential RVing Guide to the National Parks

The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.

This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.

You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.

So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.