A national poll showed significant numbers of Americans want strong support for wildlife and wildlife habitat in and around national parks/NPS file

Nearly 90 percent of those surveyed about wildlife in national parks say more needs to be done to protect the fish, birds, and animals and their habitats.

The poll, taken in late June for the National Parks Conservation Association, showed strong bipartisan support for healthy bison herds, coral reefs, caribou in Alaska, the return of grizzlies to the North Cascades Ecosystem in Washington state, and for restoring wolves to national parks in the Lower 48 states.

“This united support for protecting park wildlife should serve as a call to action for policymakers in D.C. and in communities across the country,” said NPCA President and CEO Theresa Pierno. “Investing in the future of national park wildlife has far-reaching benefits including protecting clean drinking water, supporting made-in-America jobs, and maintaining connected landscapes."

The polling was done against the backdrop of proposed energy development in Alaska that could impact wildlife, National Park Service review of how bison are managed in Yellowstone National Park, and efforts by the Biden administration to preserve 30 percent of the nation's lands and waters for nature by 2030. The findings also come as a strongly divided Congress grapples with many of these issues.

"One area of focus we explored in the poll was public opinion around the factors driving the biodiversity crisis. Climate change and human development combined are leading causes of the crisis. It is estimated that as many as one million species around the world are at risk of extinction if we don’t act," Bart Melton, NPCA's wildlife program senior director, said in an op-ed column. "Wildlife populations in your national parks are no exception. From migratory caribou at Gates of the Arctic to gray whales passing seasonally through the protected waters at Channel Islands to monarch butterflies at Great Smoky Mountains, no species is off the hook in a time of monumental change."

The surveying, done by The Harris Poll, is not without its contradictions. While it found on one hand that Gen Z, adults aged 18-26, was least likely among those surveyed to say more needs to be done to protect wildlife and their habitats, that generation also was most likely, among all generations, to support a political candidate who would "prioritize safeguarding national park wildlife populations" over one who would not. The Gen Z respondents also were least likely among the different generations to support reductions in water pollution to protect marine wildlife, and least likely to say more needs to be done to protect birds and pollinators from air pollution.

Also interesting was that the Baby Boom Generation, which led the push in the 1960s for environmental protections, was the least likely generation to say climate change was harmful to national park wildlife.

To add some context to those seeming contradictions, the polling nevertheless showed significant majorities of those two generations, along with the others, were in support of those wildlife-friendly issues.

In general, 92 percent of those surveyed were in support (of one or all) of federal efforts to protect marine waters and their varied habitats (reefs, salt marshes, coastal wetlands), protect wildlife habitats from development, dedicate more resources to habitat protection on lands surrounding national parks, develop or improve migrational corridors, dedicate more resources to recovering threatened and endangered species, and dedicating more resources to restoration of rivers and coastlines.

Seventy-one percent of those surveyed were in favor of the federal government paying to improve wildlife habitat on private lands and remove fencing if necessary to maintain national park wildlife.

The survey was conducted online from June 20-22 and reached 2,037 U.S. adults age 18 and older. The results were weighted to align with demographics with their actual proportions in the population, said The Harris Poll. The sample data was judged to be accurate to within +/- 2.7 percent using a 95 percent confidence level.