Climate Change & Conservation: Federal Level
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.
― John Muir, Our National Parks
Over the Easter Break, I had the privilege to revisit Death Valley National Park in southern California with Chelsea. If you know me, you know that I want to be a park ranger later in life. Well folks, this is where I want to be. In the middle of this desert climate, I found something wild and free in myself and this landscape. I always found the area to be incredibly serene, and something about the grand geological formations gives you the sense that there is something greater at work in this world. Being there is an experience unlike any other, but enough about my sentimentality, let’s get into the spirit of our adventure in this desert wonderland.
Firstly, the entire reason I even wanted to go to Death Valley was to experience the Super Bloom. The Super Bloom is an event that occurs approximately every decade in Death Valley after incredibly unusual wet winters and autumns. Underneath the arid surface of this landscape lies a wealth of wildflower seeds, waiting to bloom. There are approximately 30 endemic species in Death Valley, and only during the blooms do you see the true power of this addition of water. This winter was particularly devastating, with a huge flooding event that occurred in October 2015. It resulted in the earliest blooms beginning in December, but after the flowers kept coming for months, the park quickly realized they were experiencing a Super Bloom phenomenon. Now all this sounds well and good right? That’s what I thought, too; that is until I spoke to Ranger Laura.
Chelsea and I met Ranger Laura on a hike through Golden Canyon where she was explaining how the landscape of Death Valley came into being, which is pretty cool in-and-of-itself, but irrelevant to the subject at hand. After she led her hike, Chelsea and I took the opportunity to conduct some interviews with her before she had to head back toward the ranger station. So I asked her the age old question: how do you see climate change’s effects in Death Valley?
Well the fact that the bloom began in December meant that a lot of those pollinators weren’t up and available to take advantage of it so we may lose some of those species. Now, what we were expecting was an El Nino rain pattern which we didn’t get. So we started out with that normal moist flood and we were supposed to get continual rainfall, but we’ve had less than a half an inch of rain since January. So now these plants are dying earlier, unpollinated, and this could be incredibly detrimental to the wildflowers in the future.
I had never looked at the situation like that before. It never occurred to me that the early blossoming could be problematic to future blooms. It also occurred to me how unique of a situation it was though, because the ecosystem of Death Valley hinges so much on appropriate balances of vegetation and wildlife, this would surely effect every single creature in this web of life. Life in Death Valley is much like John Muir’s quote, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” There is no creature that would not feel its effects. On another topic, Laura still had wisdom to impart:
People often comment that our highest temperature was taken in 1913, which was the 135 degrees Fahrenheit, but you have to remember the summer of 2001. That summer, we had 100 consecutive days over 100 degrees. And then 5 of those days consecutively were 129 degrees. Consecutive. A change in a cycle like that is going to effect cycles beyond it. Death Valley has some of the most watched weather in the world. People who live here have seen an incredible increase in hazy days, where moisture is present in the air, but it just won’t condensate. Problems like this are climate change.
After this jarring conversation and several other topics were covered, she suggested I talk to Ranger Mike at the visitor center, who was more on the science side of things. So we went and waited in line to speak to Mike for a few minutes, and when we got up there, he gave us a few bullet points on what he thought was important for us to know.
We have scientists looking at species diversity in plant life up at Eureka Dunes, and we have plenty of people who keep track of biodiversity among the animal life in the park as well. There are people up at Stovepipe Wells who watch the plant species and make sure changing temperatures don’t eradicate the life up in the mountains, and we have people at Salt Creek keeping an eye on the pupfish populations. But honestly, you are in the poster-child park when it comes to environmental change. This used to be the bottom of a lakebed! Now it’s a desert. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shaped this topography. Climate change has been happening for millennia, the only difference is the speed at which its occurring now. And as for the question, “How are we dealing with climate change on the federal level?” The answer is: We aren’t. We can’t. To change the climate, we need to change as people. Unfortunately, the parks can’t do anything but save what we have.
Ranger Mike’s bluntness was honestly incredibly refreshing and poignant. The fact of the matter is, they can’t do anything about climate change! The parks are in place to protect what we have left, but it’s up to us to make the effort that keeps these places alive. Meeting these rangers really broadened the way I look at the parks and gave me a lot of insight into how I can use my knowledge and experience to help educate others on how to encourage better habits.
In my opinion, Death Valley is one of the most beautiful places on earth. One of the only spots in the continental United States that is unaffected by light pollution, you can see the Milky Way above your head at night. The mountains are striped with greens, pinks, reds, and blues due to the richness of sediment that was found at the bottom of that old lake bed. It has been the homeland of the Timbisha-Shoshone tribe for thousands of years, and they have thrived in this land were others could not. It houses the same kind of rock as the ones on Mars, and its alien feel gave way to it being the setting for scenes from Star Wars (Tatooine, anyone?). It’s the hottest, lowest (-282 feet below sea level), and driest place in North America, with less than 2 inches of rainfall a year (you need less than 10 inches of rain to be qualified as a desert). To me, it’s unimaginable to think that we would ever not have this place safe and secure, but a more terrifying thought is that the world could look like this if we stay on our path of destruction. We must take Death Valley as a warning, and respect nature and the power that it holds over us… or else.
Ranger Laura, NPS
Ranger Mike, NPS
The Death Valley Facebook Page (dates, info)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140703-climate-change-national-parks-science/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/07/060728-global-warming.html
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/climatechange/visitation.htm