Yellowstone, more than just another climate data point

Recently, we traveled to Montana to visit relatives. Yellowstone was close and the tourist season was only starting to spool up, so we considered it our chance to visit the world’s first national park. What we take for granted today, was only created in 1872.   As the world’s first national park, it does not take long to realize the world considers it a world park. There were people from everywhere on the globe.  Each summer Yellowstone National Park hosts 4 million visitors.

It is hard to imagine a more enjoyable way to host foreign visitors than our national parks. As a side note, the idea of making our beautiful Porcupine Mountains a national park may be great way to put our jewel of a park on the world’s destination radar screen.

Climate change for many who study it, can simply be a data set of rising temperatures, rising seas, melting ice and larger storms. We, in the UP, have been affected but not as rapidly as what the rest of the world is experiencing. Statistics prove we are warming here, especially Lake Superior, and our winters are gradually getting shorter. Also, large rainstorms are more frequent. The change here is one of the slowest in the world. In fact, scientists have nicknamed our weather region, “The Warming Hole”.  In places like Yellowstone it is obvious change is rapid. The most obvious change I noticed were the dying forests.  The forests once vibrant green, die in place shedding their bark, becoming gray zombie sticks that are a slow-motion nightmare. The nightmare is the pine bark beetle. The only thing preventing the pine bark beetle from killing and devouring the forest is the powerful frozen grip of old man winter. And he has lost his grip. The warmer winters are not killing the beetle and it is overrunning the pine kingdom.

What follows is from the Yellowstone, “2019 Experience Planner”, a publication of the Yellowstone National Park Lodges run by Xanterra. The article was written by Jenny White. I reprint it here to let you know that those of us who care, are not alone. And, if we chose to join, we can be part of that mighty army able to reverse the zombifying of our forests.

How Climate Change is Changing Yellowstone

In a place that breathes wildness and offers a unique glimpse into the steaming depths of the earth, climate change is more than a data set.

It’s personal.  We see it daily, especially those who live and work in Yellowstone National Park.

We have fewer ski days-fewer days of those glittering, silent winter vistas. Xanterra retired the old Bombardier snow coaches with their skis and cleated tracks in favor of snow coaches with low-pressure rubber tires that can handle the reduced snow conditions between Mammoth and Old Faithful in the winter while also improving noise and emissions.  Wolves have fewer days of easy hunting for ungulates in the deep snow. Bear hibernation cycles have altered.

The same audacious ecosystem that gives awe to park visitors also gives rise to a park in which every inch of ground and every plant and animal is connected, where we watch the effects of climate change cascade through the landscape.

We see it-the way spring comes earlier, and snow melts out of the mountains more quickly than it once did-flooding the nests of pelicans on the Molly islands in Lake Yellowstone and cavorting down the Yellowstone, the Snake and the Green rivers. Filter into the Missouri, now, by summer, the snowpack is largely gone, and the rivers run slower, lower, and warmer, impacting millions of people downstream as they filter into the Missouri, the Columbia and Colorado rivers.  Fire seasons test new limits, and with continued climate change, they will become more frequent and intense.  Forest insect pests, whose numbers have boomed in these warmer conditions, have decimated tree populations.

Like any wild place Yellowstone is doing its best to adapt, but there will be losses and drastic changes to come.  The park may very well be a strikingly different place in 15 to 30 years.  Our imaginations struggle to picture what it may look like, but the mountains of scientific data gathered over the last century have begun to paint the picture.

If you read the stories-the ones written in the water flow, the footprints, and the flames-there’s another message.  And that is that we also have to adapt as humans-to conserve resources to change some of our most wasteful habits.

And so, when Yellowstone National Park adopts sustainability measures to improve energy efficiency, install renewable energy systems, and conserve water, it’s not just for show.  It’s personal.

And for Dylan Hoffman, director of sustainability at Yellowstone National Park Lodges/Xanterra, keeping ambitious goals surrounding carbon emissions is about impacting global emissions as much as it is about taking care of the place where he lives.  You install water-saving faucets because there are wetlands at stake. You divert more than 3 million pounds of waste from the landfill each year because you’ve seen the numbers about snowmelt and park temperatures.

It requires a wide-open imagination-and a good grasp of data analytics-to understand impact.  A few pine bark beetles do not destroy a forest or a tree species; thousands do.  Just as one water faucet may seem insignificant, conserving water in the 840-plus buildings that Xanterra manages in Yellowstone makes a big impact.  As does inviting visitors to recycle, compost, and conserve.  When you serve 17,000 meals a day in the park, making sustainable choices about everything from straws to utensils and where the food comes from has an effect- on carbon emissions and the local economy.

The changes keep coming Yellowstone.  Some are good; others are alarming.  If nothing else, it’s time to remember each of our roles in conservation and in Yellowstone’s changing ecosystem.

By Jenny White

Adopted by Greyson Morrow, Citizen’s Climate Lobby