What to save? Climate change forces brutal choices at National Parks
By Zoë Schlanger New York Times,Updated May 18, 2021, 2 hours ago
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Some of the 1.3 million Joshua trees that burned in the Dome Fire in Mojave National Preserve in California on Oct. 29, 2020.Max Whittaker/NYT
For more than a century, the core mission of the National Park Service has been preserving the natural heritage of the United States. But now, as the planet warms, transforming ecosystems, the agency is conceding that its traditional goal of absolute conservation is no longer viable in many cases.
Late last month the service published an 80-page document that lays out new guidance for park managers in the era of climate change. The document, along with two peer-reviewed papers, is essentially a tool kit for the new world. It aims to help park ecologists and managers confront the fact that, increasingly, they must now actively choose what to save, what to shepherd through radical enviro
What to save? Climate change forces brutal choices at national parks.
By Zoë Schlanger New York Times,Updated May 18, 2021, 5:58 p.m.
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Abraham Miller-Rushing, an ecologist and the science coordinator at Acadia National Park, at Bass Harbor Marsh in the park in Maine. For decades, the core mission of the Park Service was absolute conservation. Now ecologists are being forced to do triage, deciding what to safeguard â and what to let slip away.JOHN TULLY/New York Times
For more than a century, the core mission of the National Park Service has been preserving the natural heritage of the United States. But now, as the planet warms, transforming ecosystems, the agency is conceding that its traditional goal of absolute conservation is no longer viable in many cases.
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