Indirect Environmental Consequences of National Parks

The indirect environmental impacts of National Parks visits that I'll be looking at refers to the attitudes and behaviors these parks foster. When we visit, what kinds of ideas do these National Parks promote? And do these ideas parallel environmentally sustainable initiatives or contradict them? 

Two studies have shown that National Parks have the potential to undercut pro-environmental behavior and I've outlined them below.

First, Jack Coburn Isaacs states that many individuals are more prone to partake in riskier (in terms of environmental) behavior at National Parks because its protected status provide a false sense of security as it acts as a form of insurance against the complete loss of the ecosystem. People assume that straying off a trail path won't impact the ecosystem because park rangers will make sure that the parks stay ecologically healthy and will take measures to safeguard the park if it does become damaged. Thus, National Parks have the potential to encourage greater environmental ignorance of the land.

Second, what is even more unfortunate is the fact that parks inherently create a boundary separating what areas require protection and what does not. So, not only may the protected status of National Parks promote a false sense of security within them, but it may further promote a false sense of ecological importance to the areas surrounding the park. The boundaries of the parks have the tendency to convey that only the areas within the park boundaries are ecologically important enough for protection. This presents us with another two problems. 

First and foremost, it creates ambivalence toward non-protected ecosystems by conveying the idea that it does not require protection and therefore, can be exploited. This ambivalence has the potential to not only foster environmentally unsustainable behavior but also has the potential to indirectly harm the environment within the park as pollution does not abide by the boundaries set forth by the NPS. 

In the Everglades National Park, citizens have planted invasive species upriver and which have traveled down to the marshland outcompeting the natural fauna and triggering eutrophication within the park. Moreover, the National Resource and Defense Council revealed that smog from neighboring cities have contributed to dangerous air day alerts being issued in 9 National Parks, including the Rocky Mountain National Park and Arcadia National Park this year. In a recent 2011 press release by the NPS, they revealed that the

majority of threats to natural resources stemmed from human activities, including development on lands adjacent to national parks that is negatively impacting resources inside park boundaries

Tom Kiernan, President of the National Parks Conservation Association reaffirms this problem.

"From Grand Canyon to the Great Smoky Mountains, mining, energy production, roads, and housing projects on adjacent lands are fragmenting wildlife habitat, diminishing air quality, disrupting cultural landscapes, and contaminating water resources"

Additionally, research by Susan Clark of Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and David Cherney of the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative showed that wildlife requires a greater boundary than what the National Parks currently have and thus, a viable wildlife population cannot be maintained. Yellowstone exemplifies this problem as the future of wolves and bears in Yellowstone depends not only on the maintenance of the wilderness within the park but also on the maintenance of the 18 million acres surrounding it. Because no sustainability initiatives have taken place across the park boundaries, there has been a 75% loss of large mammal migrations within the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Thus, our ambivalence to environmental protection in the surrounding areas end up harming the ecosystem within the parks themselves.

So then, enough with the negatives for now, what are some benefits of visiting National Parks?

Direct Environmental Consequences of National Parks

I always like to start with the bad and then go to the good stuff. So, I'm going to start off by investigating the environmental damages associated with National Parks and visits to them.

General environmental impacts National Parks have faced include water and air quality issues and wildlife and shoreline degradation associated with visitor use. 

A lot of the wildlife and shoreline degradation problems are associated with visitors not abiding by the Leave No Trace provision and also with outdoorsy nature lovers who want to be active members of nature by participating in hiking, climbing, rafting and other outdoor activities. 84% of National Parks superintendents have reported this as a major problem to their parks natural flora and fauna.

In regards to the pollution problem, most of the air pollution created within the park stems from people driving to get to visitor information centers, trails, or to go on the scenic roads established by the NPS. This has created a huge problem in many of the most popular parks as their popularity has increased congestion and smog. In fact, the Appalachian Voices found that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park had greater air pollution than Atlanta and rivaled Los Angeles in ozone pollution.

The Great SMOKY Mountains on the Left and the Great SMOGGY Mountains on the Right

Thus, our need to travel within the park to get to the scenic viewpoints is detrimentally affecting the scenery and the landscapes' survival.

Moreover, visiting National Parks requires us to emit carbon dioxide to get to the park. What is the effect of our carbon footprint in getting to these parks? Well, there are no reported figures, however, using my two experiences to National Parks, I calculated my carbon footprint and assumed it as an average to formulate a general conclusion about the environmental impact of our travel. Here are the numbers.

1.  Family Roadtrip to various National Parks in the four corner states (referred to as Family Roadtrip in later posts)

Roundtrip flight from Austin, TX to Denver, CO

Roadtrip across the 4 corner states visiting various National Parks along the way

2. Roadtrip with friends up the Western coast of the US (referred to as BL Roadtrip in later posts)

My Flight from Providence to San Francisco to meet up with my friends

Our drive up along the western coast and our visits to various National Parks

My Flight back home

Wow! What makes the biggest difference in carbon dioxide emissions is the air travel, which is the one component of eco-tourism that is almost always necessary. People in the US can drive to US National Parks, but that’s not entirely feasible if you want to visit the Redwoods yet live in Washington D.C. It becomes even more difficult when someone wants to go on an eco-tour in a different continent. I guess boat transportation is possible but what’s the likelihood of that happening?

So, between the 2 numbers, let's assume the average is around 3700 lbs of carbon dioxide emitted per person. The 2010 NPS National Summary Report states that in 2010, 281,303,769 people visited the National Parks. That means that in 1 year,  ~1 trillion lbs of carbon dioxide is emitted by National Park visitors. 


What does this figure mean exactly? Well, the EPA states that 1 trillion lbs of carbon dioxide is the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered by 96,715 acres of pine forest annually. The NPS currently encompasses around 43 million acres of land and while not all of it has forest cover, the Redwoods National Park is almost completely forest cover and encompasses 131,983 acres. So, maybe carbon dioxide emissions don't play a significant role in our environmental impact to these parks after all if the Redwoods can sequester all of the carbon dioxide we'd be emitted to visit these parks...

But just for kicks, what would our carbon emissions be if we had traveled by other means?

According to the Carbon Fund, traveling by plane is the least eco-friendly method. Rail and vehicular transportation emit much less carbon. So, I calculated the carbon dioxide emissions as if I took Amtrak or did a real road trip traveling just by car and got some astonishing results. 

OPTION 1: Driving the Entire Trip

* Here, I assumed that the car had the mph (25.2mph) of an average car in America, which was provided by the Carbon Fund.

OPTION 2: Traveling via Amtrak rather than by Plane

= 3094.471 lbs carbon dioxide/person

= 2329.721 lbs carbon dioxide/person

The most eco-friendly traveling method was definitely by car. Unfortunately, eco-friendly does NOT translate into efficient. They are somewhat inversely related. It would have been perfectly inversely related if the train system in America was better and there was no need for excessive detours. However, the pattern is pretty clear. The more carbon dioxide is emitted, the more efficient transportation tends to becomes. Thus, it becomes a battle over which is more important: time or the environment…

Here’s the ridiculous breakdown.

Traveling Option	Time (BL Roadtrip)	Carbon Dioxide Emissions (BL Roadtrip)	Time (Family Roadtrip)	Carbon Dioxide Emissions (Family Roadtrip)
Plane	15 hrs	4912.738 lbs CO2/person	5 hrs	1702.842 lbs CO2/person
Train	168 hrs	2999.22 lbs CO2/person	86 hrs	1622.88 lbs CO2/ person
Car	86 hrs	991.036 lbs CO2/person	33 hrs	806.961 lbs CO2/person

Here's the even more ridiculous route I would have had to have taken using Amtrak.

For the BL Roadtrip

Providence, RI to San Francisco, CA

Seattle, WA to Austin, TX

For my Family Road trip:

Austin, TX to Denver, CO and back

It's crazy how even with the extremely long route, travel by train still emits less carbon dioxide than a direct flight via plane... If only we had a better train system in the United States... What's wrong with us?

The reason for our sad train system stems from its decline in popularity due to the commercialization of cars as it allowed for people to travel short distances as quickly as trains without having to wait or abide by the train schedule.

However, trains are making a comeback in areas such as Santa Fe, as gas prices and plane tickets continue to steadily increase. Hopefully, soon enough, it will be possible to make a trip across the country via train without having to make unnecessary detours. It would be nice for the US to set up something like the Eurail, so that we could have a more efficient, popular, and fun way to travel throughout the country. Lots of people vacationing in Europe for an extended period of time purchase a Eurail pass to cheaply get from one country to another. With a better networked system, tourists in the US could have the opportunity to travel to a lot more places as it would be a faster and more efficient mode of travel. This could stimulate local economies in areas with train stops, decrease road congestion, and reduce carbon emissions, making our visits to National Parks much more eco-friendly

Take a look at the differences in the rail systems in Europe and the US. When comparing, remember that Europe is slightly bigger than the continental United States. Also, while it makes sense that there aren't rails throughout the Great Plains region of the US, compare the popular destinations in Europe and the US; you'll be able to see that major cities in the US do not have nearly as many routes as in major European cities.

Eurorail System - Sorry the picture cannot be larger without messing up the resolution

Since in the clash between time and the environment, time would win in most cases, I'm going to stick with the numbers I got from my original travel plans. Why do I assume that time beats environmental sustainability? Well, considering the fact that Americans do not get that much vacation time and therefore, every minute counts in one’s vacation, it is unlikely for someone to spend a majority of their time getting to their vacation spot. We could say that driving is a feasible possibility if visitors lived close by, however, a Parks Studies Unit at the University of Idaho revealed through visitor surveys that most visitors (over 85%) come from out of the state.

So  ~1 trillion lbs of carbon dioxide (a little less than what is sequestered by the Redwood trees at the Redwoods National Park) is the number I'll be using when evaluating the environmental sustainability of  National Parks.

Final Project - National Parks: Yay or Nay?

Yesterday, my environmental studies class had a lecture based on resource management and one of the methods mentioned was Eco-tourism. While there is no standard definition for eco-tourism, it involves visiting a protected ecosystem created with the intention of minimizing human impact in the area and of promoting the local economy. I had two thoughts on my mind during that lecture. First was my visit to the Redwoods National Park (a lot of the powerpoint slides had aesthetic pictures of trees) and the second was whether or not eco-tourism was really that environmentally friendly. The reason for my second contemplation was because eco-tourism made me think of one of the paintings by my favorite artist, Alexis Rockman.

Airport, 1997, Envirotex, digitized photo, vacuum-formed styrofoam with aluminum finish, plasticine, Laughing Gull specimen, and oil paint on wood, 56 x 44 x 4.5 in.

I saw this painting last spring break at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and was in utter amazement because of the message it conveyed. No matter how environmentally friendly we want to be, when we go on an eco-tour, it will most likely involve traveling to the site via carbon dioxide emitting modes of transportation that in effect, harm the environment.

Already, climate change is affecting the parks' environment. Reports from the NPS reveal that glacial retreat has been occurring in Glacier Bay and Kenal Fjords National Parks and that increased flooding and wildfires due to climate change have damaged Mesa Verde and Rocky Mountain National Parks. 

HOWEVER, eco-tours are so inspiring. Seeing vast untouched areas of beautiful nature is a remarkable experience. This picture of the Redwoods, may look tall, but if you actually go and see for yourself, it’s not tall at all; it’s GARGANTUAN!! I may only be 5’2, but even my tall friends had to bend their necks 90 degrees to attempt to see the top of the trees. My time there definitely reinforced my love for trees yet, came at an environmental cost. I had to fly from Providence to San Francisco and then drive up the California coast to get to the park and see these beautiful trees.

So, I was left in a predicament. Should eco-tourism to National Parks be allowed? Are eco-tours environmentally sustainable? What exactly are the environmental implications of these parks?

Thus, for my final project, I decided to answer these questions. Throughout the next couple of weeks, I will investigate the environmental sustainability issues associated with National Parks in the United States to try and determine whether or not we should continue to go to them and support them if we want to be environmentally conscious individuals.