The Road to 30: National Parks
How national parks are the heart of landscape conservation
This story map, in collaboration with the National Parks Conservation Association, is the seventh installation of our ongoing “Road to 30” series exploring the vision of protecting 30 percent of our land and water by 2030. In this storymap, we explore how our treasured national parks form the heart of conservation networks.
…or read a summary below.
Across America, natural areas that we rely on for clean air and water, biodiversity, outdoor recreation, and local economies are disappearing. To combat this crisis, scientists are urging that we conserve 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by 2030 — a goal that can help save nature, strengthen local economies, and improve public health.
There is not just one path to conservation. Finding diverse and innovative ways to protect landscapes that support local communities and preserve the land’s specific values will be critical in achieving the “30x30” goal. Currently, about 12 percent of American lands are protected. While we still have a ways to go, strong leadership and grassroots momentum are bringing us closer to the goal.
The National Park System
Our national parks have been called “America’s crown jewels.” But in addition to protecting breathtaking places, national parks also serve as anchors that help advance protections in surrounding natural and cultural landscapes.
As anchors of larger ecosystems, national parks and preserves are essential pieces of the 30x30 puzzle and provide a strong foundation from which collaborative conservation efforts can radiate. By building from places that Americans already know and love, we can connect landscapes and ecosystems that are valued and protected for generations to come.
The National Park Service was established in 1916 with a mission of conserving America’s national parks and monuments. Today, the Park Service manages 62 national parks and a total of 421 protected sites, from historical landmarks to national seashores. These parks not only preserve America’s stunning landscapes, they tell our nation’s story, from Indigenous communities to those fighting for civil rights.
National parks have been essential to traditional conservation efforts. But climate change is already changing our national parks. Researchers have found that national parks are warming at twice the rate of the United States as a whole. Climate change doubled tree death in Western parks from 1955 to 2007, while the number of glaciers in Glacier National Park has been cut in half since 1968. In 10 western national parks, snowpack is at its lowest level in 800 years, affecting water systems on which tens of millions of people rely. These climate change impacts will fundamentally change our national parks and their role in the conservation landscape. Parks cannot simply stand alone, isolated islands in a sea of development.
As we aim to protect 30 percent of America by 2030, we must work with communities to create functional, climate-resilient conservation networks that integrate many land uses. Wildlife corridors, protected private lands, and other innovative land protections must form the connective tissue between large areas of well-protected habitat such as wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, and national parks.
Glacier National Park
Glacier National Park is at the wild heart of a stunning region known as the Crown of the Continent. This 18-million-acre ecosystem presents real-world lessons about how to protect both communities and wild nature at a landscape scale. Some 160,000 people call this area home, and over many decades they have formed unparalleled and powerful coalitions to protect the transboundary lands that surround Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.
Vast swaths of the Crown of the Continent are protected as national parks, provincial parks and wilderness areas, while other portions of the region are home to working ranches, timber forests, vibrant communities and tribal lands. This patchwork protects both the people and the places — the economies and the ecologies — and represents a model for how national parks can serve as centerpieces for large-landscape conservation.
Everglades National Park
Everglades National Park protects the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, and is one of three national park units that anchor the Greater Everglades ecosystem and its conservation network — along with Big Cypress National Preserve and Biscayne National Park.
Combined, these parks protect nearly 2.5 million acres of expansive wetlands, vibrant marine and coral ecosystems, and ultra-biodiverse forests. All this is hemmed in by heavily developed coasts to the east and west, creating a unique set of challenges and opportunities to protect world-renowned wetlands and waters and the wildlife that calls the Greater Everglades home.
Appalachian National Scenic Trail
At 2,190 miles long, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail is one of the most biologically diverse units in the National Park System. Beginning in Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia and ending at Baxter State Park in Maine, the trail passes through some of the most significant and rare ecosystems remaining along the East Coast.
The Appalachian National Scenic Trail offers an important opportunity to reconnect the many fragmented landscapes that exist from Georgia to Maine. If robustly protected, this unique north-south corridor can help plant and wildlife species migrate to critical habitats as their preferred temperature ranges shift and the impacts of climate change and species extinction accelerate at unprecedented rates.
Hovenweep National Monument
While Hovenweep itself is a small national monument straddling southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado, its surrounding Colorado Plateau landscape is a critical complex of canyons and mesa tops that culturally connect Bears Ears National Monument, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and Mesa Verde National Park.
If fully protected, these lands would fill in a major missing component of a broader cultural landscape and help create a connected corridor stretching all the way from Grand Canyon National, through Canyonlands, to Mesa Verde National Parks.
LEARN MORE THROUGH THE INTERACTIVE STORYMAP
For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. To learn more about the 30x30 goal and to participate in discussions about this bold vision, visit RoadTo30.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to Go West, Young Podcast.”
Read the rest of the Road to 30 storymap series here:
