Oak Fire Threatens Yosemite: Here Are The National Parks At Risk Of Burning As Climate Change Drives Wildfires

by techlowdown · 27 July 2022

Topline

With the Oak Fire raging towards Yosemite National Forest, the National Park Service is preparing for more wildfires to come as climate change fuels extreme droughts and record high temperatures across the west and Rocky Mountains—here are the parks conservationists warn face the biggest wildfire risks as a result of climate change:

Key Facts

The Oak Fire has burned 18,532 acres in California’s Mariposa County as of Wednesday morning, according to the state wildfire information site Cal Fire, bringing it within 25 miles of Yosemite National Park — and it’s only 26% contained.

The National Parks Service boosted precautions around Sequoia National Park’s namesake trees, going so far as to wrap them in sheets of aluminum foil last year as the KNP Complex Fire came dangerously close, just a year after the Castle Fire killed roughly 10,000 of the iconic trees (estimated to comprise 10% to 14% of all California sequoias) in Sequoia National Park and Sequoia National Forest.

The National Parks Conservation Association predicts Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park, Montana’s Glacier National Park and Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park will experience the “most significant increases” in wildfires of all U.S. parks.

Rangers at Rocky Mountain National Park are taking action to save the forest after a wildfire approached the park last November, two years after the two largest wildfires in state history came dangerously close to the park.

Rangers at Glacier National Park, which lost nearly 17,000 acres in a 2017 wildfire caused by a lightning strike in a particularly dry period, are turning to prescribed burns as a way to reduce available wood from fueling a fire, by burning it before larger fires get a chance to spread.

Two fires that merged outside Las Vegas, New Mexico, in April burned more than 341,000 acres, including large swaths of the Santa Fe National Forest — which the U.S. Forest Service blamed on climate change and poorly managed forest management that failed to prevent the fires from spreading rapidly, and out of control.

Big Number

5.57 million. That’s how many acres have burned so far in 2022 from 38,402 wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Most of those were human-caused and spread easier as a result of record temperatures and “very dry” forestland (called fuel).

Key Background

Scientists warn the effects of climate change can intensify droughts and bring new record high temperatures into fire-prone areas. The fires at Sequoia National Park were two of six major wildfires in the Sierra Nevadas since 2015. A fire in 2018 closed Yosemite as more than 14,000 firefighters battled the blazes. In Colorado, the Bircher Fire in 2000 burned 19,607 acres at Mesa Verde National Park, a site known for its archeological significance. But it’s not just the West Coast and Rocky Mountains that face a growing risk from wildfires. In Tennessee, some 14 people were killed and more than 14,000 residents near Great Smoky Mountains National Park were evacuated in 2016, when a wildfire burned 11,000 acres and came within half a mile of a major visitor center. Over the past three decades, wildfires in the U.S. have increased in frequency and caused more damage, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, which found fires burned over 10 million acres in 2020, up from 2 million to 4 million acres reported by the National Interagency Fire Center in the 1980s.

Tangent

Scientists also warn the effects of sea-level rise and warming temperatures are jeopardizing coastal and northern parks, as well. Glacier National Park, for instance, is anticipating a day not too far in the future when its namesake glaciers have all melted. They have lost 80% of their size from 1966 to 2015. Meanwhile, sea-level rise threatens South Florida’s Everglades National Park’s low-lying grassland and mangrove swamps. Extreme heat and drought conditions at California’s Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks are causing a significant population decline in species like the cactus mouse, kangaroo rat and mountain quail, a University of California, Berkeley report found.