By John Hartman
My wife, daughter, son-in-law, two grandsons and I recently visited Glacier National Park. This was late June, so right in the middle of the hot stretch we all suffered through. Even though it was hot and crowded we had a wonderful time. The lakes and streams were refreshing. The mountains were awe inspiring, even through a slight haze. I never grow tired of the Going-to-the-Sun Road — a miracle of engineering and one of the most beautiful highways in the world.
It wasn’t long after our visit to Glacier that I came across an article by Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana. She has spent the last 30 years researching how bark beetles are decimating pine forests. She also made a recent trip to Glacier. I quote from her article:
“Glacier National Park. 97F in June. Little snow left. 75F degree water. Glaciers disappearing. This is what we hear. But the worst is what most never see.”
Loss of snow and warm lake water so early in the season is devastating to fish and algae. The hot temperatures cause early blooming and wilting of the flowers. The bees and hummingbirds that depend on them are in trouble; their food is gone.
“There have been total losses of a lot of baby birds this year. You see these ospreys and eagles sitting on top of the trees in their nests and those young, they just can’t take the heat. Year after year of that and you lose your birds.”
“People seem to think of extinctions as some silent, painless statistic. It’s not. You look at birds that can no longer find fish because they’ve moved too far off shore. They’re emaciated, they’re starving to death. We are at a point that there’s nothing untouched.”
“I had gone from being an ecologist to a coroner.”
One of the joys of my visit to Glacier was teaching my 5 year old grandson, Miles, about wildflowers. We walked down the trail and I pointed out a wildflower and gave it a name. Pretty soon he was happily going down the trail pointing out the wildflowers he knew.
What can you do about climate change? It can be changing laws or it can be teaching a child to appreciate nature. Just do something.
John Hartman