Ready for more tourist flights over national parks like Crater Lake? (mwhyte / flickr) http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwhyte/ / CC BY 2.0
Ian Edlind over at TrailVoice.com sent us a link to continue the discussion about whether America has true wilderness anymore.
Sound has a lot to do with the answer.
The Wilderness Society interviewed Karen Trevino, the National Park Service’s natural sounds and night skies program (anyone wanna guess where Karen lands on the presidential succession of power), and Kurt Fristrup, a park service acoustics expert, about sound issues in the parks.
Sound issues? Yeah, such as – How can we have true wilderness when the sounds of coyotes wailing and elks bugling are meshed with the roar of snowmobiles or the hum of airplanes?
When asked about how noise – rumbling motorcycles, construction on the park borders and so on – impacts wild life, here was Trevino and Fristrup’s answer:
Great grey owls are capable of hearing mice under a foot of snow and then diving down to catch them. When the sounds of those mice are masked, the owls’ ability to find enough food is compromised. When animals flee sounds that frighten them, they waste energy and are distracted from activities that are central to their survival such as eating and procreating. There can be serious reductions in reproduction. Research is also showing that some birds are changing their mating songs because of noise.
Ever been to Shenandoah National Park, Va., during a sunny summer Sunday? Not exactly quiet with all the traffic moving up and down Skyline Drive, although I would argue that you’re not at all aware of the traffic if you’re deep into one of the ravines cut into the Blue Ridge.
Sunlight bounces off the mountains below Clingman's Dome. (Compass Points Media / flickr) http://www.flickr.com/photos/compasspointsmedia/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
Mankind’s imprint is omnipresent, even in our national parks, supposedly the last refuges of the American wilderness. I’ve sat in a trail shelter watching passenger jets fly overhead and stood on the concrete platform at Clingman’s Dome to see the last rays of sunlight turn the folded mountain landscape into shades of amythest.
I don’t believe there’s any going back to 1872, when Yellowstone was founded – before cars, motorcycles and snowmobiles. Parks like Rocky Mountain, Shenandoah and Acadia were founded with roads, inviting a new driving public to come check out the scenery. That’s not likely to change.
The parks just can’t be for us, those who would travel through the parks primarily on foot. Parks have front country, too, with roads and buildings and campgrounds, which are accessed by people operating motorized vehicles. For them, wilderness might just be a stretch of Skyline Drive where you have woods on either side and white tailed deer are crossing the median. For them, that place might be the definition of fresh air and nature, while others might scoff at the idea of seeing nature from the road.
A law relegating decibel levels similar to those in urban centers? That’s begging for a fight between wilderness and motorcycle lobbies, and that won’t be a pretty sight.
But wait … here’s the most startling revelation from the interview:
Q: And how do things look up in the sky, with aircraft?
A: The Park Service has less control there. The Federal Aviation Administration, which has most of the jurisdiction, has forecast that over the next ten years the number of national park air tours will grow from 180,000 to nearly two million. That’s a ten-fold increase. A large percentage of the current flights are at the Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, and the parks in Hawaii. They are also a major concern at Mount Rushmore because the tours occur in such a concentrated area.
What recession?
Are you kidding me?! Tourist flights growing from 180,000 to 2 million during the next decade? Where are people getting the money to not only pay for a ticket but to start up one of these businesses?
And that brings me to one of the biggest questions we should consider – Can wilderness in today’s society exist if it isn’t economically viable for itself on the communities around it?
