There are 59 national parks in the United States, which range from the depths of the Grand Canyon in Arizona to the turrets of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. All are run by the National Park Service (NPS), which celebrated its centenary last year. The parks were created so that America’s natural wonders would be accessible to everyone, rather than sold off to real estate tycoons.

However, American national parks are facing three serious threats that will affect them in the next future: severe underfunding, climate change and a lack of diversity and youth among their visitors.

Climate change is killing trees, threatening birds and mammals, and leading to devastating wildfires across the 85m acres run by the NPS. 

 “As temperatures warm, things on higher elevations get warmer and things on lower elevations move up,” Patrick Gonzalez, the principal climate-change scientist at the NPS, told The Guardian. 

If no action is taken, the glaciers of Glacier National Park may melt away; Joshua trees could die out in the park that bears their name; bison may disappear from Yellowstone; and the ancient cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde in Colorado could crumble away.

The NPS is tackling the issue in two ways, said Gonzalez, first by cutting emissions from its own operations by 35% by 2020; and secondly, by adapting its management of the parks to cope with how things might look under climate change rather than trying to maintain them as pictures of the past. However, the success of their plan is highly dependant on the new Trump administration. And Trump has called climate change "a Chinese hoax". 

Read the full article in The Guardian.