GARDINER, Mont. – Today is the 100th anniversary of the creation of the National Park Service, and U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is celebrating the event in Gardiner, Mont., outside of Yellowstone National Park.

Gov. Steve Bullock will join Jewell, along with National Park Service officials and country singers Emmylou Harris and John Prine.

Scott Christensen, director of conservation for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, says it's significant that the secretary has chosen to celebrate the Park Service in Yellowstone, the country's first national park.

"It's appropriate that Yellowstone is a focal spot for the centennial celebration,” he states. “I think we have a great opportunity to reflect on the last 100 years of the park service, and then think about the next 100 years and what it may bring."

The event begins at 7 p.m. Mountain Time at the Roosevelt Arch and be livestreamed on the Internet.

Jewell has been touring national parks throughout the country this week in observation of the National Parks centennial.

Before Jewell heads to Yellowstone, she’ll stop in Glacier National Park to see the effects of climate change firsthand.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the park has only one-sixth of the glaciers it had in 1850.

Steve Thompson, chairman of Climate Smart Glacier Country, which is working with local communities near the park to find climate solutions, met with the secretary this week.

He says Glacier has been partnering with the local area to work on solutions, such as changes to infrastructure, even though some climate change effects might be irreparable.

"What can we do?” he questions. “And some things there's not a lot we can do, but going into it with our eyes wide open recognizes there's going to be some impacts.

“What can we do to adapt to those impacts, rather than get run over by them?"

Christensen says visitors from all over the world come to national parks – Yellowstone has seen record numbers of visitors in the past few years – but the parks are still being neglected.

"It's time that people step up and advocate for our parks and let their voice be heard, and ask and really demand that their elected officials adequately fund the parks and protect them as we go forward," he stresses.




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Conservation groups are rejoicing over the decision Friday by the Biden administration to reject a proposed mining road in Alaska.

The 211-mile Ambler Road would have sliced through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, severing the migration route for a Western Arctic Caribou herd.

Alex Johnson, interior Alaska director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said it was important for the feds to take a stand in Alaska so mining interests do not start eyeing other national parks.

"This is a very expensive, destructive and just highly speculative project that does not in any way support our clean energy goals as a country," Johnson contended. "And ultimately would permanently threaten the health and well-being of local communities and the tribes."

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski slammed the decision, warning it could limit jobs and tax revenues for Alaska by preventing exploration for minerals she said are important to national security, like copper, cobalt, gallium and germanium.

Jayme Dittmar, a photographer and filmmaker from Fairbanks, said the road would have been very disruptive to the 66 Native American villages along the proposed route.

"That'd be 168 trucks passing through close vicinity to the villages," Dittmar pointed out. "There would be hundreds of bridges built. It would dismantle a subsistence livelihood that's been in place for thousands and thousands of years."

The road was seen as a negative for tourism to the Brooks Range area. According to the Alaska Travel Industry Association, Californians make up 9% of visitors to Alaska.

Arizona conservation groups and sportsmen alike say they're pleased the Bureau of Land Management will now recognize conservation as an integral part of public lands management.

The agency's new rule puts protecting the environment on par with other land-use priorities.

Scott Garlid, executive director of the Arizona Wildlife Federation, said historically the BLM has done what he termed a "pretty good job," not only managing about 12 million acres of public lands in Arizona, but also protecting natural resources.

"They've got a tough job," Garlid acknowledged. "I think this rule helps make their job a little bit easier because it gives them some tools to balance those different demands on the 12 million acres that they manage."

Garlid predicted the rule will raise what he terms "harder-to-quantify conservation values" to the same level of importance as more extractive land uses like oil and gas exploration and mining. He thinks most Arizonans will recognize the new rule as a positive. A solid majority of Arizona voters across party lines say they are conservationists and use public lands for recreation.

To Garlid, the rule makes it clear the BLM is recognizing certain parts of federal lands, in Arizona and around the West, have been degraded. He contended restoration leases will be a good tool, allowing the BLM to lease acres to groups specifically to improve the conditions on a given landscape. He noted opponents of the new rule might see the leases as a way to "lock up" land but he argued it is not true.

"One example could be a nonprofit, like the Arizona Wildlife Federation," Garlid pointed out. "We could get a conservation lease from the Bureau of Land Management to do riparian restoration work, or work to remove invasive species along a creek bank."

According to the BLM, while a restoration or mitigation lease is in place, casual uses of the leased lands like recreation, hunting, fishing and research activities would generally continue.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

State and federal agencies are collaborating to increase the use of prescribed fires in the Northwest.

Prescribed fire is the controlled use of burns to minimize the larger risks of wildfires and smoke. It is seen as an increasingly important strategy as wildfire seasons pose greater threats to the Northwest.

Casey Sixkiller, Northwest regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said authorities want to work together to maintain forest habitats.

"Prescribed burn is one of the best tools we have for making our forests more resilient against catastrophic wildfires and they help to manage and target hazardous fuels and make for healthier forests," Sixkiller explained.

Sixkiller pointed out the EPA is involved because wildfire smoke poses risks to people's health. The collaboration is between federal agencies, departments in Oregon and Washington, and tribal governments.

Sixkiller noted the collaboration needed a formal agreement to move forward.

"That is what we've been able to do here with this agreement," Sixkiller emphasized. "To get federal land managers and states and us all in the same room, making sure that we're all on the same page about what success looks like."

Sixkiller added the collaboration has another advantage: It helps drive engagement with communities potentially in the path of prescribed burns.

"They have the confidence that the effort that's gone into planning that activity has been thought out from soup to nuts," Sixkiller acknowledged. "And that they have a seat at the table and are being engaged and their concerns are being addressed as we go forward with that activity."


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