Guns are no longer prohibited in America's national parks. (Photo courtesy of Fenners)
People can now carry guns in national parks. The National Park Service is adapting to the new law. Samara Freemark reports:
Transcript
People can now carry guns in national parks. The National Park Service is adapting to the new law. Samara Freemark reports:
The new policy means a reversal for the nation’s 392 National Park sites. Firearms have been prohibited in the parks.
But now….
Whatever law you were under in that state outside of the park now applies in the national park unit.
That’s National Park Service spokesman David Barna. He says that means that parks everywhere except Illinois and Washington DC will allow firearms.
But different states have different laws about the specifics – for example, whether you can conceal your weapon or not.
Barna says that could get complicated.
Appalachian Trail passes over 14 states. Yellowstone National Park is in 3 states. And the burden is going to be on the public to know those various laws.
Barna says the Park Service will help gun owners out with website updates and postings in park facilities.
But he says they can’t put up notices every time a park trail crosses a state line.
Melting glaciers as seen from aboard the Fairweather Express II in Glacier Bay, Alaska (Photo by John Ryan)
Glacier Bay, Alaska (Photo by John Ryan)
Steller’s sea lions on a rock in Glacier Bay (Photo by John Ryan)
A National Park might not be the first place
you’d expect to turn into a crime scene. But John Ryan
found one – of sorts – on a boat touring Alaska’s Glacier
Bay National Park:
Transcript
A National Park might not be the first place
you’d expect to turn into a crime scene. But John Ryan
found one – of sorts – on a boat touring Alaska’s Glacier
Bay National Park:
(music)
Scene of the crime. Glacier Bay National Park. 9 o’clock on a sunny Saturday morning.
The crime: Global warming. You know: ice caps melting. Sea level rising. Deserts and
disease spreading. Scientists say it’s big, very big.
(music)
Intergovernmental investigators have ID’d the perpetrator: it’s us. Emissions from fossil
fuels like coal and oil have started heating the earth.
But here on the Fairweather Express II, you’d never know it. Park ranger Kevin Richards
is at the mic, entertaining passengers as we cruise past mile-wide glaciers
in the sun.
“That snow fell when Thomas Jefferson was signing the Declaration of
Independence.”
Richards tells the crowd how the glaciers have retreated 60 miles in the past 200 years.
But he hasn’t once mentioned global warming.
In the audience, Anchorage pathologist James Tiesinga smells a rat.
“The rangers seem very reluctant to say the words ‘global warming’, they skirt
the issue of why the glaciers are receding. I can’t help but wonder if the Park Service
has communicated the message to its employees, ‘don’t bring this up, it’s a hot topic’.”
And I notice the visitors’ newsletter put out by the park talks in depth about the changing
glaciers, but fails to mention that the climate is being changed by humans.
During a break in the naturalist’s stand-up routine, Tiesinga asks why there has been no
mention of global warming? Are we witnessing a coverup?
(music)
As huge chunks of ancient ice tumble into the bay, the Park Ranger, Kevin Richards, says, no,
there’s no censorship of climate science.
“Until very recently, yeah, if you’re working for the government, you
probably didn’t talk a lot about it. But now it’s okay, it’s an open forum right now.”
He says he’ll get to the connection
between melting glaciers and a warming earth near the end of his talk, but it’s a lot more
complicated than you might think.
“We just can’t talk about tidewater glaciers the same way we do about
terrestrial glaciers. It’s not the same process.”
Here’s why it’s not the same: tidewater glaciers have snouts that stick out into the ocean. Terrestrial glaciers are
land-locked. Richards goes on to say that land-locked glaciers in the mountains above
Glacier Bay are shrinking under a warming climate. But he says the dramatic loss of 60
miles of ice from Glacier Bay itself is not a sign of global warming.
(music)
To fact-check the on-board nature talk, I called up Roman Motycka.
He studies glaciers at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks’ Geophysical
Institute. He confirmed that global warming is hitting most Alaskan
glaciers hard.
“90% of the glaciers in South-Eastern Alaska are wasting away, and that’s
complicated, but primarily due to global warming.”
So why aren’t tourists in Glacier Bay hearing that when they witness fall
ice chunks fall into the ocean?
“It’s really complex there. Here’s what happened when all
that ice got lost.”
Motycka explains that tidewater glaciers have their own cycles of
advance and retreat. In a nutshell, when the snout of a glacier ends up floating in deep water, it becomes inherently prone to calving – that is, dropping icebergs – independent of the climate. And that’s what’s happened in Glacier Bay. So, in other words…
“Your naturalist was right, the terrestrial glaciers are the
ones that are more important to look at in terms of straight climate
change.”
(music)
Back on the Fairweather Express II, Park Ranger Kevin Richards
finishes his day at the mic talking about global energy consumption and
making a plea for people to protect the environment back home,
wherever they come from.
So in the end, park rangers are still the nature lovers in funny green outfits you might
remember from your childhood. And as this episode of Thaw and Glacier comes to a
close, all is well in Glacier Bay. Except for a little thing called…
Audra Brecher, who lives in Manhattan, says the city lights are her stars. (Photo by John Tebeau)
Brecher works in an architecture firm, "recycling" buildings from more than 120 years ago. (Photo by Mark Brush)
Brecher shops at a farmer's market, where she can buy fresh fruit and vegetables from Hudson River Valley. (Photo by John Tebeau)
Big cities have skyscrapers, smelly subway stations,
and people from all over the world. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to the
environment, Kyle Norris talks with one big city
resident who says that the people and places of New
York City connect her to the world:
Transcript
Big cities have skyscrapers, smelly subway stations,
and people from all over the world. In our
occasional series about people’s connections to the
environment, Kyle Norris talks with one big city
resident who says that the people and places of New
York City connect her to the world:
Audra Brecher wears her chestnut hair in a Louise
Brooks bob. Actually, she’s a dead ringer for Louise Brooks,
that silent film movie star. She’s stylish
and snazzy.
Audra lives in Manhattan. Her apartment is above a
pizza parlor on a bustling avenue. She says in the
evenings, she hears blaring taxi horns and the thumping
techno music from the clubs on her block. But she
loves everything about the city: its sounds,
its architecture, and its people.
I once asked her if she ever missed nature. She said,
“The city lights are my stars.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything. I don’t
feel maybe such a romantic feeling about stars, the
night sky. I feel maybe the same excitement when I
see the city lights and when I walk across Lexington
and I look north and I see the Chrysler Building lit
up and those beautiful, starry chevrons of the
Chrysler Building. I think maybe the feeling I have
looking at that, is what other people feel when they
look at the night sky.”
So here’s the deal. When I think of someone connected
to nature I picture a state park ranger. I picture a crunchy-
granola type. I do not think of someone who wears
fashionable clothes and wines and dines in the city. I
do not think of Audra. But Audra says she has a
better connection to the natural world than people in the
suburbs:
“I go to the Union Square market on Saturday and I
buy varieties of apple that have come from the
Hudson River Valley and I know my parents, who
live in the suburbs in Florida, they go to the grocery store
where they buy everything pre-packaged and already
cut up fruit. I feel like my experience is actually closer to
nature even though I’m in heart of Manhattan.”
Audra works in an architecture firm. She’s a historic
preservationist, and she’s studied architecture all over the
world. But she grew up in the Florida suburbs. And
what she saw there – the sprawl and development –
seemed wrong to her:
“What led me to do what I do is noticing how
unhappy I was with a suburban existence. Having to
get in car to drive somewhere, or looking at
expanses of parking lot in strip centers and
subdivisions with gated communities that are named after
the natural feature they replace. Like ‘Eagle’s Nest.'”
Those new developments seem wasteful to her. She
likes the idea of re-using materials. And this
connects her to nature. At her job, she’s always in
close contact with old buildings and old materials:
“Yeah, I love the materiality of them. I mean, I love
an old brick from 120 years ago. I love the building
materials and the craftsmanship from that time. I
love the idea of taking something that has been cast
aside and might not be used and giving it a new
purpose, giving it a new vitality. Taking a building that
somebody has abandoned and giving it a new life.
To me, that’s the ultimate recycling.”
Audra says although she’s not walking through the
forest and communing with nature, she feels
ecologically responsible in different ways. She either walks or takes public transportation to get someplace. She never drives a car.
“I’m not asking so much of the world in terms of
water and energy and resources and I feel like when
live in dense environment you are allowing for those
things to remain protected and safe. And pristine. So
I feel like a responsible citizen living in Manhattan
in many ways.”
This stylish city-slicker may not be the person
who pops in your head when you think of someone who’s connected to nature. But Audra’s
deeply connected to the world around her in her own way. She’s also aware of how we can use natural
resources in better ways.
Guns are no longer prohibited in America's national parks. (Photo courtesy of Fenners)
