Julie Thomas McNamee, NPS resources and climate change liaison, and Kathryn Parker, Grand Canyon’s climate change coordinator, facilitate a “visioning exercise” during the park’s CFP workshop. The session explored mitigation and adaptation strategies needed to make the park’s 2019 climate friendly vision a reality. NPS photo.

Grand Canyon National Park held a Climate Friendly Parks (CFP) workshop in mid-October.  The CFP program assists national parks with management tools and resources to address climate change, both within park boundaries and the surrounding community.  Over 100 participants attended the workshop, which included not only Grand Canyon staff but staff from nearby parks, park concessioners, tribes, local universities, public utilities, NGOs (non-governmental organizations), local community representatives, and other federal, state and local governments.

By partnering with park concessioners, a greenhouse gas inventory was completed prior to the workshop.  This inventory provided estimates of the emissions resulting from activities occurring within the park.  The greenhouse gas inventory was used by workshop participants to identify potential action items for the park’s climate action plan. A climate action plan is one of the primary outcomes of a CFP workshop. 

Grand Canyon’s action plan is currently being drafted from the ideas generated by five different working groups that explored the climate related issues of education and outreach, transportation, waste, energy, and impacts and adaptation.  The final action plan will outline “climate friendly” actions the park will be taking, in collaboration with park partners, workshop participants and nearby communities to further reduce its carbon footprint, educate park visitors and employees, and adapt to the projected impacts of climate change. Grand Canyon’s final climate action plan should be completed by the end of January, 2010.

Grand Canyon National Park is proud to already be engaged in many climate friendly activities, such as utilizing photovoltaic panels at its primary visitor center, supporting an extensive recycling program, implementing a concessioner’s in-park volunteer environmental service program, and providing an extensive mass transit shuttle system within the park that utilizes clean alternative fuel.  Unfortunately, the American Southwest is already experiencing climate-related increases in the number and severity of wildfires, longer droughts, and loss of some species while others migrate to different elevations, all of which indicate that more can and must be done. 

Grand Canyon’s CFP workshop was the next step in a continued commitment to providing leadership in addressing this globally important issue.

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Name: Shannan Marcak