Last updated: July 10, 2024
Article
Resisting, accepting, and directing change in parks
Cuyahoga Valley National Park
![Black locust Close up of a black locust tree branch](/articles/000/images/Black-locust2-Larry_Allain_WARC_USGS-revised2.jpg?maxwidth=650&autorotate=false)
Larry Allain / USGS (WARC)
Cuyahoga Valley National Park, in northeastern Ohio, devotes considerable resources to fighting invasive species, including black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), a species native to southern Ohio and nearby southwestern Pennsylvania, as well as states further south. However, the park is now rethinking its approach in recognition of ongoing trends and projections of warming temperatures and increasing precipitation. Whereas until recently this new arrival was categorized as an “invasive” (undesirable) species and its establishment strenuously resisted, black locust is now viewed as a regionally native species simply shifting its range northward “naturally” as it tracks climate change, and distinguished from “problem” species not native to North America. In this view, accepting the black locust represents not only a money-saver but also an articulation that ecosystem stewardship and conservation in an era of sustained, directional climate change increasingly means working with climate change-driven native biodiversity redistribution.
Glacier National Park
![Two fish swimming above a rocky streambed](/articles/000/images/Ole_Bull_web-revised2_2.jpg?maxwidth=650&autorotate=false)
USGS
Indiana Dunes National Park
![Karner blue butterfly Blue butterfly with white wing tips perched on small white flowers](/articles/000/images/DSC04096-revised.jpg?maxwidth=650&autorotate=false)
Gregor Schuurman/Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Rocky Mountain National Park
![Blackened standing tree trunks with purple flowers growing on rocky slope](/articles/000/images/20210715_114641-revised.jpg?maxwidth=650&autorotate=false)
Koren Nydick / NPS
Capitol Reef National Park
![Uplands_CARE Person in hat crouches to the desert ground, looking closely at plant transect with yellow flowers.](/articles/000/images/Uplands_CARE_1.jpeg?maxwidth=650&autorotate=false)
NPS
Haleakalā National Park
![A kiwikiu, a Hawaiian honeycreeper with a large, curved beak and vibrant green-yellow plumage, rests on someone's hand. A kiwikiu, a Hawaiian honeycreeper with a large, curved beak and vibrant green-yellow plumage, rests on someone's hand.](/articles/000/images/Chris-Warren_Male-MAPA-Waikamoi-2021.jpg?maxwidth=650&autorotate=false)
Chris Warren (NPS/Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project)