Last updated: October 16, 2024
Article
Too much to lose: Preparing national park museum collections for climate change
By Laura Vachula, August 2024
NPS / Bradley Hagstrom
In a historical building, tucked amongst spruce, the Denali National Park museum collection storage room holds an array of items from the past: trace fossils, mammoth bones, projectile points and stone tools, historical photographs, and Barbara Washburn's parka — worn as she summited Denali and became the first woman to do so.
National Park Service museum curator Kimberly Arthur manages the care, storage, record keeping and other aspects of the collection, maintaining long-term safeguards to reduce deterioration and potential damages. She stores items based on their individual needs and is mindful of factors within the facility that could lead to degradation, like temperature, humidity, and visible and UV light exposure.
“All of these items are significant and would be terrible to lose,” Arthur said. The pieces in the Denali National Park museum collection hold the stories and heritage of the park — they’re irreplaceable.
But on June 30, 2024, following weeks of warm, dry weather, a patch of black spruce trees ignited near the railroad tracks that run along the park’s eastern boundary. The spark was just a mile north of the Denali National Park entrance. Flames rose from the Mount Healy hillside and smoke filled the Nenana River Canyon. The fire spread to more than 300 acres in just a few hours.
Due to a diligent response team and change in weather, the fire kept its distance from park structures, but the event was a reminder that conditions outside of protected museum facilities need to be considered as much as those within. Fortunately, with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, national parks in Alaska have already begun preparing for future sudden events and are developing plans to bolster museum facility resilience to reduce the long-term impacts of climate change.
National Park Service museum curator Kimberly Arthur manages the care, storage, record keeping and other aspects of the collection, maintaining long-term safeguards to reduce deterioration and potential damages. She stores items based on their individual needs and is mindful of factors within the facility that could lead to degradation, like temperature, humidity, and visible and UV light exposure.
“All of these items are significant and would be terrible to lose,” Arthur said. The pieces in the Denali National Park museum collection hold the stories and heritage of the park — they’re irreplaceable.
But on June 30, 2024, following weeks of warm, dry weather, a patch of black spruce trees ignited near the railroad tracks that run along the park’s eastern boundary. The spark was just a mile north of the Denali National Park entrance. Flames rose from the Mount Healy hillside and smoke filled the Nenana River Canyon. The fire spread to more than 300 acres in just a few hours.
Due to a diligent response team and change in weather, the fire kept its distance from park structures, but the event was a reminder that conditions outside of protected museum facilities need to be considered as much as those within. Fortunately, with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, national parks in Alaska have already begun preparing for future sudden events and are developing plans to bolster museum facility resilience to reduce the long-term impacts of climate change.
In the heat of the moment
Downstairs at the Denali Visitor Center, a traditional Athabascan, also known as Dene, bear spear is on display in a recently updated cultural exhibit. The spear — a long birch shaft wrapped in moose sinew with a steel blade — points angled upward to demonstrate the way hunters braced one end of the spear on the ground, so that a charging bear would run into the point.
NPS Photo
The piece is on loan from the Starr family of Tanana who have lived, worked, and subsisted on the land before it was a national park. The bear spear is more than 100 years old.
“It’s a significant cultural item,” Arthur said.
As the fire burned, the bear spear was one of the items she was most concerned about. It was only a mile away from the flames and within the evacuation zone.
Consulting the park’s Museum Collections Emergency Operations Plan, Arthur worked with her colleagues to quickly decide the best actions to protect the museum items. Because the emergency operations plan is awaiting revisions, the outdated contact information for temporary storage locations wasn’t useful. Arthur called her local community contacts to find a safe space — about 30 miles south of the wildfire — to bring the museum property that was on display at the visitor center: the Starr family bear spear, Adolph Murie’s camera, and the pen that President Woodrow Wilson used to establish the park. Her greatest concern was that the items could be damaged by smoke or water during fire suppression.
“I just had to make decisions, and I’m glad that I knew people in the community,” Arthur said. She also coordinated with the National Park Service’s Alaska Regional Curatorial Center and fire incident supervisors, ready to move additional property offsite to Anchorage if the situation worsened. Fortunately, with cool, rainy weather and multiple fire crews, the wildfire was contained without needing to move any museum items.
It was good practice for sudden events that could occur in the future. Arthur plans to share a list of priority items with fellow park employees and community first responders, so it’s clear what should be evacuated in an emergency, though an updated, comprehensive list in the emergency operations plan is still needed. She’s already marked filing cabinets with reflective tape, so that anyone coming into the facility to save the museum records can immediately find them. “Ideally, we’re all on the same page,” she said.
An updated Museum Collections Emergency Operations Plan will help with this. Supported by Inflation Reduction Act funding, Denali and other national parks in Alaska will revisit their emergency plans to address deficiencies, make updated recommendations, develop a prioritized list of items in the collections, and establish secure emergency storage. Each park will have an actionable document detailing specifically what to do with collections in various situations, whether threatened by a wildfire, earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, or other disaster.
At Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, museum curator Martin Hobmeier stores the first-discovered Coccotrema hahriae in an envelope, tucked into a box, and secured in a cabinet. This new lichen species was found near the Chilkoot Trail during an inventory project in 2008. Recognized as one of the most lichen-rich areas in the world — 757 species in 53 km2 — the park’s 2,223 specimen collection represents and documents that biodiversity.
“It’s a significant cultural item,” Arthur said.
As the fire burned, the bear spear was one of the items she was most concerned about. It was only a mile away from the flames and within the evacuation zone.
Consulting the park’s Museum Collections Emergency Operations Plan, Arthur worked with her colleagues to quickly decide the best actions to protect the museum items. Because the emergency operations plan is awaiting revisions, the outdated contact information for temporary storage locations wasn’t useful. Arthur called her local community contacts to find a safe space — about 30 miles south of the wildfire — to bring the museum property that was on display at the visitor center: the Starr family bear spear, Adolph Murie’s camera, and the pen that President Woodrow Wilson used to establish the park. Her greatest concern was that the items could be damaged by smoke or water during fire suppression.
“I just had to make decisions, and I’m glad that I knew people in the community,” Arthur said. She also coordinated with the National Park Service’s Alaska Regional Curatorial Center and fire incident supervisors, ready to move additional property offsite to Anchorage if the situation worsened. Fortunately, with cool, rainy weather and multiple fire crews, the wildfire was contained without needing to move any museum items.
It was good practice for sudden events that could occur in the future. Arthur plans to share a list of priority items with fellow park employees and community first responders, so it’s clear what should be evacuated in an emergency, though an updated, comprehensive list in the emergency operations plan is still needed. She’s already marked filing cabinets with reflective tape, so that anyone coming into the facility to save the museum records can immediately find them. “Ideally, we’re all on the same page,” she said.
An updated Museum Collections Emergency Operations Plan will help with this. Supported by Inflation Reduction Act funding, Denali and other national parks in Alaska will revisit their emergency plans to address deficiencies, make updated recommendations, develop a prioritized list of items in the collections, and establish secure emergency storage. Each park will have an actionable document detailing specifically what to do with collections in various situations, whether threatened by a wildfire, earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, or other disaster.
Adapting to a new reality
While natural disasters often occur suddenly and dramatically, gradually changing environmental conditions can have similarly detrimental effects on museum collections. If not mitigated within the storage facilities, warming temperatures, wetter summers, changes in humidity, or more drastic freeze-thaw patterns can cause artifacts to deteriorate. Using climate change projections, Alaska national parks are exploring ways to improve their museum facilities to avoid future damage.At Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, museum curator Martin Hobmeier stores the first-discovered Coccotrema hahriae in an envelope, tucked into a box, and secured in a cabinet. This new lichen species was found near the Chilkoot Trail during an inventory project in 2008. Recognized as one of the most lichen-rich areas in the world — 757 species in 53 km2 — the park’s 2,223 specimen collection represents and documents that biodiversity.
“It’s not a matter of ‘if’ there will be a natural disaster, it’s a matter of ‘when’,” said Molly Conley, museum curator in the Alaska Regional Curatorial Center.
NPS Photo
Due to climate change, Alaska is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world and the impacts are felt throughout the state.
Now the park installs an air conditioner unit in spaces when the temperatures rise during the summer, but Hobmeier is looking forward to moving the collection into a facility that has more permanent infrastructure for controlling conditions.
The buildings that hold museum items are one of the last protective defenses against deterioration. In the coming years, Klondike Gold Rush — and other Alaska national parks — will assess their museum facilities with future conditions in mind. They’ll look for possible vulnerabilities due to climate change and develop mitigation options that might include installing HVAC systems, adding insulation, or reinforcing roofs to prepare for greater snow loads.
The planning will help each park get ahead of future issues, such as pest control. A big concern for museum facilities in other parts of the country, insects and rodents chewing on collections can cause destruction fast.
“It’s not a problem in Alaska currently, but it could easily become a problem if temperatures allow for specific pests to become more established here,” Hobmeier said.
Protecting the past for the future
While most park visitors interact with museum collections by observing them on display, some items are also actively used by the local community and researchers.“National park collections are held in the public trust and are property of the people of the United States,” said Molly Conley, museum curator in the Alaska Regional Curatorial Center. “We really do consider these to be the peoples’ collections.”
In Sitka National Historical Park, where Haida and Tlingit totem poles stand erect along a trail, many pieces in the park’s museum collection are held on a long-term loan in partnership with Native and local groups. Tlingit and Russian Orthodox groups regularly use their items in the collections, including a sacred clan crest hat and liturgical items, for ceremonies.
The Tlingit community has been interested in using the park museum to actively protect and preserve items, including through donation or loan, and the loans allow for tribal ceremonial use.
NPS Photo
But that will require protecting and maintaining the original specimens. Despite an increasingly online world, a digital copy doesn’t provide the same value. Using other senses or viewing an object at different angles and under different light, can provide necessary context and details. Losing the original could mean losing valuable information needed in the future.
The gift of time
National park museum collections are protected in perpetuity — forever. It’s nearly guaranteed that there will be a variety of minor and major disasters in the life of a collection.“It’s not a matter of ‘if’ there will be a natural disaster, it’s a matter of ‘when’,” Conley said.
And with climate change expediting environmental impacts, it’s necessary for parks to prepare for the future. Otherwise, their stories could be lost.
With funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, Alaska national parks now have the opportunity to be proactive and improve their lines of defense. Having time to consider multiple options, organize, and widely communicate plans is a huge advantage.
Even when posed with the theoretical situation in which the Denali National Park road could be blocked by an advancing wildfire, Arthur listed a variety of ideas of how the park might be able to rescue museum items. There are options, it’s just a matter of thinking them through and being ready in advance.
“We can find a way,” she said.
Laura Vachula is a writing partner with the National Park Service’s Natural Resource Stewardship & Science Directorate.