Established in 1872 as the United States was recovering from the Civil War, Yellowstone was the first national park considered America’s best idea. Now, the home of erupting geysers, rumbling waterfalls and some of the country’s most diverse and abundant wildlife is facing its biggest challenge in decades.
Floodwaters this week have swept away bridges, washed away kilometers of roads and closed parks as it approaches peak tourist season in celebration of its 150th anniversary. Nearby communities were swamped and hundreds of homes flooded as the Yellowstone River and its tributaries rose.
The extent of the damage is still being counted by Yellowstone officials, but based on other national park disasters, it could take years and cost up to $1 billion to rebuild in a landscape sensitive to water. environments, where the construction season lasts only from the spring thaw until the first snowfall.
Based on what park officials have revealed and Associated Press images and video taken from a helicopter, the greatest damage appears to have been to roads, particularly on the highway connecting The park’s north entrance is in Gardiner, Montana, with park offices in Mammoth Hot Springs. Large sections of the road were cut and washed away when the Gardner River jumped its banks. Perhaps the hundreds of foot slides on the trails could have been damaged or destroyed.
“This won’t be an easy rebuild,” Director Cam Sholly said earlier in the week as he marked up photos of the road’s large gaps in the steep canyon. “You know, I don’t think it’s wise to invest tens of millions of dollars, or how much, in fixing a road that could be similarly flooded in the future.”
Recreating the human footprint in a national park is always a delicate undertaking, especially when climate change makes natural disasters more likely. Increasingly intense wildfires are brewing, including one last year that destroyed bridges, cabins and other infrastructure in Lassen Volcano National Park in Northern California.
Flooding has caused extensive damage in other parks and is a threat to virtually all of the more than 400 national parks, a report by the Rocky Mountain Climate Foundation found in 2009.
Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state was closed for six months after the worst flooding on record in 2006. Damage to roads, trails, campgrounds and buildings was estimated at $36 million. .
Yosemite Valley in California’s Yosemite National Park has flooded several times, but suffered the most damage 25 years ago when torrents of rain atop a large layer of ice and snow – a scenario similar to the one Yellowstone flood – campgrounds flooded, hotel rooms flooded, bridges and road sections were swept away, and power lines and sewers knocked out. The park has been closed for more than two months.
Congress allocated $178 million in emergency funds — a large sum for park infrastructure at the time — and the additional funding eventually surpassed $250 million, according to a report. 2013.
But the rebuilding effort, once estimated to last four to five years, has spanned 15 years, in part due to environmental lawsuits over a protected river corridor and a bureaucratic review and planning process. lengthen.
It’s unclear if Yellowstone will face similar obstacles, although rebuilding the trail running near Mammoth Hot Springs, where water evaporates up a series of otherworldly stone steps, has been challenging. .
It is created by a unique natural formation of underground pipes and vents that help push hot water to the surface and will be just one of many natural wonders that the team of natural wonders will have to be careful not to be disturbed, said Brett Hartl, director of government affairs at the Center for Biodiversity.
Along with the formation itself, there are also bacteria and insects that thrive in environments that are almost nowhere to be found. And the park will need to avoid damaging any archaeological or cultural artifacts in the region’s rich Native American history.
“They’re going to have to look at all the resources the park is designed to protect and try to do this project as carefully as possible, but they’re also going to try to get it going pretty quickly,” Hartl said. .
Having to reroute the road that embraces the Gardner River could be an opportunity to better protect the waterway as well as the fish and other species that thrive there from oil and other microscopic pollution from vehicles, Hartl said. back and forth.
“The river will be fresher for it,” he said.
Frank Dean, president and chief executive officer of the Yosemite Conservancy and a former ranger, said the Yosemite floods were seen as an opportunity to rethink its planning and not necessarily rebuild in similar places. on one’s own.
Some facilities were relocated outside the flood plains and several campsites were flooded in floods never to be restored. At Yosemite Lodge, cabins that were slated to be removed in the 1980s were swamped and had to be removed.
Dean said: “The flood swept them out like a precision strike. “I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing, but providence came and made the decision for them.”
Yellowstone’s recovery comes as a rapidly growing number of people are lining up to visit the country’s national parks, even as the delayed maintenance budget backlog grows into the tens of billions of dollars. The park has been funded by the Great American Outdoors Act, a 2020 law passed by Congress that authorizes nearly $3 billion for maintenance and other projects on public land.
It will now need another funding for more urgent repairs that Emily Douce, director of park operations and funding at the National Parks Conservation Association, estimates could reach at least $1 billion.
The southern half of the park is scheduled to reopen next week, allowing visitors to flock to Old Faithful, the rainbow-colored Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon and its majestic waterfalls.
But the flood-damaged north end may not reopen this year, preventing visitors from seeing Tower Fall and the Lamar Valley, one of the best places in the world to see wolves and bears grey. Some days during the high season, animal sightings can cause thousands of people to park by the roadside in the hope of being able to see.
Whether some of these areas can reopen will depend on how quickly drifting roads can be repaired, which can remove fallen trees and clear landslides.
Maintaining approximately 466 miles (750 km) of roads throughout the park is a major undertaking. Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of public affairs for the National Park Service Association, said much of the road was originally designed for horse-drawn carriages.
“Part of the effort over the past few decades has been to stabilize the road to make it safe for heavier vehicles to travel on it,” she said.
Located at high altitude, where snow and cold weather are not uncommon eight months of the year and frequent small earthquakes, the pavement does not last long and the road crew has a short time to complete the project. judgment. A recently completed road work has been closed for about two years.
“I think it’s probably going to be a couple of years before the park is completely back to normal,” Hartl said.
