Ecosystem and climate projects get $1.9M in funding
Glacier National Park will receive more than $1.9 million in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to continue work on advancing bison reintroduction; inventory cultural resources impacted by climate change; and protect and restore whitebark pine, the park announced this week in a news release.
“Glacier is on a lot of people’s minds when thinking about the impacts of a changing climate,” said Glacier National Park Superintendent Dave Roemer in a statement from the park. “These projects will help us prepare, restore, and preserve key aspects of the park that make Glacier special.”
Glacier National Park said it continues to support the Blackfeet-led vision to establish a free-ranging bison herd in northwest Montana. The herd is expected to roam freely onto National Park Service lands.
The park said $1.5 million of IRA funding will help with coordinating landscape level ecosystem function and connectivity studies, gain a better understanding of how deer and elk forage and use the habitat in the absence of bison, and attempt to obtain a population estimate for these animals through pellet analysis. The park service is also assessing infrastructure needs and placement to support visitor use, enjoyment and safety.
Glacier was also awarded $200,514 as part of a multi-park project to inventory cultural resources in the Intermountain West high-elevation areas impacted by climate change. Other parks awarded additional funding include Yellowstone and Grand Teton. More than 11,000 years of human occupation and Native American cultural heritage have been documented in Glacier National Park. These resources are experiencing loss through climate changedriven impacts such as wildfire and melting ice.
Finally, Glacier received $270,000 to restore threatened whitebark pine and implement a national restoration strategy. This is also a multipark project that includes additional funding awarded to Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Olympic, Mount Rainer, North Cascades, Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, totaling $750,000.
“What ties these efforts together is the development and use of highquality information to inform management, and the coordination of these efforts with the Blackfeet Nation and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes,” Roemer said.
Glacier National Park’s climate related projects are part of an overall $195 million investment from the Inflation Reduction Act announced last week to prepare parks across the country to be resilient to climate change.