Washington’s National Parks Kick Off Climate Friendly Park Program with Two-Day Workshops

During the last two weeks of February, Mount Rainier, North Cascades and Olympic National Parks each hosted a two-day Climate Friendly Park workshop. Together with diverse groups of community leaders, scientists, park partners and local and business people, park staff took part in the meetings, learning about local effects of climate change and helping to generate specific action items for decreasing each park’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“Climate Friendly Park workshops are an excellent way to engage park neighbors and park staff in thinking collaboratively about preparing and mitigating for climate change,” said Olympic National Park Superintendent Karen Gustin.

The workshop results, including a Climate Action Plan for each of the three parks, will be available in late spring. 

The plans will describe a series of specific, targeted steps that each park will take to reduce its carbon footprint and help inform park visitors and the public about how they can become more climate friendly both at home in parks. Each park began the process by completing a greenhouse gas inventory called the CLIP (Climate Leadership in Parks) tool. This carbon baseline will be used to track the reduction of emissions as parks implement their Climate Action Plan.

The workshops began with presentations about local impacts of climate change, including the featured showing of a new NPS DVD, Cascading Effects, and talks by NPS and community leaders about ongoing climate friendly programs in each park area.  Workshop participants then developed strategies for the parks to track their greenhouse gas emissions, educate park staff and the public about climate change and plan ways to adapt to a changing climate. 

The Climate Friendly Parks (CFP) program is a collaboration of the National Park Service and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and is made possible in part by funding from the National Parks Conservation Association.

More information about the Climate Friendly Parks program is available at the NPS website. Regional news coverage of the Washington CFP workshops and climate impacts to Washington’s national parks.