OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — The North Olympic Peninsula’s national park is celebrating its diamond anniversary this weekend.
And those who oversee Olympic National Park agree that it looks pretty good for its age.
“Seventy-five is the new 40,” National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said Wednesday from his office in Washington, D.C.
“We look forward to her next 75” years, he said.
As the park, signed into existence June 29, 1938, by President Franklin D. Roose-velt, steps into its next 75 years, Jarvis and Park Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum agreed that two of the biggest challenges it faces is climate change and keeping the national park relevant for younger generations.
Creachbaum said she is undaunted.
“I think what this last 75 years has shown us is that, as an agency and as a country, we are up to this challenge,” she said Thursday.
“We’ll go forward and continue to protect our parks, and our visitors will continue to come and be inspired.”
Global climate change has the potential to have drastic, far-reaching effects on many of the country’s national parks, especially those that include glaciers within its boundaries and those whose borders include ocean coastal areas, Jarvis said.
What this means for the 922,650-acre park depends on how the maritime environment is affected, Jarvis said, and how the wildlife that calls the park home, such as the weasel-like fisher and the
Roosevelt elk, will react to a changing climate.
“[The challenge is] how we adapt to that, how we mitigate, how we manage for [the impacts] and how we communicate with the public on that,” Jarvis said.
More specifically, Creachbaum said, the documented increasing acidity levels of the world’s oceans, likely linked to the globe’s changing climate, have the potential to affect the park, particularly because of the miles of coastline — 73 miles of wilderness coast — within the park’s borders.
Creachbaum said how global climate change might affect the park is one of the issues addressed in the park’s wilderness stewardship plan, now under development.
The plan — laying out how the 95 percent of the park devoted to wilderness areas will be managed, and ensuring both its conservation and public access — likely will attempt to address climate change by remaining flexible, Creachbaum said.
“I think there will be an adaptive element to our plan, [and] we will continually be assessing it,” she said.
Park staff have conducted 11 public comment meetings on the plan.
People were asked to weigh in on what they value most about the roughly 1,300 square miles of wilderness in the 1,442-square-mile park.
“Right now, my goal is to take care of what we have and take care of it well,” said Creachbaum when asked about the park’s potentially expanding, action beyond the superintendent’s control since any changes in park boundaries are made through acts of Congress.
Creachbaum said park staff is organizing comments and developing a number of alternatives for managing the park’s wilderness.
The alternatives will be subjected to public comment, with meetings likely to begin in the fall, Creachbaum added.
“I think it’s very important that parks remain relevant to people,” Creachbaum said.
“And it is part of the [federal] Wilderness Act that we allow people the opportunity to experience wilderness.”
Creachbaum and Jarvis agreed that keeping the park relevant to new generations of park visitors is goal to reach for in the next 75 years.
“How we build a new constituency is one of the biggest challenges for the National Park Service in general,” Jarvis said.
The park consistently ranks among the top 10 most-visited national parks, according to Park Service visitor data.
Attendance has slipped slightly in the past five years, however, from slightly more than 3 million in 2008 to 2.8 million in 2012.
Creachbaum said park visits are always a priority and cited a program starting this summer that will bring Latino journalists and bloggers from across the country to the park and encourage them to write about their experience hiking and camping there.
“I thinking making parks relevant to diverse audiences is where we start,” Creachbaum said.
Overall, though, she said, the park’s roaring rivers, snow-capped peaks and dense rainforests can still draw crowds.
“I don’t doubt at all that Olympic National Park, once someone comes for a visit, will have the ability to [ensure] return visits.
“She can charm anybody, but I have to get them here first.”
Many of those charms have to do with the environmental conservation going on in the park, and Jarvis said the work being done at Olympic has long been an inspiration for national park managers across the country.
“Olympic has been one of the pioneers in those areas and [is] looked up to around the service for [an] excellent, high-quality natural science program,” Jarvis said.
Jarvis cited the efforts to reintroduce the fisher to the park, a project on which staff has worked hand-in-hand with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Jarvis also praised the work that staff has done with tribes who have made their historic homes in and around the park.
“We’ve had, I think, over the years a positive working relationship with the tribes, and that’s set a model for us working across the country,” Jarvis said.
Then there’s the Elwha River dam-removal and restoration project, the largest such effort in history.
“A lot of other parks are watching what’s going on at Olympic with the Elwha,” Jarvis said.
“Putting nature back together is a complicated process and expensive.”
The $325 million project, in the works in some form since Congress passed the law authorizing the removal in 1992, seeks to unlock 70 miles of Elwha River habitat for use by migrating salmon.
The once-108-foot-tall Elwha Dam, built in 1913 5 miles from the river mouth, was taken down by March 2012, while only 60 feet of Glines Canyon Dam, the Elwha Dam’s once-210-foot-tall cousin, remain.
Creachbaum and Jarvis agreed the historic dam removal is just one example of the country’s love affair with Olympic National Park ever since it was signed into existence three-quarters of a century ago.
“I think one of the reasons Olympic looks so good at the ripe old age of 75 is because the American people really wouldn’t have it any other way,” Creachbaum said.
Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
