'Why everyone needs a Grand Canyon'

The tour party of British pensioners were very disappointed. "We've saved for years for this holiday of a lifetime, and we can't even see the Grand Canyon".

Grand Canyon National Park, in the middle of the Arizona desert, seems the epitome of wilderness. And yet on bad days in the summer when the wind comes from the Southwest, pollution from southern California can totally obscure the view across it, a distance of ten miles.

The National Park Service has two main remits, to make the area accessible to visitors and to safeguard it for the future. They realise that to achieve this they may have to push for environmental changes outside the park boundary, and critics would argue therefore outside their jurisdiction. But pollution is not an observer of man made boundaries. The park is therefore monitoring particulates in the air, in an effort to present a strong case to the Environmental Protection Agency to do something about it.

But 5 million visitors a year can make preservation for the future difficult to achieve. They can present a formidable pressure, which has forced the NPS to draw up an ambitious General Management Plan to, amongst other things, restrict motorised vehicles in the park and provide more public transport.

But coupled with this is a realisation that visitors can also become powerful allies for the good of the park. Many of the visitors who come initially to wonder at "the Big Ditch" can also learn about the fragility of what Roosevelt called "the one great sight which every American should see". The extensive range of free nature walks and ranger programs allows the Park Service to introduce visitors to a range of environmental issues which they may not have thought impinged on their lives: people pressure on natural resources, disruption of wildlife, the speed of species extinction. Even the "wild" white water Colorado River is tamed and unnatural. It has been estimated that global species extinction rates are running at 25,000 times normal rates, and here Americans can actually see an example - six endemic species of fish extinct since the Colorado River which flows through the park was dammed upstream in 1963 and altered the temperature, sediment load and flow regime of the River.

On the geology walk they can learn that the earth is 4,500 million years old, but compressed into a one year time scale, the Canyon formed about lunch time on December 31, and the industrial society which affects it came into being two seconds before the end of the year. It overshadows them in time as well as space. It highlights the rapid impact that the first species on Earth that can change its environment has had on the planet. Visitors who thought the Canyon was just an awesome hole in the ground have the opportunity to realise that it is very much affected by man's activities. It is almost the world and its problems in microcosm. A carefully presented program educates them without realising they're being educated and turns them into "friends" of the Park and ensures they will take an interest when they hear of threats to it. There was talk of Congress reducing the Park Service budget by 10%. This would mean the end of interpretive programs for visitors. They would come, look, photograph and return home having learnt little of why it is so special, but more importantly what it can teach us about the interconnectedness of man and natural systems.

It is not enough to admire scenery, one has to be able to learn from it. Because with understanding and appreciation comes concern. What is the moral of the tale? That anywhere in the world, beauty alone is not enough; it is essential to explain that beauty and draw out the lessons it shows us. Specialness can be eroded away if no-on realises it is special. Environmental interpretation becomes an essential aid to survival.

© David Edwards
This article originally appeared in the Scottish Environmental Education Newsletter, August 1996