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Behind the Scenes: Glacier National Park Superintendent Interview
The Top Three Moments, Three Things I Learned and Three New Fun Facts About Glacier: All from my conversation with Dave Roemer, Glacier Superintendent
Maddie Pellman
March 05, 2024
We are back folks! Happy Tuesday!! Today our episode with the Glacier National Park Superintendent is LIVE. This conversation had me reminiscing on my trip to Glacier last August (pics from trip and from Dave & I’s convo of course below). Listen NOW on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts 🪩🎉
IYKYK (gotta listen to the episode to find out 😜)
Back with my top three moments from the interview, three new things I learned from Dave and three new facts about Glacier National Park 🤠.
Dave & I cheesin’ 🙂
Top 3 Moments From Interview
The homecoming story of bison being re-introduced to their homelands (Glacier National Park and Blackfoot Reservation), redemption and a path towards reconciliation after grievous wrongs (from eradicating bison from the Glacier area to signing contracts to have the Blackfeet Nation give their land up to Glacier National Park in a time of starvation). Listen here.
My bucket list continuing to grow, with Dave painting a beautiful portrait of ice-skating on the alpine lakes in Glacier National Park during the winter (among other winter adventures that have me hankering for a trip up north to Montana).
Dave talking about the directive climate change actions, proactively making decisions to introduce species to different parts of Glacier National Park to sustain that population’s life span in the midst of their natural habitats not remaining suitable.
“You can really nerd out on the philosophy of park management on a topic like this. And you can say, well, is the desired goal to return it to its normal fishless state, or is this an opportunity through which we can create a refugia that's going to give us a longer lease on existence for these two cold water adapted rare species?”
3 Things I Learned Interviewing Dave
Sometimes our conceptions of where animals belong doesn’t reflect where they historically were before they were eradicated. Re-introducing animals to their natural habitats challenges these misconceptions. Listen here.
“We all have this image, right, of bison being a plains animal. And we have images of grizzly bears being mountain animals. And grizzly bears are expanding into the plains. And just in modern times with bison that are roaming free, they're going up and using those mountain habitats. So I think we'll learn a lot from bison, having them back on the landscape.”
The work at Redwood National Park (where Dave was deputy superintendent) to re-introduce Condors (a bird previously eradicated via lead poisoning from gun ammunition piles). This was an effort led by the Yurok Tribe with ecological and cultural significance.
“There's 11 condors flying over Redwood National and State Parks in skies where they hadn't been for more than a century”
How species re-introduction actually happens, and in the case of Glacier National Park for white bark pine restoration. For the white bark pine, they identify the “plus trees” (the ones that have been resistant to the disease, the ones that are thriving), collect their seeds, start them in nurseries and plant them into recently burned areas and other microclimates where they can thrive.
3 Fun & Interesting Facts About Glacier
Glacier has the highest density in the United States for grizzly bears outside of Alaska, so bring your bear spray!
Goat Haunt, a dreamy and remote place accessible by driving around and into Canada, via boat on Waterton Lake, or by several days of hiking (Dave talks about this spot when sharing about how he has thus far explored Glacier. Although, with 700 miles of trails he has a long way to go).
Bison being re-introduced into Glacier is ecological restoration cultural restoration and justice and the park is doing a ton of ecological monitoring to understand the effects, including studying the quality of the vegetation, the songbird diversity, insects, etc. It will be exciting to keep up with all the impacts bringing bison back to the land has.
Maddie’s Outdoor Obsessions
This section highlight’s my favorite picks from the past week in the outdoor & adventure world
Kodiak Cakes: My favorite (protein packed!!) pancakes ever. They are perfect for camping trips or for a big ski day. I was camping this past weekend and made everyone Kodiak Cakes 🙂
Camping at Garner State Park eating Kodiak Cakes 🙂
Alpinist Podcast: Check out this podcast to listen to rad stories about climbing & the different ways it impacts our lives. My favorite episode so far has been with Lauren DeLaunay Miller, where she talks about how climbing & journalism intersect & how she uses climbing as a medium to tackle stories around larger issues in society
This is a big week to enter Recreation.gov backpacking lotteries! Where are you planning trips, if any?
As always, thx for making it this far, love y’all — see you in two Tuesdays !!
Maddie
p.s. Get your friends to sign up for the newsletter at whorunsthispark.com/newsletter.
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