The Scientists Fighting Back

Olympic's rainforests face real trouble, like warmer summers and melting ice. But here is the good news: people are fighting back. Scientists, park rangers, local Tribes, and even kid volunteers are out in the park right now. They watch the glaciers, count animals, and help rivers heal. None of this is magic. It is careful work, done one measurement at a time, by people who love this place.

Olympic's rainforests are under pressure from a warming climate, shrinking glaciers, and changing rivers. That part is honest, and it is worth knowing. But it is only half the story. Across the park, scientists, rangers, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, university researchers, and volunteers are doing the slow, careful work of protection. They measure ice, track wildlife, and restore rivers, building records that stretch across decades. Their secret is not a single breakthrough. It is patience, teamwork, and showing up year after year to gather the data that decisions depend on.

High on Mount Olympus sits Blue Glacier, a river of ice 2.6 miles long. Scientists have studied it for so long that it is one of the most-studied glaciers in the world. They photograph it, measure its thickness, and use GPS to see if it is shrinking. A glacier is a giant, slow-moving mass of ice. By tracking Blue Glacier closely, scientists learn how a warming world is changing the whole park.

Blue Glacier descends from 7,980-foot Mount Olympus and stretches 2.6 miles, and it has been monitored so intensively that the Park Service calls it one of the most-studied glaciers in the world. Researchers observe, photograph, and measure it, using GPS and aerial photos to track its thickness and its terminus, the lower end where the ice stops. The numbers are sobering: Blue Glacier's terminus retreated about 325 feet between 1995 and 2006. But that long record is also a gift. It gives scientists a precise, decades-long baseline so they can tell real change from normal ups and downs, and warn people early.

The Olympic marmot is a chunky, whistling mountain animal found nowhere else on Earth. To protect it, the park needs to know where it lives. So since 2010, teams of volunteers called Marmoteers hike to alpine meadows and record whether marmots are there. Kids ages 13 to 17 can join when a trusted adult comes along. It is real science: the surveys spot marmots about 90 percent of the time when they are present.

The Olympic marmot is an endemic species, meaning it lives only here, in the high alpine meadows of the Olympic Peninsula. To make smart decisions, the park needs range-wide information on where marmots still live, so since 2010 it has run a citizen-science survey, helped by the Washington National Park Fund and its donors. Volunteers nicknamed Marmoteers hike to designated habitat patches, navigate off-trail, and record whether marmots are present or absent. The method is reliable, detecting marmots roughly 90 percent of the time when they are there. Best of all, it is open to young people: kids ages 13 to 17 can take part when accompanied by a responsible adult.

Just outside the rainforest, the Elwha River shows what healing looks like. Two big dams once blocked it, leaving salmon only five miles of river. From 2011 to 2014, workers removed both dams, at the time the biggest dam removal in United States history. That reopened more than 70 miles of river. Now salmon are swimming far upstream again, and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, which pushed for years to free the river, is helping scientists track their comeback. A blocked river became a comeback story.

For proof that protection works, look to the nearby Elwha River. For about a century, two dams kept salmon penned into roughly the lowest five miles of the river. Between September 2011 and the summer of 2014, crews removed both the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, at the time the largest dam removal in U.S. history, reopening access to over 70 miles of mainstem and tributary habitat. The river was once home to all five Pacific salmon species. After the final barriers came down, biologists confirmed Chinook, sockeye, coho, steelhead and others migrating upstream again, and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, whose elders' persistence helped free the river, now works alongside park biologists and other partners to track the recovery.