Natural History Wanderings

Updated 5/30/12

The Sacramento Bee reported that Sequoia and King’s Canyon are the most polluted national parks in the country.  The pollution is comparable to an urban area such as Los Angeles. The ozone levels are responsible for  weakening Ponderosa and Jeffrey Pines and making them more susceptible to drought and disease.  The air is so bad that some days visitors are warned not to hike. Job applicants are warned that the parks are an unhealthy workplace. The greatest cause of the pollution as stated in the Sacramento Bee is:

“the San Joaquin Valley, the expanse of farmland that is home to the California’s two busiest north-south trucking highways, diesel freight train corridors, 1.7 million dairy cows,food processing plants and tens of thousands of diesel tractors plowing dusty fields. Its trough shape traps pollutants, and high-pressure systems act like a lid on a pot.”

To clean up the air in the park would require cleaning up the air in the San Joaquin Valley, something that has failed to happen in spite of  millions spent to retro fit diesel engines and replace gasoline lawnmowers with electric ones.

Read more at the Sacramento Bee Sequoia smog damaging pines, redwood seedlings

Sequoia and King’s Canyon aren’t our only polluted parks read more at this posting from KCET  Why 4 California National Parks Made the ‘Worst Ozone Pollution’ List