Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve - Environment

Environment

Glacier Bay National Park preserves nearly 600,000 acres (2428.1 km²) of federally protected marine ecosystems in Alaska (including submerged lands) against which other less protected marine ecosystems can be compared. Within both the park and preserve, there are two Tlingit ancestral homelands that are of cultural and spiritual significance to living communities today. The Alsek River serves as a route of discovery and migration from the coastal mountain range in the park to the Pacific Ocean in the preserve. Within the preserve, in contrast to the park, the Alsek River provides a setting for subsistence uses, commercial fishing activities, and hunting as provided for in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) while simultaneously protecting the glacial ecosytem.

No roads lead to the park and it is most easily reached by air travel. During some summers there are ferries to the small community of Gustavus or directly to the marina at Bartlett Cove. Despite the lack of roads, there are over 400,000 visitors each year most of whom arrive via cruise ship. The number of ships that may arrive each day is limited by regulation. Other travelers come on white-water rafting trips, putting in on the Tatshenshini River at Dalton Post in the Yukon Territory and taking out at the Dry Bay Ranger Station in the Glacier Bay National Preserve. Trips generally take six days and pass through Kluane National Park and Reserve in the Yukon and Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park in British Columbia.

Glaciers descending from high snow capped mountains into the bay create spectacular displays of ice and iceberg formation. In the last century, the most dramatic was probably the Muir Glacier. The calving face was nearly 2 miles (3.2 km) wide and about 265 feet (81 m) high. Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve includes nine tidewater glaciers. Four of these glaciers actively calve icebergs into the bay. In the 1990s, the Muir Glacier receded to the point that it was no longer a tidewater glacier. Most visitors today travel to the Margerie and Lamplugh Glaciers.

Wildlife in the area includes both grizzly and black bears, moose, sitka black-tailed deer, mountain goats, dall sheep, wolves, Canada lynx, sea otters, harbor seals, Steller sea lions, Pacific white-sided dolphins, orcas, minke whales, humpback whale, bald eagless, gulls, waterfowl, and salmon.