SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK

Why is the park called Shenandoah National Park?

Shenandoah National Park lies astride a beautiful section of the Blue Ridge, which forms the eastern rampart of the Appalachian Mountains between Pennsylvania and Georgia. In the valley to the west is the Shenandoah River, from which the parks gets its name, and between the north and south forks of the river is Massanutten, a 40-mile-long mountain. To the east is the rolling Piedmont country. Providing vistas of the spectacular landscape is Skyline Drive, a winding road that runs along the Blue Ridge through the length of the park.

When did the first people inhabit this land?

Most of the rocks that form the Blue Ridge are ancient granitic and metamorphosed volcanic formations, some exceeding one billion years in age. By comparison, humans have been associated with this land only about 9,000 years. Primitive food gatherers and, later, Indian hunters used the land for centuries but left little evidence of their presence. Settlements of the Shenandoah Valley began soon after the first expedition crossed the Blue Ridge in 1716. Many of the settlers came “up river”, north to south, from Pennsylvania. By 1800, the lowlands had been settled by farmers, while the rugged mountains were still relatively untouched. Later, as valley farmland became scarce, settlement spread into the mountains. The mountain farmers cleared land, hunted wildlife, and grazed sheep and cattle. By the 20^th century, these people had developed a culture of their own, born from the harshness and isolation of mountain living. However, the forests were shrinking, game animals were disappearing, the thin mountain soil was wearing out, and people were beginning to leave.

When was Shenandoah National Park established?

In 1926 Congress authorized the establishment of Shenandoah National Park. The Commonwealth of Virginia then purchased nearly 280 square miles of land to be donated to the Federal Government. More than half of the population had left the mountain area, and the remaining residents sold their land or were relocated with government assistance. In dedicating the park in 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a novel experiment in returning an overused area to its original natural beauty. Recreational facilities were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and in 1939 Skyline Drive was completed. Croplands and pastures soon became overgrown with shrubs, locusts, and pine; these in turn were replaced by oak, hickory, and other trees that make up a mature deciduous forest. Now, more than 95 percent of the park is covered by forests with about 100 species of trees. The vegetative regeneration has been so complete that in 1976 Congress designated two-fifth of the park as wilderness. The largest remaining open area is Big Meadows, which is being kept in its historically open condition by management fire. Here, the abundance of wildflowers, strawberries, and blueberries attract both wildlife and humans.

What are the permanent and rare residents of Shenandoah National Park?

Deer, bear, bobcat, turkey and other animals that were formerly rare or absent have now returned. Deer and such smaller animals as chipmunk, raccoon, skunk, opossum, and gray squirrel are frequently seen. Bear are found mostly in backcountry areas but are occasionally spotted elsewhere. About 200 species of birds have been recorded. A few, such as ruffed grouse, barred owl, raven, woodpeckers, and junco, are permanent residents. Many more are seen during the warmer months. The park is home to several species of salamanders, and two poisonous snakes, the timber rattlesnake and the copperhead, are occasionally reported, as are several harmless species.

What can you admire in the park?

Whatever time of the year you are here, many new sights and discoveries await you. Between the Skyline Drive and the park boundaries are ridges and valleys, hills and hollows, laced with sparkling streams and waterfalls. Trails take you into the forest of Shenandoah where you can see plants and animals and experience the beauty and peace of this vast recycled land.

 

What recreation activities does Shenandoah National Park provide for its visitors?

By far the greatest number of people enjoy Shenandoah’s scenic beauty from the 105-mile long Skyline Drive along the Blue Ridge. Numerous parking overlooks present panoramas of the Piedmont to the east and Shenandoah Valley to the west. Park visitor centres provide information services, interpretative exhibits, and illustrated programmes. Naturalist programmes, consisting of evening programmes and campfire talks, hikes, and demonstrations, are offered at several locations; so are self-guiding nature trails with interpretative signs. Family campgrounds and picnic grounds are also provided, having tables, fire-places, drinking fountains, and comfort stations. Accommodations include overnight lodging and restaurants, cottages can be rented. Food service, gift shops, service stations, and facilities for campers – such as grocery and camping supply stores, laundry, and ice and wood dales – are at various points along Skyline Drive. Horseback trips are offered at Skyland Lodge and wagon rides at Big Meadows Lodge. Trails totalling more than 500miles make much of the park accessible to hikers. The trails vary in length from short leg-stretchers to 95-mile segments of the Appalachian Trail that runs the entire length of the park. Fishing for native brook trout provides a challenge to those who are willing to hike to streams in the park.

Shenandoah National Park is your park; please take time to enjoy it and to discover some of its many secrets beyond the Drive.

(Shenandoah NP, Va, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, 1996)

B) Correspond the facts with the following numbers: 40-mile-long / one billion / 1716 / 1800 / 280 square miles / 1936 / 95% / 100 species / two-fifth / 200 species / 500 miles / 95-mile segments

 

 

9.10 Read the text “The Temples of Nature” and fill in the table after it.

THE TEMPLES OF NATURE

When the first miners and hunters returned from the Rocky Mountains, they brought back such marvelous tales of natural beauty that a group of scientists decided to test the truth of their stories. These skeptical scientists, who visited the Rockies in 1870, wrote reports that sounded more like fiction than fact. They described a mountain made entirely of black glass; rivers of ice that were blue-white; magnificent deep canyons; towering white waterfalls; and great caves far beneath the earth.

One night, as the members of the party rested around their campfire, they discussed ways of preserving these magnificent natural scenes. It was finally and enthusiastically agreed that the whole area should be set aside as a great national park for all people to enjoy. This suggestion was accepted by the federal government and, two years later, the Yellowstone National Park came into being. Today some 9,000 square kilometres of this magnificent wilderness are preserved for millions of visitors to enjoy. Since 1872, the system of national parks has grown steadily; by 1981, there were 48 such areas set aside by the national government. State and local governments have added smaller regions.

The land in the national parks belongs to the federal government which bought the areas from the states or private individuals. The government protects the plants and animals native to each national park area. No rancher, miner, hunter or logger may use its meadows, trees or wildlife, except under strict controls.

The parks are under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, whose rangers protect the areas, guide visitors through the parks, and lecture on the natural phenomena so that the visitor can more fully enjoy the natural monuments, scenery, wild animals and plants. Within the parks, there are campgrounds, cabins and motels available to the approximately 180 million annual visitors.

Yellowstone is still the favourite of tourists. Excellent highways lead into the park; comfortable, inexpensive lodgings are offered. Experienced instructors serve as guides to the famed geysers and hot springs and animals wander about unhunted and unafraid.

Some parks are famous for their scenery; others have special significance for students of geology or cultural anthropology. For example, Mesa Verde National Park is a tableland about 24 kilometres vide, rising 600 metres out of the valley below. It contains the cliff dwellings of some of America’s earliest known Indian tribes. Rocky Mountain National Park is a geological museum which contains the remains of older mountains, canyons, forests and glaciers. Yosemite National Park is famous for its beauty: its waterfalls which cascade 730 metres, and its valleys which have walls over 900 metres high.

But perhaps no scene can equal the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. There, for a million and a half years, the great river has been gouging through the mountain rocks. The most impressive parts of the canyon lie within the 270-square-kilometre Grand Canyon National Park.

More than any other section of the United States, the mountains and deserts are still the country of immense open space. This land, which once barred the way of weary travellers, now has become a land for winter and summer vacations, a land of magic and wonder.

► In what park can you meet: the most impressive parts of the canyon / waterfall cascades / dwellings of some Indian tribes / students studying cultural anthropology / comfortable, inexpensive lodgings / glaciers / valleys with high walls? Fill in the table.

Yellowstone National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park
Yosemite National Park
Grand Canyon National Park

 

9.11 You are going to read the text “Deforestation” and some quotations from a number of writers around the world. Read and decide how important forests can be in people’s lives. Give reasons.

DEFORESTATION

It has been estimated that an area of tropical rain forest the size of 100 football pitches is destroyed every minute. If this continues the tropical rain forest will have disappeared in about forty years. Forests in more temperate climates are also under threat and you may have read in newspapers about the threat to trees from acid rain. There are many important reasons why we should conserve the forests.

Trees slow down heavy rain before it reaches the soil and their roots help anchor the soil to hillsides. They help to control the amount of moisture in the soil and to maintain its fertility through the rotting of fallen leaves and other fallen vegetation. This natural system of protection fails if the trees are removed.

In every continent of the world soils are being devastated because trees are being cut down, without any regard for the environment, by large timber companies who make huge profits by selling the valuable timber to the richer nations. Some governments encourage the clearing of forests to make more farmland. In many parts of the world local people depend on firewood for fuel for cooking and warmth. They use up trees at an alarming rate and could not afford alternative fuels even if they were available.

You may have seen on television the barren landscape in parts of Africa. Ethiopia is often in the news and when we see that dried-up landscape it is difficult to imagine that only 55 years ago half of Ethiopia was forested. Even fifteen years ago many of the hillsides were covered in trees. Today Ethiopia loses one billion tonnes of soil each year because of wind and water erosion. In Nepal about half the forests have been lost since 1950s and about 20 tonnes of soil are lost from every hectare of treeless mountainside. Soil is thus washed down towards the sea causing rivers to rise and floods to become more and more serious among the villages on the river plains.

In South and Central America farmers have been encouraged to clear the forest to make room for growing crops. This has not been particularly successful as the intensive cropping. After two or three crops have been harvested the soil is no longer fertile and becomes suitable only for rough grazing. From 1966 some 50,000 square kilometres of Brazil’s Amazon jungle were cleared to make way for 336 cattle ranches. The intention was to produce a surplus of beef to export to the USA and Europe. Soon it was realized that the amount of beef produced on this cleared land was a lot less than had been expected, as the forest soils were not as fertile as they had hoped. Only 22 kilograms of beef were produced per hectare of land which compares very poorly with 270 kilograms per hectare on European farms. Similarly in Nepal, where large areas of trees have been destroyed, yields of rice have gone down by 20 per cent and of maize by 30 per cent.

When we think of forests we often think of them as being useful only for timber and producing very little in the way of food for people. Yet the tropical forests provide food, shelter and medicines for millions of people. They can be for growing crops. In Brazil it has been calculated that an area of untouched forest could produce ten times more food than the beef cattle that graze there. Fruits, nuts, game and fish are the main foods found in the tropical forest. Many of the remote and almost forgotten peoples of the world, like the Baka people of Cameroon, get all they need to survive from the forest, as do the peoples and tribes of the South American rain forest, such as the Yanomami who are completely in tune with their natural surroundings. In Britain we have now forgotten what our ancestors knew about the productivity of our forests: providing timber for houses and ships; fodder for farm animals and game and berries to eat. In medieval times the forests were regulated and farmed so they would remain productive and be conserved for future generations. Perhaps we should be encouraging this kind of ‘forest farming’ in other parts of the world so that the fragile soils will be protected and people fed.

 

 

Malaysia

Deforestation is usually followed by massive soil erosion with valuable topsoil washed away into rivers. This is a loss of a most vital resource required for agriculture and at the same time a siltation of the river systems causes widespread floods.

(Khor Kok Peng, 1989)

Kenya

Kenya fells up to 20,000 hectares of trees a year but … thanks to efforts at grassroots level, encouraged by government, the country now has a record unparalleled in the developing world of efforts to eventually planting more trees than it fells.

(UNEP News, 1987)

South America

In other regions pristine tropical forest has been converted on a massive scale to cattle pasture. Ironically even small farmed plots in cleared tropical forest areas are often converted to pasture after two or three years because of declining yields on poor soils. Perhaps 90% of tropical moist forest soils are completely unsuitable for any kind of annual agriculture. The only people that have evolved sustainable agroecosystems in these areas are the indigenous and tribal peoples who inhabit many of the still intact rainforests.

(Ecoforum, 1988)

India

The variety of forest resources available and used by the rural people are neither recorded nor appreciated by the government foresters. Arttabandhu Mishra, a researcher … in the eastern coast of Orissa, has recorded that rural people in Orissa get almost all their needs in the forest without destroying it. “There are at least 30 to 40 varieties of roots and rhizomes collected by the villagers from the hill slopes and by asking the old ladies in the villages I learned of 40 types of spinaches and edible flowers …”, Mr Mishra reported. So abundant is the resource that in certain seasons people taking cattle for grazing in the forest rarely take lunch with them because fruits, berries, mushrooms etc. Are so readily available.

(Ravi Sharma, Ecoforum, Dec. 1989)

 

9.12 Read the text “The Greenhouse Effect” and think what consequences of this phenomenon can be. Name them.

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT

There is an increasing amount of scientific evidence to suggest that the average temperature of the earth is increasing due to the ‘greenhouse effect’. This would appear to be bad news for all those parts of the world already suffering from serious desertification. Surely a rise in temperature will make the problems caused by drought much more severe.

The events following the warming of the earth’s climate by even a few degrees would be far more complicated than you might think. For example, it is predicted that by the year 2060 the earth’s temperature will have increased by an average of three degrees centigrade but that the actual increase will only be about one degree at the equator and as much as seven degrees at the poles. A rise of seven degrees at the poles could cause the melting of a tremendous amount of ice. If only a small proportion of the 26 million kilometres cubed of ice in Antarctica melted, the seas would rise and there would be a lot more water, which could evaporate and form rain clouds. Changes in the temperature would also affect the paths and direction of wind and water currents around the planet earth. So we cannot be certain what all the consequences of the greenhouse effect would be.

One prediction is that there would be tremendous changes in the pattern of the world’s climate, which would make some areas wetter than they are now and other areas much drier than they are at present. The tropical rainforest areas of the world would become drier and many of the desert areas would become wetter. Large areas of Africa (including the Sahara), South America, and Australia would receive more rain and might be able to grow more crops and provide more grazing for animals. In the great grain growing areas of the USA and Russia the rainfall would decrease and many of the crops would die of lack of moisture. In these areas desertification would become more and more of a problem and perhaps we would see a return of the great dust bowls which rendered great tracks of land infertile in the 1920s and 1930s. Countries which were once big exporters of grain might not have enough to feed themselves. Indeed, they could become dependent on the countries which today are poor and stricken by famine.

Another consequence of the melting of the ice at the North and South Poles would be a rise in the level of the sea. Many coastal cities would be flooded and many hectares of fertile land on coastal plains and valley bottoms would be permanently inundated with water. Most of the Netherlands, for example, would be permanently flooded. Forty per cent of the world’s population lives in coastal areas and would have to move inland as the seas rose and this might well result in millions of people unable to earn a living or grow their own food.

Nobody knows if there would be a total decrease or increase in the food supply as a result of the greenhouse effect but what is certain is that there would be tremendous changes in the areas where food is produced at the present time. Farmers all over the world would have to learn to grow different crops and millions of people might be forced to change their traditional diets.

Even if people all over the world were successful in adapting to a different climate, the problems of desertification would remain with them if they continued to neglect the soil and ignore the need to carefully cultivate and nourish those precious few inches of topsoil. Changes in the climate might just give some people living in the drier areas of the world a better chance to grow their crops and the years of drought might cease, but water as well as wind can carry away fertile soil and once lost it is gone for ever.

The greenhouse effect is not difficult to understand if you know how hot a greenhouse can get when the sun shines on it. The glass lets the sun’s energy into the greenhouse and then traps it so the air gets hotter and hotter. Carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has much the same effect as the glass in the greenhouse, and the more carbon dioxide there is, the hotter the earth’s climate will become. Since 1850 the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by almost 30 per cent. This is because our consumption of energy from fossil fuels has reached such a peak that we now burn almost five billion tonnes of fossil fuel each year. Coal fired electric power stations produce large amounts of carbon dioxide which is released into the atmosphere. The burning of tropical rain forests also produces a great deal of carbon dioxide. Trees also use carbon dioxide so the destruction of forests also means less carbon dioxide is used up in the atmosphere.

 

9.13 You are going to read a newspaper article about a man who teaches survival techniques. Eight sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A-I the one which fits each space (1-7). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0).