Age has been unkind to Glacier National Park

Glacier National park turns 100, but age has not been kind.

The gorgeous million-acre park in northwestern Montana celebrated its 100th birthday on Tuesday. But many of its glaciers have melted, and scientists predict the rest may not last another decade.

The forests are drier and disease-ridden, leading to bigger wildfires. Climate change is forcing animals that feed off plants to adapt.

Many experts consider Glacier Park a harbinger of Earth’s future, a laboratory where changes in the environment will likely show up first.

“What national parks all give us is, in effect, a controlled landscape where we can see the natural and climatic processes at work,” said Steve Running, a University of Montana professor and co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in 2007 for his work on climate change.

Average temperatures have risen in the park 1.8 times faster than the global average, said Dan Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist.

The change is visible to the naked eye, with the vast moraines left behind as the giant glaciers melt away. Climate change is blamed for the increasing size and frequency of wildfires, and lower stream flows as summer progresses.

What this all means for the bears, wolves and other big predators in the park is unclear, Fagre said.

A birthday ceremony Tuesday focused on the wonders of the nation’s 10th national park. Several hundred tourists and employees listened in the crisp mountain air as speakers extolled its virtues as one of the most intact and diverse ecosystems in the world.

“Glacier connects us to the very core of our nature,” park superintendent Chas Cartwright said.

Glacier remains perhaps the only place in the Lower 48 where all the big wild animals that Lewis and Clark saw in 1804 can still be seen, Running said.

“Our landscapes are still wild and pristine and clean,” he said. “When you start looking globally at how many clean, wild landscapes are still around, Glacier is doing pretty well.”

Glacier, signed into law on May 11, 1910, by President Taft, draws 2 million visitors per year to see its sawtooth peaks, clear lakes and wildlife. Nearly all come in the summer, jamming the signature red buses on Going-to-the-Sun Road, the dizzying roadway that bisects the park.

“We come to Glacier as often as we can,” said Shirley McLaughlin of Missoula. “I have a real sense of ownership.”

The park drew 4,000 visitors in 1911, when tourists would ride the train to Glacier and travel by horseback to stay at chalets in the high country, said Amy Vanderbilt, park spokeswoman. Visitors come to see predators like grizzly bears, which are now stable at around 300, she said.