This National Park in Utah Is Home to an Unusually Lush ‘Eden’ Orchard — but Now, It Is Dying

Soil erosion is a crucial natural process, essential for the sculpting, highlighting, and vulcanizing of a land formation. The erosion can be triggered by differing types of natural forces, such as winds and rainstorms. In Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park, water is the primary driver of this erosion, despite its dusty, desert climate. Stretching for about 300 miles southwest of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, the park’s sandstone cliffs and limestone rocks are marked with cave-like patterns called “tafoni,” typically carved by the streams of floodwaters during summer monsoons, per USGS.

As climate change causes the planet to heat up, these tafoni designs could no longer remain the same. Not just tafoni, but the entire park could suffer enormously from the wrath of this accelerating climate change, according to a report by SFGate. With a rapidly shifting climate comes sinking humidity, fluctuating temperature extremes, varying salt concentrations, and wind erosion. All these factors, summed together, carry the potential of killing the park, including these tafoni formations and the biological communities that reside here.

Located in south-central Utah in the heart of the barren red rock country, Capitol Reef National Park rumbles with lush trees and majestic stone formations. In the orchards, you may spot apricots ripening on a tree. Thickets of willow and cottonwood invade the borders of the Waterpocket Fold, a dramatic wrinkle in the Earth stretching for over 100 miles. As the climate crisis clutches the Park in its grip, it threatens to steal away all this beauty and reduce the landscape to a gloomy version of its former self. 

When it comes to the park’s resident bird population, climate change is both a boon and a bane. According to the National Audubon Society, the park’s winter climate might become suitable for 57 bird species, including the Vermilion Flycatcher, Western Bluebird, and Violet-green Swallow. On the flip side, the same climate change could trigger the extirpation of 20 species in summer, including the American Goldfinch and Tree Swallow. Next comes the heart of the Park, the Fruita Rural Historic District, also called the “Eden of Wayne County.” The district is typically brimming with apple, apricot, cherry, peach, and pear trees. 

But this year, there are no fruits to pluck from the orchards, according to NPS. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” the park states in a recorded message. “Due to an abnormally early spring bloom, followed by a hard freeze, this year's crop was lost. There is no fruit available to pick this year,” the park writes on its website. A 2024 report from the National Park Service revealed that the park’s climate has escalated at a rate of 6 degrees per century in recent years due to global warming. By 2050, average temperatures are projected to increase at the park by 2.4 to 8.9 degrees, which puts the park’s landscape in a grave vulnerability to disease, decay, dryness, and probably death.

To manage the situation, the park’s officials have initiated a “pilot orchard rehabilitation project” that involves planting trees to enhance soil quality and improve irrigation features. So far, over 260 peach trees, 141 cherry trees, and 70 apple trees have been planted, and are getting planted each day. All these strategies are being implemented to ensure that the visitors continue to remain infatuated by wild deer galloping in the orchards, plucking apples and pears.

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