Winter 2010—Season of Silence

The hush of fallen snow has once again returned to the glacier-capped peaks of Olympic National Park and down in the Hoh Valley, the rain beats new rhythms through its 300-foot tall forest. This is a sonic wonderland, rich with opportunities to truly be alone and empty of workaday thoughts, a rare, pristine haven for restoring your senses. Meanwhile snowmobiles continue to roar through Yellowstone. The chop of helicopters shatter the natural silence at Hawaii Volcanoes and Haleakala.   And again this year, an unbelievable 90,000 air tours will fly over Grand Canyon.  Without a sound level meter or even a microphone to measure noise intrusions, Olympic Park management has turned a deaf ear to the urgent need of protecting its endangered natural soundscape.  Olympic National Park is the last great quiet place among the 392 units managed by the National Park Service; yet the operating budget to save the silence and the natural sonic wonders of this park remains zero dollars—yes, zero.  What’s more, Karen Gustin, Superintendent of Olympic National Park, replied in a 2009 email: “Olympic NP is in queue to start an air tour management plan sometime within the next couple of years or so.”

Planning for air tours? We should be banning not planning.

Speak out for silence (email your concerns to Supt. Gustin Karen_Gustin@nps.gov)and give generously to One Square Inch of Silence.

UPDATE at  Newsweek (January 28, 2010): An Unquiet Nation–America’s Vanishing Silent Spaces.

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