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Article: When the ships come in: park managers at Glacier Bay in Alaska are grappling with how to protect the world-class preserve and its wildlife while providing access to the creatures and landscape that thousands come to see each season.
- Article from:
- National Parks
- Article date:
- July 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 National Parks Conservation Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Exploring the broad bay that makes up just a portion of the 3.3-million-acre Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska is like traveling back to the Ice Age, when ice and snow dominated the North American landscape. "It's geology happening right before you," says Ken Leghorn, a long-time guide in the park. "The story of glaciation and how it forms the landscapes, the colonization of new plant and animal species--that's all happening in Glacier Bay. And the marine shoreline is where a lot of the biological significance of the park is."
This, the nation's largest protected marine ecosystem, is best known for its 17 tidewater glaciers and whale-watching ...