By Brooks Johnson
The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune
DULUTH, Minn. – Minnesota’s only national park has been qualified as an Intercontinental Dark Sky Park “for the remarkable quality of its darkish night time skies and the park’s commitment to preserving darkness and educating the public about this exceptional source,” the International Dark Sky Association has announced.
Voyageurs National Park joins just 135 other locations all around the planet that have been recognized by the nonprofit in the previous two a long time. Even though the certification carries no legal authority, it allows be certain the park will protect an normally undervalued asset.
“It’s one particular of those people points that we just take for granted,” park Superintendent Bob DeGross stated this month. “It’s just slowly and gradually whittled away without the need of a lot of consideration or fanfare or angst toward it … right until all of a sudden you just can’t see 90% of the stars in the sky.”
The yearslong effort and hard work of the federal park and the nonprofit that supports it, Voyageurs Conservancy, will see that each energy is created to use lighting that has the most affordable effects on the nocturnal ecosystem and that visitors and other individuals understand the value of darkness.
Numerous lights fixtures at the park will be transformed and gentle concentrations will be measured yearly.
“We’re privileged that we’re commencing off with some incredibly dim skies,” reported Christina Hausman Rhode, govt director of Voyageurs Conservancy. “Getting the certification isn’t a 1-and-performed thing. You’re committing to really participating the general public in this work, way too.”
The park, east of Global Falls along the Canadian border, joins the organization of 61 other U.S. countrywide parks, like the Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree.
“One of the most significant matters is it lets us to tout a single of our stunning means to a broader viewers,” DeGross reported. “We have some of the darkest skies in northeastern Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. It is not some thing a whole lot of men and women have a opportunity to knowledge with no it staying hindered in some way.”
The Boundary Waters Canoe Region Wilderness in Minnesota was awarded Darkish Sky Sanctuary status in September, becoming a member of just a dozen other internet sites.
The Dark Sky application was started in 2001 “to maintain and protect darkish web sites by liable lighting procedures and community education.” The Arizona-dependent corporation that certifies Dark Sky Destinations estimates about 80% of the U.S. just can’t look at the Milky Way from where they live.
Together with the ecological and aesthetic benefits of darkness, Hausman Rhode reported it preserves a tradition useful resource relied on and cherished by longtime Indigenous inhabitants of the area and the fur traders for whom Voyageurs National Park is named.
DeGross said other regional parks are interested in darkish sky certification, which include Quetico Provincial Park in Canada and Grand Portage Countrywide Monument in Minnesota.
“All the land supervisors in northeastern Minnesota and northwest Ontario acknowledge the gain for retaining and conserving this useful resource,” he reported. “We are quite fascinated in getting capable to rejoice the simple fact we still have some of the darkest skies in North The united states.”
