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Obama warns of climate change impact on American national parks

President Obama and his family arrived late Friday at the Yosemite Valley National Park as part of a weekend tour to celebrate the 100 anniversary of the creation of the USA national park system.

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President Barack Obama said that climate change is the biggest threat to United States national parks.

“Here in Yosemite, streams are drying up, the birds are moving north, alpine mammals are moving up to escape the high temperatures”. Also, “this weekend National Geographic, Facebook and its Oculus team, and Félix & Paul Studios, will shoot The White House’s first 360 virtual reality video experience and capture President Obama visiting Yosemite National Park”, Nat Geo announced today online.

President Barack Obama wants more people to appreciate and visit America’s national parks as the park system nears its 100th birthday in August. He tapped Congress, thanking them for working to protect the parks. The first time I saw a bear and her cub.

“We’ve got kids all across the country who never see a park”, he said.

“To me, there is little point in conserving lands or allowing the federal government to acquire even more land if we are not going to take proper care of them”, Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska who is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said a year ago. He has given protected status to more land and water combined than any of his predecessors, and while much of that comes from his additions to a huge marine monument in the Pacific Ocean near his native Hawaii, he trails only President Jimmy Carter in the number of acres of public lands that his administration has protected.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said national park visits in 2016 were on pace to beat last year’s record of 307 million.

Obama brought his family late on Friday to Yosemite, one of the nation’s most popular national parks, on a working vacation. That’s not the legacy I think any of us want to leave behind.

“There’s something sacred about this place, and I suppose that’s why the walls of this valley were referred to as cathedral walls, because here at Yosemite we connect not just with our own spirit, but with something greater”, Sasha Obama said.

Yosemite National Park, set within California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, was established on October 1, 1890.

What the National Parks represent to USA historyPresident Barack Obama waves to the crowd while he arrives at Yosemite earlier this week. But the president also hit out at the climate change position of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has said he is in favour of clean air but has vowed to pull the USA out of the Paris climate accord and has disparaged mainstream climate science as a “hoax invented by the Chinese”.

Yet, we aren’t entitled to them. “And the biggest challenge we’re going to face in protecting this place is climate change”.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama handed numerous fourth-graders from across California a free pass at a Kids in the Park event prior to speaking Saturday morning.

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Reminders of Father’s Day were frequent throughout the visit: Photographers caught glimpses of daughters Malia and Sasha playing and joking together, and first lady Michelle Obama posted a family photo for the occasion.

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