Glacier National Park needs our Help!
Extremely noisy helicopter scenic over-flights are destroying the peace and tranquility of Glacier National Park, Montana. These helicopters serve a very few, and create incessant noise pollution that all other visitors and wildlife must endure. Noise pollution from helicopter over-flights must stop.
Please sign this petition to help Glacier restore the pristine natural soundscape visitors come to experience and on which wildlife depends. Natural sounds are as much a part of the natural splendor as the visual beauty and wildness.
Glacier National Park administration and staff, local residents, and visitors from across the country and around the world have long been concerned about noise pollution in Glacier. It is among the most common complaints lodged by travelers. The issue was thoroughly studied and documented in Glacier’s General Management Plan 20 years ago. Glacier's Management plan states: "In the Congressional designation of Glacier National Park and Waterton Lakes as the world's first International Peace Park, Glacier's peacefulness and tranquility were cited among the characteristics that lent the designation of "peace" to the area. Glacier's values for solitude and tranquility are also recognized in its wilderness recommendation to Congress in 1974. Glacier's enabling legislation states the park is to be "for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" and should be regulated to provide "for the presentation of the Park in a state of nature"... These air tours conflict with the Park's responsibilities to preserve park natural sounds resources." The plan also states "the Federal Aviation Administration would be requested to prohibit all commercial scenic air tours over Glacier National Park. The Going-to-the-Sun Road would continue to provide access to interior portions of the park for all visitors..."
(Learn more here, by visiting the Quiet! Glacier website.)
Helicopter over-flight noise knows no boundary and cannot be contained. It takes only one helicopter to shatter the natural soundscape people travel thousands of miles to experience. Tour helicopters over the peaks of Glacier disrupt the Park experience for the majority of visitors. We cannot have peace without a place for peace and quiet. One of those places is Glacier National Park. Please join this effort to restore quiet to Glacier for the benefit of present and future generations and its magnificent wildlife.
