Visitors awed by the size and beauty of the Grand Canyon often comment on how beautiful its night skies are, too. Many visitors get their first-ever sight of the Milky Way there – and night sky programs are the most popular run by the National Park Service, with attendance around five times higher than for geology presentations.
To help protect the darkness, in 2013 Grand Canyon National Park joined a nationwide program run by Dark Sky International. A thorough inventory found 5000 exterior light fixtures, way more than any other national park.
Luckily, a third were already fully shielded and no brighter than a 60-watt light bulb, making them Dark Sky friendly. The Grand Canyon Conservancy raised over one million dollars to help make two-thirds of all light fixtures compliant by 2019, when Grand Canyon achieved official Dark Sky Park certification and won the worldwide award for ‘Dark Sky Place of the Year.'
By January this year another 1500 fixtures, including 70 at Phantom Ranch, were made dark sky compliant, leaving only 10% of the trickiest lights to fix. Some will have timers or motion sensors added; others will be removed.
Grand Canyon is now one of the few places on Earth with the infrastructure to host around six million visitors every year while having near-pristine dark skies. It’s a spectacular showcase of the benefits of controlling light pollution.
This Earth Note was written by Diane Hope and produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.
