Zion National Park is one of the country’s, if not the world’s, natural wonders. But a few weeks ago, the park was forced to warn visitors against two of its popular hikes due to a toxic bacteria spreading through the park's waterways.
Zion National Park is one of the country’s, if not the world’s, natural wonders. In Eastern Utah, the park is the 10th most visited national park according to the National Park Service , and throughout the pandemic continually struggled with overcrowding, with many hikers flooding in to cram themselves onto one hiking trail in particular: the Narrows.
In a statement, the NPS wrote, “Toxin producing cyanobacteria has been detected in the North Fork of the Virgin River which will remain at a Warning Advisory.” It added: “During Warning and Health Watch advisories, recreators should avoid primary contact recreation such as swimming or submerging the head. During Danger advisories, recreators should consider avoiding all direct contact with the water.
However, there are a few things that make the algae in Zion a stranger case than most. The first is that algal blooms most commonly occur in lakes, large standing bodies of water; but in this case, an algal bloom occurred in a river. “So we began to hypothesize that the algae was benthic,” Fickas said. Benthic cyanobacteria differ from typical algae insofar as they live closer to the floor of the water body, instead of floating atop the surface. It also implies that the algae has always been a part of the river, they just haven’t bloomed, or been detected and become a source of heath concern, historically.
Another theory, according to the park, suggests high-flow events might trigger rapid regrowth. A spokesperson for Zion said, “National Park Service scientists have observed that high flow events scour away cyanobacteria. Following high flow events, park scientists have observed cyanobacteria regrowth happen in the following weeks and months.”
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