FEATURE
Resist, Accept, or Direct? Inspiring RADical Conversations
Warm morning light hits the east face of Champlain Mountain, viewed from the Beehive in Acadia National Park on Tuesday, July 26, 2022. Photo courtesy of Lily LaRegina/Friends of Acadia.
A Flood of Changes
Early on the morning of June 9, 2021, rain fell on Acadia National Park in Maine—a lot of rain. Five inches fell in three hours in parts of the park. In Acadia’s hilly, coastal terrain, streams quickly swelled and overflowed their banks, washing out bridges, trails, and roads. Ten miles of the park’s 45-mile carriage road system had to be closed, along with the Wild Gardens of Acadia, bike paths on the Schoodic Peninsula, and the Schoodic Head Road. Some of the washed-out trails, like the Maple Spring Trail, will never be fully rehabilitated—rather they are now more rugged and will continue to be altered by future storms. The short duration and intensity of the rainstorm made it one of the most exceptional weather events in the park’s history.
The 2021 flood event at Acadia was exceptional when looking to the past but was consistent with the new reality we can expect under global warming. The recent passage of Hurricane Helene reminds us that formerly unimaginable events are increasingly possible under anthropogenic climate change. Simultaneously, our warming world fuels longer-term impacts, such as extended drought, the loss of snow and ice, and sea level rise.
The combined influence of acute events and chronic stressors fundamentally reshapes many protected areas in surprising and novel ways. Resource managers across the National Park System, for example, already grapple with transformative climate impacts, such as biome shifts, widespread tree mortality, coral bleaching, and falling lake levels.
Signage indicating the Maple Spring Trail sits at an angle near the most heavily damaged section near the Hemlock Bridge, Friday, November 5, 2021, in Acadia National Park. The trail was closed after a severe rainstorm in June 2021. Park managers used RAD to frame options for repairs. The trail is now reopened but is more rugged than prior to being washed out. Photo courtesy of Lily LaRegina/Friends of Acadia.
A Useful Framework
As familiar public lands change in unexpected ways, thoughtful interpretation becomes increasingly important. In the face of rapid, discomforting transformation, visitors will yearn to square intellectually and emotionally with the consequences. Interpreters and educators will need to help deftly explain the change, explore the cause, and manage dismay and grief. Perhaps most importantly, they must cultivate a sense of hope and agency that facilitates solutions. To do so, they might borrow a tool that is already helping colleagues take action on the ground.
The “Resist-Accept-Direct” (or, RAD) decision framework helps resource managers navigate difficult climate impacts. The tool encourages managers to think beyond just resisting modern human impacts and preventing changes to native species, ecosystems, and processes. Rather, rapid environmental change forces us all to increasingly consider alternative strategies, such as the intentional decision to accept some changes already in motion or to work deliberately with ongoing trends to direct change to a desired future state. Considering the full spectrum of possible management strategies often unearths new opportunities, benefits, and outcomes that help justify and motivate action.
But fostering “RAD-ical” thinking among long-time managers requires thoughtful communications. In 2020, an interagency group including the National Park Service (NPS) described a “Resist-Accept-Direct" (RAD) framework, adapted from the “Resist-Accept-Guide" framework proposed in Beyond Naturalness, a 2010 book focused on “rethinking park and wilderness stewardship in an era of rapid change.”
A representation of the sailboat analogy for the RAD framework. The Resist boat powers upwind in an attempt to return to where it started. The wind and waves push the Accept boat to parts unknown. The Direct boat captain uses the prevailing conditions to steer to a new location of choice. Photo courtesy of NPS.
Caution tape blocks the entrance to the damaged section of Maple Spring Trail near the Hemlock Bridge, Friday, November 5, 2021, in Acadia National Park. Photo courtesy of Ashley L. Conti/Friends of Acadia.
To illustrate the RAD concept, the interagency group envisioned a sailboat pushed from its home port by strong winds, and the ensuing choices available to the captain. Would the best choice be to lower the sails and allow the winds to guide the boat, or perhaps use the motor to fight the winds and attempt to return home? Or might the captain direct the boat towards a promising shoreline using the tools of winds, sails, and rudder? This analogy underscores RAD’s goal of expanding managers’ perspectives beyond maintaining the status quo.
But how does this abstract framework translate into practical, on-the-ground action? What would the RAD framework look like when applied to record-breaking heatwaves, critically endangered species, or infrastructure collapsing under permafrost thaw? One of the best ways to imagine a course of action is to watch others who have already navigated those waters and scoped the path ahead. Parks directly and indirectly engage in information-sharing—presenting to each other or chronicling their efforts for others to read and watch, modeling actions based on those of their colleagues. To further this network of learning and communication, the NPS Climate Change Response Program (CCRP) and other groups have added to a growing library of RAD adaptation case studies, articles, and videos, spotlighting how parks are navigating climate challenges with creativity and resilience. Acadia National Park and its partners—Friends of Acadia and the Schoodic Institute—have written extensively about real-world adaptation using the RAD approach and provided interviews to news organizations to communicate their work.
For example, on the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia, decades of foot traffic have degraded summit vegetation, including the three-toothed cinquefoil (Sibbaldiopsis tridentata), a low-growing plant that mixes with grasses, lichens, and mosses to create a stable bed of soil for other plants like alders to take root. Visitors have helped slow the damage by following Leave No Trace principles and avoiding roped off areas on the summit. But under a changing climate, that may not be enough to restore summit ecosystems, as the plants contend with hotter temperatures, drier summer conditions, and heavier rain and ice storms. The three-toothed cinquefoil that nurtures these ecosystems is projected to lose 98% of its range in Maine to unsuitably hot temperatures. Understanding that vegetation may need some additional help for restoration efforts to be successful in the long term, Acadia and its partners began planning for a hotter, drier, more unpredictable climate future.
Applying the RAD framework to their management decisions, researchers are directing restoration by introducing cinquefoil from warmer regions of the northeast (e.g., New England), to test if different varieties of the same species might be better adapted to the increasingly hotter climate. Experiments in summit garden plots compare local cinquefoil with those from warmer areas and also monitor their growth at different elevations on Cadillac Mountain, taking advantage of the dramatically different climate conditions from its base to its summit. Simultaneously, the park has been engaging in other restoration techniques—such as adding soil and biodegradable mesh to eroded summits—allowing natural seed colonization, aligning with the resist strategy to preserve existing ecosystems as opposed to accepting a changing ecosystem where cinquefoil may not be given extra assistance to help it regrow. These stories of RAD-based adaptation from Acadia National Park and other protected areas provide practical guidance as well as inspiration, proving that even in uncertain times, resource managers have agency over their park’s future.
Just as the RAD framework provides a structured way to stretch perspectives, applying the framework in an interpretive context can help broaden conversations beyond one-dimensional, defeatist thinking. Rather than simply dwelling on how climate change impacts our lands and resources, introducing RAD can move audiences toward solution-based narratives and introduce new possibilities. Doing so, however, is not merely an academic practice. An informed, engaged public is a necessary partner to decision-makers looking to advance collaborative adaptation efforts.
Damage to a foot bridge on the Maple Spring Trail near the Hemlock Bridge, Friday, November 5, 2021, in Acadia National Park. Photo courtesy of Ashley L. Conti/Friends of Acadia.
Visitors watch the waves at Thunder Hole on Thursday, August 18, 2022. Photo courtesy of Avery Howe/Friends of Acadia.
From Marshes to Mountains
It’s not only the general public who is interested in learning about climate change and climate change in National Parks specifically. Increasingly, schools and teachers have requested park-led lessons on the RAD framework, especially for middle and high school science classes. Indeed, climate change is woven into the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), adopted by many states.
At Acadia National Park, staff offer a virtual program titled “Acadia in a Changing World” as part of a wide range of free, distance learning programs to teachers across the United States. This program is grounded in NGSS while also emphasizing data literacy, communication skills, and social emotional learning. It uses the restoration of vegetation on Cadillac Mountain, an active climate-smart restoration project in one of the most visited sites in the park, as a case study. Students spend the first half of this program learning how Acadia National Park managers use the RAD framework in deciding how to best reestablish sub-alpine vegetation on the summit. Once they understand the basics of the RAD framework, students break into groups and apply the RAD framework to other climate change case studies from Acadia National Park. These case studies include the rehabilitation of the Maple Spring Trail, which was washed out in the June 2021 storm, and the fine rockwork of Thunder Hole viewing area that is damaged with increasing frequency by strong waves and storm surge.
In a landscape where climate anxiety and climate grief are increasingly present, the RAD framework helps students identify concrete, actionable steps they can take in the face of climate change. The framework empowers and provides students with agency, an antidote to the “doom and gloom” mentality that sometimes arises in climate conversations. In discussing these RAD case studies, students practice teamwork, creative thinking, inclusion of diverse perspectives, and grappling with park issues that lack clear answers. These skills will help them weather future climate change in their own communities. As a seventh-grade teacher recently shared, partnering with Acadia National Park to teach and learn about the RAD framework helps “make our curriculum relevant in the real world.” Offered virtually, the “Acadia in a Changing World” program has been so well received that a similar in-person program is being implemented this spring for the overnight middle school Schoodic Education Adventure (SEA) program.
Cedar-frame tripod waysides explain the RAD Framework to visitors in Acadia National Park’s Great Meadow. (full image description can be found here). Photo by Claire Burnet.
In the intertidal zone at Little Moose Island on the Schoodic Peninsula, SEA students participate in an intertidal crab survey in conjunction with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Photo courtesy of Schoodic Institute.
Educational programming is just one of several strategies used to interpret the RAD framework at Acadia National Park. At sites where the park is directing change by restoring vegetation and enhancing hydrological function, tripod-style signs explain changes to ecosystems and how the park is responding. Some of these sites, including Sieur de Monts and Great Meadow Wetland, rank among the park’s most visited and most impacted by changing climate conditions, yet without thoughtful interpretation, climate change impacts at these sites may go unnoticed.
To foster deeper engagement, park staff and partner organizations introduced a tabling activity to initiate conversations around RAD at community events and popular sites. In the activity, participants explore different ways to respond to climate change at sites across Acadia, discovering what the park is doing and how they can help. Beyond in-person initiatives, a robust collection of web pages, articles, and videos explain how Acadia uses the RAD framework and share regular updates on research and restoration projects. By weaving RAD into nearly all climate-related messaging, Acadia and its partners balance the intensity and uncertainty of change with solutions and action.
Partnerships have been crucial in giving the park the capacity to interpret the RAD framework and climate adaptation methods to numerous audiences. In particular, park staff work closely with the nonprofits Friends of Acadia and Schoodic Institute to design and implement these interpretation projects. The partners are working together to communicate a RAD-based approach for managing Acadia's resources; these techniques and materials can be adapted and implemented at other parks.
As part of the SEA program, students happily summit Schoodic Head on the Schoodic Peninsula in Acadia National Park. Photo courtesy of Schoodic Institute.
Acadia to Zion & Beyond
As the world increasingly experiences previously unimaginable events, like Hurricane Helene in 2024 and the Acadia flood in 2021, the RAD framework provides a simple model that can help resource managers across the National Park System sort options and make difficult decisions under rapidly changing conditions. Like Acadia National Park, protected areas across the nation are using this framework to implement novel strategies beyond resistance alone. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are using RAD to inform management of refuges, sanctuaries, and research reserves. And RAD is now being used internationally by agencies like South African National Parks.
As ‘RAD-ical’ management increases in visibility, there is a pressing need to leverage thoughtful interpretation to explore these efforts with visitors, stakeholders, and local communities. And through communications with various audiences, RAD provides a valuable springboard for meaningful discussions beyond protected areas alone. It is a guide for exploring possible paths in an ever-shifting landscape, empowering visitors, students, and the public to navigate the complexities of climate change with purpose and hope. RAD-based interpretation can remind us that—as we grapple with all manner of climate-related challenges—we needn’t always be resistant to change. We always have options to consider.
Claire Burnet shares a RAD tabling activity with community members at an Earth Day event. Photo courtesy of College of the Atlantic.
Disclaimer
Views, statements, findings, conclusions, recommendations, and data in this report do not necessarily reflect views and policies of the National Park Service or the U.S. Department of the Interior. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use by the U.S. Government.
