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Arthur T. Knackerbracket writes with an article from Phys.org:

Bring on the night, say National Park visitors in new study

Natural wonders like tumbling waterfalls, jutting rock faces and banks of wildflowers have long drawn visitors to America's national parks and inspired efforts to protect their beauty.

According to a study published Sept. 4 in Park Science, visitors also value and seek to protect a different kind of threatened natural resource in the parks: dark nighttime skies.

Almost 90 percent of visitors to Maine's Acadia National Park interviewed for the study agreed or strongly agreed with the statements, "Viewing the night sky is important to me" and "The National Park Service should work to protect the ability of visitors to see the night sky."

Acadia National Park will hold its annual Night Skies Festival Sept. 10 through 14 this year.

According to the study, led by Robert Manning of the University of Vermont, 99 percent of the world's skies suffer from light pollution and two-thirds of Americans can't see the Milky Way from their homes.

Most light threatening the National Parks comes from development, the study says. Light from cities or towns can reach parks from as far away as 250 miles.

"It's a typical story," Manning says. "We begin to value things as they disappear. Fortunately, darkness in a renewable resource and we can we can do things to restore it in the parks."

In addition to gauging the value to park visitors of a dark nighttime sky, the study also provides data to park managers at Acadia - and by extension, other parks - enabling them to develop visitor-driven plans for setting light pollution targets.

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