Despite a century of success in maintaining and America’s national parks for generations of nature lovers, the guardians of the national parks have been presented with “an almost unimaginable new job —  slowing the all-out assault climate change is waging against national parks across the nation,” Oliver Milman reports for The Guardian.

As the National Parks Service turns 100 this week, its tasks have grown herculean as global warming melts glaciers, causes sea levels to rise, and increases wildfires across the United States. As Milman explains, “America’s grand symbols and painstakingly preserved archaeological sites are at risk of being winnowed away by the crashing waves, wildfires and erosion triggered by warming temperatures.”

Just which parks and monuments are at risk? The Statue of Liberty, for one, is “at ‘high exposure’ risk from increasingly punishing storms,” Milman reports. Also in Jamestown, home to the nation’s first English settlement, the land walked by Pocahontas and John Smith could be swallowed by waters rising at twice the global average. This historic land could be “beyond rescue,” Milman warns.

Image: Sunset in Glacier National Park, Montana | Image Credit: Pauk / Flickr