There are a surprising number of units in the National Park System that are visited by scant few folks. Should visitation be the gauge against which a park's continued existence in the system is justified? Or, should parks be measured by what they protect?
That question arises in light of 2010 visitation data from the National Park System. According to those numbers, 23 units -- nearly 6 percent of the system's 394 units -- attracted fewer than 10,000 visitors last year. The total attendance of this bottom tier was 77,825.
Are such numbers justification for keeping the involved units up and running, or should serious consideration be given to shuttering them?
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Comments
Here are examples of two of the most extreme cases:
Muir Woods National Monument: 2010 Budget $463,000. 2010 Visitation: 781,609. Cost per visitor: 59 cents.
Isle Royale National Park: 2010 budget $4,593,000. 2010 Visitation: 14,038. Cost per visitor: $327.18
There is a way to preserve National Parks that are proving to be too costly as well as low visitation: allow them to revert to National Monument status. Or something like the Artic Wilderness Reserve. Fewer staff, low operating expenses and a good deal for freedom to roam about on wild and scenic lands.
Perhaps the question isn't should the park exist, its should we be spending $4.6 million on it. Parks can exist without massive expenditures - especially if there is low visitation.
Why is visitation the only criteria given in this discussion? How about significance of the site, fragility of the resources, importance of the story to civic discourse? Perhaps the discussion should be why these sites get low visitation - and what that means.
I would be so sad to see our low visitation parks closed. We've visited a good number of them and they are very special places! We visited Nicodemus last year. The town felt like a ghost town! However, we really took our time in the visitors center, watched all the movies they offered, read all the information, etc and then drove around the town. I left there very touched. I learned so much and can honestly say I loved our visit to Nicodemus. Another time we went to Fort Bowie. We took the mile or so walk in and enjoyed all the ruins. We even had to call the ranger at home to come to the visitor center! Once again, we were so pleasantly surprised at what a neat park this is! Another lonely park we visited was Alibates. We called in advance to arrange a ranger tour. Needless to say, we were the only ones on the tour. But it was great. We had one on one with the ranger and again, learned so much. It's beautiful! We even found a rock store in one of the local towns where we could buy a piece of alibate as it is so pretty. So NO, don't close our lonley parks. I would encourage those who go to Yosemite and Yellowstone and all our other great parks to take the time to visit our lonely parks - you will be in for some special times!
Anonymous is off the mark. "Cost per visitor" is a red herring. The national parks exist for more reasons than to simply be visited by people. There's an Alaska unit that gets very few visitors per year, but I wouldn't say that means we shouldn't protect it. Likewise there's a unit in Texas that has low visitation (and one in Arizona that is off limits) but because neither of these have big staffed visitors centers, you essentially need an appointment to visit. There may be cases though where low visitation might justify decertifying a unit, but I wouldn't make blanket statements about the system as a whole as some would.
Also what defines a visit varies widely from unit to unit, and may not tell the whole story about visitation. Each unit has their own method of determining visitation/usage, which may arguably be accurate/innacurate and under/overcount usage, and of course a "visit" to Big Bend National Park is far from the same thing as a "visit" to the Lincoln Memorial. But you have to wonder whether some parks, because they're so remote, because they're sparsely staffed, or because (in the case of Apostle Islands as I read one time in their log), because the batteries ran out on the device used to track visitation, underreport visitation.
Laura's comment is on the right track.
If you were in the hospital, would you want the decision of whether you lived or dies to be made based on how many freinds you have? That's what this whole story implies.
Admittedly, there are a few national park sites that are of questionable national significance. Mots however, have an intrinsic value. Even if no one ever saw Yellowstone, it would be worth saving, just because it is a "Once in a Planet" place. It has it's own value independent of what we think of it.
Another anaology: I'll bet Shakespeare's works aren't the most popular at the library, but no library would be without them.
Laura said: "Perhaps the discussion should be why these sites get low visitation - and what that means."
Serious consideration should be given to the national park system, yes. Should all low-visitation park automatically be closed? Not necessarily. But there are certainly many parks in the system that get low visitation and are perhaps not on par with the "crown jewel" parks.
Laura's right that we should examine significance. I doubt that River Raisin National Battlefield Park will be as "significant" or "valuable" to visitors as Grand Canyon National Park will be, say. Maybe that's a reason to reevaluate spending money (or even having) some of these "less-valuable" sites.
The parks are not a popularity contest. They were established to protect unique sites - and if Americans cannot be bothered to visit, so be it. Personally, I've been to the least visited sites, some more than once, and they are treasures. Protection is the strategy, not popularity.And since when has a government entity ever been assessed by its cost/benefit ratio anyway? If that was the case, 95% of government would shut down.
"95% of government would shut down"
Is that a bad thing?
Nope. Not if you can shoehorn into the remaining 5% the Postal Service, FAA, Medicaid, Air Force, CPSC, Social Security, Amtrak, EPA, Department of Labor, Coast Guard, OSHA, garbage collection, CDC, Navy, FDA, Department of Motor Vehicles, 911 Emergency, court system, Fire Department, Interstate Highway System, FDIC, snow plowing, National Mint, SEC, Department of Health, Police, EPA, Marines, HUD, Federal Reserve, NOAA, Department of Social Services, TSA, Medicare, Pension Guarantee Corporation, USDA, oh, and the National Park Service! Whaddaya think, can do? ;-)
Looking at it from another direction, I like to adopt as an axiom that there was a thorough vetting and discussion process prior to the establishment of a national park unit.
Given that, there should be standard funding which is above the "irreduceable minimum". Also, there should be additional funding as justified by larger numbers of visitors and demonstrated need. The size of the museum collection in a park should dictate how many curatorial personnel there are, not how many people see the artifacts. The size of the back country and the number of visitors should both help to drive how many additional rangers may be needed beyond the standard.
And, in my perfect world, the NPS would never be the low hanging fruit for whatever yahoo decides to decimate the budget as a stepping stone to political office.
Cost per visitor is really just one (very small) factor in the equation. BTW, does anyone know the cost pervisitor at the White House? I'll bet it tops the list.
I'm one of those 700,000 fortunate residents within the Pinelands National Reserve (http://www.nps.gov/pine/index.htm). By the numbers (http://www.nps.gov/state/nj/index.htm?program=parks) says the state NPS units overall got just under 6 million visitors in 2010. If they all visited Pinelands, that would be about 6 people per acre. Three times that many visited North Carolina, home of the most-visited NP, Great Smoky Mountains. They also claim 7-times the economic benefit over NJ. No matter that the website also states (correctly) that three major toll roads run through the Pinelands. Most people have heard of the NJ Turnpike. The other roads collectively fall in the classification of the Northeast Corridor, the most heavily travelled roadway in the country. This system endures over 235-million vehicles each year. That's over six-hundred thousand cars a day. How many of them are visitors to the Reserve (not counting those glorious turnpike rest stops)? What is their economic impact to the Reserve? To me, the environmental impact is the real question. Very few visitors but a huge carbon footprint roaring through every day. How much longer will the Pinelands survive with this kind of detrimental encroachment on its pristine water, sensitive ecology, and threatened/endangered species? Maybe people would wake up to the wonders and draw of this land if the NPS did a better job of promoting it besides this sparse quote, "Sightseeing, bird watching and photography are pursuits available throughout the Reserve."
Not sure about the Muir Woods example as truly describing their budget situation. They are part of Golden Gate NRA, so I would think their budgets would be better described they were merged.
I don't believe that they're a particularly high maintenance NPS unit. They have no picnic areas (although they did during the snack bar renovation when tables were set up outside the main entrance), have a paved or boardwalk trail, and only employ a few Muir Woods specific rangers and maintenance crew. They've got a total of two sets of bathrooms. The entrance is almost always staffed by volunteers.
They don't get their own law enforcement rangers. Their LE protection is under the Golden Gate NRA umbrella.
Honestly, I believe their actual budget cost per visitor is higher. It's just that those expenses are accounted for in the Golden Gate NRA budget. How much higher, I don't know.
Do you actually have to step foot into a park for a visit to count? If you drive up Highway 1 to enjoy the scenery north of San Francisco, aren't you essentially "visiting" Point Reyes National Seashore? What about the millions of people in New York and New Jersey catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty every single day?
Visitation statistics have questionable value, and are difficult to calculate.
Does Low Visitation Justify [Closing] A National Park? No. Not ever.
Let me give you an example from Bob's quiz:
(Q). The largest natural open space in America's most populous city is in a national park. Identify the national park and the natural open space.
(A). The 9,155-acre Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, a component of Gateway National Recreation Area, is the largest natural open space in New York City.
I don't imagine the Refuge gets many visitors. Should we close it for that reason?
There are some places that we preserve despite and because they are rarely visited by humans. There are some places that we preserve because they are important parts of our national heritage, whether the public at large is aware of them or not.
We preserve places for future generations to be able to enjoy our natural wonder and to appreciate our history and achievements, not necessarily to entertain crowds of visitors. We have Disney World for that.
I love hiking at Muir Woods National Monument in spite of the crowds. I support preserving low visitation parks, but their staffing and facilities budgets need to be kept within reasonable limits.