Most national parks have failed to set carrying capacities as required by the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978, according to PEER/Patrick Cone
Editor's note: This updates with National Park Service officials declining to comment on the report.
Nearly four decades have passed since Congress directed the National Park Service to establish visitor carrying capacities for the National Park System, yet few parks have done so, according to a review by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Zion National Park officials, who lament the crowds that overrun the park at times, have embarked on a visitor use study that could lead to a carrying capacity, and other superintendents have commented about crowding. A Traveler survey of parks late last year pointed to some of the issues:
* At Zion in Utah, the shuttle service in Zion Canyon that was supposed to end in late October had to start back up to handle early November's crowds. During the Labor Day Weekend, it took some visitors 45 minutes to enter the park at Springdale, and then another 45 minutes waiting in line to board a shuttle to Zion Canyon. "And if you parked in town or you could find a place to park in town and took the shuttle bus to come to the park, it could be 45 minutes on top of that," said Superintendent Jeff Bradybaugh.
* In Acadia National Park in Maine, cruise ships that disgorge thousands of visitors during fall stops at Bar Harbor have created problems as passengers try to get to the top of Cadillac Mountain.
* In Montana, Glacier National Park managers weren't overwhelmed so much last year by greater visitation, but rather by an early spring that saw crowds heading into the park, and damaging facilities, before the seasonal ranger force was in place for the busy summer season.
* At Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, a proposed management plan for the Moose-Wilson Road corridor to control traffic has drawn complaints from the governor.
* Great Smoky Mountains National Park Superintendent Cassius Cash has received written complaints from visitors irate that it can take five hours to drive the 11-mile loop through Cades Cove.
* At Arches National Park in Utah, crowds trying to get into the park during the 2015 Memorial Day weekend were backed up to U.S. 191, prompting the Utah Highway Patrol to temporarily close the entrance.
* At Yellowstone National Park, during the height of the 2015 summer it took some visitors up to three hours to get through the entrance at West Yellowstone, and then another hour to travel 14 miles to Madison Junction. "If you speed up the entrance station, there's no place to go, as four entrance lanes go down to one lane of traffic," said Superintendent Dan Wenk. "And then there's a bison three miles down the road. What do you do? Because if it's the first bison these people have seen, everybody thinks it's the last bison they're going to see. They all stop to take a picture."
PEER on Thursday said that "very few parks have required carrying capacities to prevent the crush of humanity from damaging natural resources or the quality of visitor experience." That despite a requirement in the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978 that park superintendents "will identify visitor carrying capacities for managing public use. Superintendents will also identify ways to monitor for and address unacceptable impacts on park resources and visitor experiences."
Among the parks that PEER found have established some form of carrying capacity regulations are:
* Channel Islands National Park set use limits by alternative in their 2015 GMP. The preferred alternative (alternative 3) lists day use and overnight use limits for the following park areas: East Anacapa Island, Middle Anacapa Island, West Anacapa Island, East Santa Cruz Island including Scorpion Harbor and Smugglers Cove, and Santa Cruz Island’s Prisoners Harbor and Rancho del Norte.
* Dry Tortugas National Park set preliminary limits, subject to testing, of 330 people per day in Garden Key and 24-36 per day in Loggerhead Key. The proposed action (alternative C) set the maximum campground capacity to 68 campers overnight on the island, which would be regulated via a reservation system.
* Everglades National Park has a GMP that employs indicators and standards to address user capacity. The only standard that could be found in the GMP that limits the number of people in a park area is the number of people on a 15-mile loop road, waiting for a tram, in the parking or restroom area at Shark Valley (400-500 people).
* Golden Gate National Recreation Area has a GMP which also employs indicators and standards to address user capacity. On Alcatraz Island, the Golden Gate GMP sets a limit of 0-43 people per view on Michigan Ave. 90% of the time, and 0-74 people at one time on C-D St. 90% of the time. The GMP also sets limits on the encounter rate on trails to “no more than 40 encounters with other visitor groups traveling in the opposite direction, 90% of the time during park operating hours.” The number of visitors in Muir Woods National Monument is restrained by the capacity of the parking lot. In Muir Woods, no more than 18 people per view per 50-meter trail section along valley primary trails 90% of the time during park operating hours, and no more than 30 people at one time at the Pinchot Tree and Redwood Crosscut 90% of the time during park operating hours.
* Saguaro National Park utilizes indicators and standards to address user capacity. Only one standard that limits the number of people in an area could be found in their 2008 GMP: “no more than 90 people in any given month for at least 11 out of the 12 months of the year” in the Madrona Pools area.
* Zion National Park in its 2001 GMP stated it would use “preliminary carrying capacities” (i.e., 80 day hikers and 70 overnight users in the Narrows from the northern park boundary down through Orderville Canyon, and 50 people in the Left Fork of North Creek (p. 36)) until a wilderness management plan and carrying capacity studies were completed. The GMP also stated that visitor use levels are somewhat regulated by the shuttle system. The GMP also set “interim carrying capacities, pending further research, for hikers and saddle stock groups in the primitive and pristine zones.” They include hiker group size limits of 12 individuals, and saddle stock group size limit of six people per group with six saddle stock.
National Park Service officials would not respond to the report, said Thomas Crosson, who this month took over as the agency's new chief of public affairs.
At the National Parks Conservation Association, officials said the Park Service needs to take a closer look at the impacts caused by the record visitation levels.
“Many popular national parks are seeing a sharp increase in visitation, and there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution for how to handle the influx. More analysis of impacts to the parks’ resources must be done to really understand these park-specific challenges. This careful research, combined with public engagement, will be essential to help identify solutions, to ensure that visitors continue to have incredible experiences and adventures in our national parks," said Kristen Brengel, NPCA's vice president of government affairs.
PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said “(T)he safeguards Congress enacted to prevent national parks from being loved to death have become dead letters." He also noted that in a campaign called “Find Your Park” to promote its centennial, the Park Service is pushing to increase visitation--which in 2015 was already at an all-time high.
“Instead of ‘Find Your Park,’ this summer the challenge should be called ‘Find a Place to Park’," said Mr. Ruch in a release.
In reaching its conclusion that "almost no major national parks have carrying capacities," PEER reviewed the management plans of 59 national parks, 19 national preserves, two national reserves, 18 national recreation areas, and 10 national seashores in the park system. "Of these 108 major units, only seven have established carrying capacities and all but one of those only cover only certain areas or facilities," the group said.
The PEER analysis found that of the ten most visited national parks, only Yosemite had carrying capacities for its wilderness zones. In a 1995 plan, Grand Canyon set numeric caps on visitors to specified areas but that plan lapsed and has not been replaced. In 2001, Zion adopted “preliminary carrying capacities” which it has yet to finalize. Encapsulating this posture was the reply Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk gave a reporter asking about this topic: “The words ‘carrying capacity’ will be attributed to you and not to me because they are words I don’t say.”
PEER noted that among the parks that have established carrying capacities of some fashion:
* Everglades has standards for crowding at boat launches, for road traffic, and on trails.
* In 2014, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the second-most-visited place in the park system, promulgated a set of concrete user limits for identified “management zones” as does the management plan adopted that same year by Gulf Islands National Seashore.
“While not all parks are the same, the ability of a handful of parks to do thoughtful planning while most others do none suggests that it is not a priority in today’s Park Service,” said Mr. Ruch. “Contrary to the clear dictates of law and official policy, the Park Service appears to be evolving to the position that there can never be too many visitors – a position with which many visitors in long lines would disagree.”
Comments
The issue of the lack of free time among American workers was raised today by Knoxville News-Sentinel columnist Ina Hughs: http://www.knoxnews.com/opinion/columnists/ina-hughs/taking-vacation-sho....
Owen, you already have the "right" to all the free time you want. What you really mean is the right to steal others property so you don't have to be productive.
The nationality of visitors should not be the issue. it is the numbers and when you get to the entrance gate. If you come late, too bad.
I swear, I read these threads and find myself shaking my head in disbelief. Millenials are in the parks. I don't understand this blatantly wrong assumption that they are not! Just because they aren't retired, and don't have the leisure time that boomers currenlty enjoy, doesn't mean they aren't visiting or even engaging themselves with the parks, when they do get the time. They ARE in the backcountry, they are in the parks frontcountry too, and they are involved.
Secondly, there are only around 3 or 4 places that are not currently National Parks that can compete with the grandeur that is found in the iconic parks. The best of the best is already preserved. No offense, but the High Allegheny will never cut it compared to other places already preserved. I'm definitely not in favor of making parks just for the sake of doing it. And if they do go that route, I prefer they make them more like North Cascades, and skip trying to produce more urbanized parks that require industrialized tourism to boost the regional economic coffers. But, that won't happen either.
By the way, the millenials are one of the most environmentally aware generations in human history. The millenials have grown up being bombarded with media on climate change, pollution, industrial waste, etc so to state that they aren't environmentally conscious is a badly percieved notion. A good % of them also reject the car and try to live in walkable communities near their place of employment. They are definitely at odds with the boomer population that is so focused on the car. Boomers, along with the WW2 generation were the founders of the industrialized tourism phenomenon that is pretty much ingrained into the system. Only a few parks, like North Cascades have ever been setup to reject that ideology. Will the millenials and gen xers shift away from that ideology? Perhaps.
I know a few millenials that are currently hiking long distance trails and posting occasional "i'm still alive, check out this picture from the trail now that i'im back in cell phone range" and thanks to social media I can get exposed to some new areas, some that I might never get to see myself, just because the Earth is too large to see it all in one single lifetime. So, i'm tired of these stodgy types stating that millenials are not out there, because they are and just because you haven't engaged with the right ones and know their pursuits, doesn't mean they aren't out there.
Finally, I definitely am for caps. 2 years ago I went into Petrified Forest National Parks backcountry, and some of the places had caps and once the monthly cap was reached, no one could register to go back there until the next month. I wasn't able to secure a permit for that week, and that was fine, because there were other places to explore, and so my permit allowed me to venture into other areas where I had it all to myself.
Working in a park, I definitely see problems caused by automobiles as well. In the smokies, where I work, it's not hard to witness what acid deposition has done to major areas of the forest, as well as the streams. The global addiction to fossil fuels is a large portion of the problem, yet the park is overwhelmed with traffic every day, so it is a catch-22. They come to the forest to see nature because they played a secondary role in cutting down the forests and eliminating the wildlife in their backyard, and so they go out seeking this "etheral moment" that gets them in touch with their primordial senses. And yet, in their pursuit of finding that natural solace many of them are unaware what their vehicles are doing to those remaining swaths of forest. Yes, it's only a very small role they are playing, but the overall accumulation of too many people swarming the parks is having a vast and negative effect on the resources.
In the end it comes down to the brains in the NPS that have access to the science and data to stand up and cap it... But, my fear in that is that they don't make it for only the wealthy to enjoy, and so lotteries, and first-come first serve should be the main basis behind the caps. Also, hopefully a bigger movement is made from the populace itself to screw industrial tourism for the hideous scourge it has become in our National Parks. It truly is out of control...
It should be noted that the back up onto the State Highway was caused because Arches does have a visitor limit based on number of vehicles. Once that limit is reached no car enters the park until one leaves. One result is a iine of cars waiting to get into the park. Canyonlands has a similar limit but due to its more remote location does not cause the same back up onto a state highway.
This is one problem with visitor capacity limits. What happens to the multitude of people who show up at often remote gates once the limit is reached? The only workable solution would be to start "selling" entry passes ahead of time on line. This of course has its own problems and costs.
All parks are seeing a massive growth in late and early season visitors. Due in part to the aging population which are still free to travel after schools start. However, the Grand Canyon was slammed unexpectedly last year and again this year by visits from college students on spring break. From the article it appears Glacier had a similar experience.
The review by PEER and Traveler looked primarily at whether parks have produced visitor carrying capacity plans. Plans are an important first step, but the MUCH more important thing is whether parks have implemented their visitor carrying capacity plans. That is where the rubber meets the road. A plan that is not implemented is worthless.
The prime example of this is Arches National Park; that was the first national park to attempt to implement visitor carrying capacity as mandated by law.
The NPS has long had a problem letting too many visitors into developed areas. Parks naturally want to accommodate the teeming hordes, even when it means decreasing the quality of the visitor experience or increasing resource impacts. It is hard to draw the line and exclude visitors, exclude their customers.
Finally Congress (in the 1978 National Parks and Recreation Act) told the NPS that the parks had to start managing for carrying capacity; parks had to draw the line. Parks had to figure out what kind of visitor experience they wanted to provide, and what kind of resource conditions they wanted to provide (that is the NPS interpretation, not the literal language of the legislation), and then the parks had to manage for those conditions. Even if that meant turning away visitors.
When the NPS prepared the 1989 Arches GMP, the National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA) commented (as the NPS knew they would) that the NPS had failed to comply with the provisions of the 1978 National Parks and Recreation Act. So the NPS did what it typically did at that time, it added a provision in the Final GMP that committed to preparing a visitor carrying capacity plan.
NPCA kept pushing (and supporting) the NPS to figure out how to develop a carrying capacity framework. Eventually the NPS put together a team to develop a carrying capacity framework (VERP) to implement the 1978 law.
The NPS developed that carrying capacity framework at Arches, especially at Delicate Arch / Wolfe Ranch. The NPS chose Arches because it was a small contained park with a recent GMP, and an excellent management team that was interested in the problem.
The NPS pulled together a great team and brought in two of the best consultants in the field. The NPS did it right. The NPS developed a scientifically sound plan that worked for the park, and that could be implemented using available resources.
The VERP implementation plan for Arches was signed by the superintendent in 1995. The plan said that the park found that visitor use was already a bit too high at several popular areas to protect the desired visitor experience. That is, social crowding conditions were already outside standard. So in the plan, the park said that conditions would be brought within standard by reducing trailhead parking. In addition, monitoring would be undertaken to see if that initial management action would be enough to bring conditions within standard. If not, then further actions would be necessary.
The plan recognized that the days of accommodating every visitor were over; the focus now was on maintaining at least the minimum visitor experience and resource condition that were committing to. It was a sea change.
For the Wolfe Ranch parking area (trailhead for Delicate Arch), the plan said that parking would be limited to the 75 striped parking spaces currently provided. Impromptu overflow parking on the sides of the road and in unlined spaces in the parking area would be eliminated through the use of barriers, signs, and ticketing of violators. The park prepared a Transportation Implementation Plan in 2006 that reaffirmed the carrying capacity limits set in the 1995 plan.
Fast forward to 2014. It was as if the management team at Arches had changed and forgotten all about this social crowding carrying capacity and visitor experience stuff. The 1995 plan was still an official signed plan. If PEER or Traveler had come looking, they would have found it sitting on the shelf. But the park was no longer implementing it; that was the critical difference.
Instead, the park was focused on their parking problem issue; how to handle the ever increasing teeming hordes. So they prepared a site plan EA to deal with that issue. Among other things, they wanted to more than double the Wolfe Ranch parking area by adding an additional 82 parking spaces. That would allow a huge increase in social and natural impacts way above the standards set in the 1995 plan.
The park had long since abandoned their commitment to protect the visitor experience. I’m sure that the park still cared about the visitor experience. But they have abandoned the VERP social crowding standards that they used to monitor and manage for. Those were the written standards that the park committed to in a signed plan. But that was just an old plan on a shelf.
When the Delicate Arch / Wolfe Ranch Site Plan EA was sent out for public input in March 2014, the park received five comments that related to carrying capacity. The park’s responses to all five of those comments were way off the mark. They were without substance, essentially non-responsive. They ranged from government double-speak to almost deceptive. It sounded like the park had made up its mind about what it wanted to do, and it was going ahead regardless.
In November 2014, the Regional Director determined that there would be no significant environmental impact to the environment (including impact to the visitor experience) by more than doubling the number of parking spaces and greatly increasing the acceptable level of crowding for the visitor experience.
I am sure that this site plan / EA and these responses were written by park employees who had only the best of intentions. I have real empathy for the park. I can imagine being in their position and being focused on the need to accommodate the ever increasing number of visitors who come to Delicate Arch / Wolfe Ranch. That is truly customer service, and that is one of the things that the NPS is supposed to be about.
But Congress told the NPS in 1978 that it had another mandate: it had to start managing for carrying capacity; it had to draw the line. It had to figure out what kind of visitor experience it wanted to provide and what kind of resource conditions it wanted to provide, and then it had to manage for those conditions. Even if that meant turning away visitors.
Arches made those hard decisions in the 1995 VERP implementation plan. The park told the public what standards they would use for the minimum acceptable visitor experience and for the minimum acceptable measure of resource protection. The park said trust us; we won’t let conditions deteriorate below this point. That is what carrying capacity is in the National Park Service.
The issue in 2014 was that Arches felt that it could just walk away from the social crowding indicators and standards that were required by the 1989 GMP in accordance with law, established in the 1995 VERP implementation plan, and reaffirmed by the 2006 Transportation Implementation Plan.
When I worked for the National Park Service, I felt that when we committed to standards in our planning documents, that was an agreement we were making with the public. We were telling them that we would maintain their parks to at least that minimum standard.
At its heart, carrying capacity is about making an agreement with the public. Drawing a clear line in the sand and promising to keep it. That line is built on trust. At Arches in 1995, the park drew a very clear line. But in 2014, Arches casually shredded that line in full view of the public, as if it were nothing. As if the NPS commitment counted for nothing. That felt like a betrayal of a public trust.
Arches National Park was the birthplace of carrying capacity in the National Park Service. It was the place where the NPS got everything right. It was the place where carrying capacity had the best chance to succeed.
If this can happen at Arches, especially at Delicate Arch, then carrying capacity in the NPS truly has no teeth whatsoever. It is a paper tiger.
Just looking at whether parks have produced visitor carrying capacity plans does not tell you much. Arches still has their 1995 signed carrying capacity sitting on the shelf.
I was in Arches before the real visitor season started this year and it was already full. Full of CARS.
I asked several people about the idea of some kind of public transport system and was met with a stock supply of answers explaining why it was impossible.
Impossible? Or just very, very difficult?
Expensive? Yes. But what are the alternatives?
We need to remember that there can be a very fine line between REASONS and EXCUSES. Based on what I heard in April, right now the balance is on the side of excuses.