With nearly 4.5 million people having visited Yellowstone so far this year, heading out onto Yellowstone Lake has been a great way to avoid crowds/Kurt Repanshek file
Editor's note: The numbers for September visitation and year-to-date visitation were corrected Thursday by Yellowstone staff to add 9,383 recreational visits to reflect an under-counting at one entrance station.
More than 4 million visitors have entered Yellowstone National Park so far this year, a record for the park and a mark that is challenging staff in managing the crowds.
"Never in Yellowstone's history have we seen such substantial visitation increases in such a short amount of time," said Superintendent Cam Sholly. "We will continue working with our teams and partners to develop and implement appropriate short- and long-term actions for managing increasing visitation across the park. My thanks to our teams here for working through a record visitation year, especially with the continued workforce challenges presented by COVID-19."
Pushing the park past the 4-million-visitor mark was September's visitation of 882,078, a 5 percent increase from a year earlier and a substantial 27 percent increase from September 2019, the park announced Wednesday. That pushed the park's year-to-date visitation total to 4,472,982 recreation visits, up 32 percent from the same period last year, and 17 percent above 2019's talley through September.
The list below shows the year-to-date trend for recreation visits over the last several years (through September):
- 2021 – 4,472,982
- 2020 – 3,393,642*
- 2019 – 3,807,815
- 2018 – 3,860,695
- 2017 – 3,872,775
- 2016 – 3,970,778
Affected areas: developed corridors
Yellowstone's road corridors and parking areas equate to less than 1,750 (0.079%) acres of the park's 2.2 million acres. Most visitors stay within a half mile of these corridors.
Visitor use strategy
Yellowstone's visitor use strategy, developed in 2019, focuses on the impacts of increasing visitation on: 1) park resources; 2) staffing, infrastructure and operations; 3) visitor experience; and 4) gateway communities, including economic and recreational access. The park is concentrating on the most congested areas including Old Faithful, Midway Geyser Basin, Norris, Canyon rims, and Lamar Valley.
Actions
The park has developed a comprehensive resource tool to monitor and respond to impacts on resources. The park piloted an AV shuttle system in 2021, moving over 10,000 visitors at Canyon Village and testing technology that could be used in the future. A major shuttle feasibility study is underway to analyze the viability of a shuttle system in the Midway Geyser Basin corridor. The park is also taking advantage of data derived from recent major visitor surveys and transportation studies to inform future decisions and is working closely with Grand Teton National Park on future solutions since both parks substantially share visitation each year.
Yellowstone has completed more than $100 million in projects over the past two years to improve transportation infrastructure, reduce traffic congestion and enhance visitor experiences. Substantial additional investments will continue in 2022 and 2023 in multiple areas of the park as part of funding received from the Great American Outdoors Act.
Plan your visit
If you plan to travel to Yellowstone this autumn, check the road and weather conditions, plan ahead and recreate responsibly to protect yourself and the park. Stay informed about changes to park operations and services by downloading the NPS Yellowstone app and visiting www.nps.gov/yell or the park’s social media channels.
More data on park visitation, including how we calculate these numbers, is available on the NPS Stats website.
Yellowstone footnote: *The park was closed March 24-May 18, 2020, due to COVID-19. Two entrances were open May 18-31 and the remaining three opened on June 1.
Comments
Was there again this year and it is such an ugly experience on the road or at the hubs. Unless your backpacking it is so crowded it has to be negatively afftecting enviroment of the park if not the experience. Very sad
Yellowstone needs to cap visitation at some exceptable level evem if means I cannot go there sometimes. It is currently getting expotentially worse
We can reduce visitor pressure by expanding Yellowstone and creating new national parks across the country. This would provide alternatives for recreation in other outstanding natural areas. A high priority should be new parks near major urban areas, where most people who visit Yellowstone and other existing parks come from.
An expanded Yellowstone would incorporate adjacent national forest and BLM public lands. These agencies allow Yellowstone wildlife such as bison, wolves, and mountain lions, to be killed by trophy hunters when they leave the park. They also allow other destructive activities such as logging, livestock grazing, and mining on many of the lands they "manage." Compared with national parks, these lands are lightly visited because the top priority is resource extraction instead of carbon storage, preservation of biodiversity, and public education and recreation. If we protect these lands and tell people about them, they will come.
That's not going to happen. Wyoming's members of Congress would stop it from happening, especially since it would take an act of Congress. The surrounding area also doesn't quite have what makes Yellowstone special, which is geothermal activity.
Also - those areas around Yellowstone and Grand Teton are not lightly visited although I can't find any visitation numbers per se. They have a lot of campgrounds that Yellowstone visitors use. That's also where a lot of hunting takes place, and the locals aren't going to stand for that. And there's tons of recreation too. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is on Forest Service land.
Like it or not, people naturally gravitate towards what's popular and spectacular. Simply calling something a national park isn't necessarily going to attract a lot more people simply because a label is attached. Death Valley visitation didn't really change. Pinnacles changed its designation but never really attained peak visitation numbers from before the change. If it's worth visiting, people will figure that out, whether it's slot canyons in Utah or waterfalls in Lake Tahoe.
Hi y_p_w,
Your assertion that the Wyoming delegation would never support expanding Yellowstone is sheer conjecture. The fact is that conservative politicians have supported new and expanded national parks in the past, especially because of their economic benefits, and they will no doubt do so in the future. This is a complex political and economic question that would get worked out if a real proposal were out there and suppoted by the public. And, of course, Yellowstone also overlaps into Montana and Idaho, which have different socio-political dynamics.
Regarding lands surrounding Yellowstone not being special, you have the right to your opinion that only thermal features matter. Some people might think old-growth forests, clear-running streams, biodiversity, carbon capture and storage, intact watersheds, scenic values, etc. matter as well. For example, I somehow think the Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance would disagree that those lands are nothing special. https://www.gallatinyellowstonewilderness.org/gallatin-range
Your view that lands surrounding Yellowstone are heavily visited is purely anecdotal. Some campgrounds adjacent to Yellowstone are obviously crowded. But there are many other places miles from the Yellowstone border that have no campgrounds or other facilities. And they are not familiar to most people. Moreover, the Forest Service does nothing to manage and direct people to distribute recreation because they would rather log and graze the lands. So the potential for visitation has barely been explored.
Regarding hunting, most of the parks in Alaska are actually National Park and Preserve, which allow hunting in the Preserve areas. There is no reason that model cannot be used where hunting is a major issue. Moreover, the National Park Service manages hunting where it is allowed, so they could ban trophy hunting for wolves, mountain lions -- and grizzly bears if and when they are taken off the endangered species list. They would phase out or manage livestock much more closely, which would lesen the threat of contact with, and killing of, bison.
You assert that "people naturally gravitate towards what's popular and spectacular." But of course, everyone has a different definition of those things. There are hundreds of places in America that are spectacular but they are not national parks and they are little known by most people. If they were designated as national parks they would be put on the map and they would draw a lot more people -- including people who have been to a crowded national park already and are ready to try another new park that may be less crowded.
Regarding changes in visitation, there is actually a lot of evidence that designating an area as a national park increases visitation. See, for example, https://headwaterseconomics.org/wp-content/uploads/national-monuments-re... This is why there was bipartisan support in ruby-red West Virginia for the recent conversion of New River Gorge National River to a national park. Death Valley and Pinnacles are poor examples, because one was already world-famous and the other is a well-known area to the millions of people who live a short distance away.
Your contention that "people will figure out" where the special places are is another one based on anecdotal evidence. The fact that many areas that could qualify as national parks are NOT crowded refutes your claim.
We face a climate emergency, a biodiversity crisis, and a public health threat due in part to lack of access to the natural world. And we have numerous national parks that are increasingly crowded. We can throw up our hands and say nothing can be done. Or, we can be creative and bold and make the case for more national parks, which would help to address all of these problems. I choose the latter.
First of all, I never said that the area around Yellowstone wasn't special. However, I don't believe it has what makes Yellowstone special enough to add more area to a national park. As far as visitation goes, the vast majority of the park is within Wyoming, but through a strange quirk in how the boundaries were drawn and where the popular routes are to enter, the gateway communities are nearly all within Montana. For any kind of visitation around there that isn't remote hiking, it would require roads. Building new roads is unlikely to happen.
Now, I don't see why there couldn't be national monument designations for specific areas around national parks. That's happened in proximity to national parks before. Giant Sequoia National Monument was declared in the 90s, carved out (and still part) of Sequoia National Forest. However, the part along Generals Highway was already heavily visited because of its proximity to SEKI.
But again, in the age of social media, people have found out about these special places, and previously lightly visited NPS and even non-NPS areas are being loved to death. Visitation has been encouraged for decades, and it's finally happened. The year I visited Arches National Park, visitation was around 800,000 per year, but now it's about double that. People are looking for their Instagram moments. Even with people dispersing towards different natural areas, national parks are getting record visitation.
There are no simple solutions. When someone visits Yellowstone, they're going to want to go to see Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone Canyon, and Lake Yellowstone. Adding more on the edges where there are no major roads is not going to be a solution to disperse visition. People gravitate towards what's popular. I keep on hearing about how crowded Alcatraz is and how difficult it is to get a ferry reservation, but somehow visitors haven't backed off. Yogi Berra's saying (Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.) would seem to apply.
Hi y_p_w,
Sorry if I mischaracterized your position on what constitutes special lands.
Regarding the issue of roads, you state that if Yellowstone were expanded it would require building more roads to accommodate additional visitors. There are already way too many roads in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem -- built to support logging, livestock grazing, mining, and other extractive industry. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/map-roads-greater-yellowstone-ecosystem The benefit of adding lands to the national park is that most of the roads could be converted to trails or closed. There would still be plenty of roaded access throughout the expanded park, but we would get rid of damaging resource extraction.
Designating national monuments next to national parks does no harm, but it is only a partial solution. Since the Clinton administration, almost all new national monuments have been left under Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management administration. As a result, other than banning mining and drilling (which is a good thing), they do not really offer much stronger protection than the status quo. For example, the Forest Service, which administers Giant Sequoia National Monument allows activities that are not allowed in the neighgoring national park, such as "mechanical thinning" (i.e., logging), livestock grazing, and off-road motorized vehicle use.
In Wyoming, this is an academic issue, since the 1950 act creating Grand Teton National Park prohibits the designation of any new national monuments in the state without the approval of Congress. https://www.nps.gov/grte/learn/management/upload/Grand-Teton-NP-enabling... It would probably be politically easier to expand the existing Yellowstone National Park than to create brand new national monuments in Wyoming.
There are virtually no places in America without paved roads nearby, so roaded access is not what is holding back visitation to non-national park areas. Despite Instagram, there are hundreds of areas across the country that would qualify for national park designation and many of them are lightly visited. I have been to many of them.
Yes, visitation is increasinig in many existing national park areas. That is all the more reason to create more national parks to relieve this pressure. We are particularly lacking in national parks near major metropolitan areas. Creating new parks in those areas would help to keep more people closer to home instead of traveling long distances to go to existing national parks.
Alternatively, we can continue to complain that our national parks are being "loved to death" and delude ourselves into believing that simply making it harder to get into existing parks is going to solve the problem. Or, even less viable, we can just complain and offer no solutions at all.
I've heard this argument before - that creating more national parks is going to relieve pressure on the crowded, premier ones. However, the premier national parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Zion are popular because they're unique destinations. They tried that before with Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Gateway Arch is now a national park. Just slapping a designation on a piece of land isn't going to magically draw people in to visit who wouldn't have likely visited anyways.
Also - keeping certain lands in BLM or Forest Service operation may be key to a public buy in if there's a national monument designation. That might help with funding and certain protections, but there are legitimate reasons to allow people to maintain their previous recreational (and even some commercial) uses.
The problem right now is that all public lands are under pressure of increased visitation. Outdoor recreation has gotten extremely popular. It's affecting NPS, state parks, BLM, Forest Service, TVA, private lands, etc.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.7/infographic-public-lands-crowds-swarm-th...
https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2021/02/nys-parks-attendance.html
It is simply your opinion that visitors will insist on going to Yellowstone, Grand Canyon Zion. etc., even if there are other outstanding areas available that are closer to home or less crowded. There is no objective evidence that this is true, because we have not offered any serious alternatives. We have not created a full-fledged National Park that was not all or mostly existing National Park System land since Great Basin in 1986. Upgrading a national monument increases visitorship, but those areas general already have a lot of visitors.
What, we do know is that NOT creating new national parks does not relieve pressure on existing national parks. Continuing this failed strategy and hoping for something different makes no sense.
Keeping national monuments under BLM or Forest Service administration also makes no sense. It hsa not increased their budgets. Other than ORV riding, trophy hunting for wolves, target shooting, and other ecologically harmful activities, there are no recretional uses that cannot be accommodated in national parks and nationa preserves. And the designation of BLM and Forest Service national monuments has not led to budget increases. Instead, the agencies do not even come close to having the resources to protect and manage those areas.
As for resource extraction, if you think that having less than 3% of the lower 48 states off-limits to these activities, then the current situation of most public lands being open to resource extraction is just fine. If you think that we need a lot more land protected from such exploitation to store carbon, prevent species extinctions, and offer recreation in a natural setting, then we need a lot more national parks.
You keep reminding us that public lands are receiving increasing numbers of visitors. That is true. But this is focused on a small percentage of public lands -- mainly national parks, state parks, and reservoir areas.
You have still not offered any solution to the problem other than claim, without any objective evidence, that creating new national parks will not help this problem.