A recreationist enjoys hiking in Arizona. Photo © Dusty Boots Photography
It’s an American pastime that transcends economic and political boundaries. Getting out into nature, whether it’s to camp, hike, ski, hunt, fish, or just enjoy the solitude and quiet that the outdoors offers, is a tradition that dates back to the formative years of our country. Thoreau waxed eloquent about his time on Walden Pond in 1845. Teddy Roosevelt recognized the importance of the outdoors to the American psyche and set about preserving public lands at the dawn of the twentieth century.
But lately it seems that the call of the wild is becoming fainter. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February reports that the number of visitors to national parks and forests has decreased dramatically since 1987—some observers calculate as much as a 25 percent decline in visitors to public lands since the early 1990s. And although the U.S. Forest Service says it doesn’t have the data to calculate whether visitation is declining, Don English, who manages the National Visitor Use Monitoring system for the agency, says his sense is that visitation is “relatively flat.”
Meanwhile, despite an uptick in visitors in 2007—perhaps attributable to a weak dollar luring foreign tourists—the overall trend at national parks shows a significant decrease in visitation since 1997. Tom More, a social scientist at the Northeast Research Station, says it’s too early to say whether national forest visitation mirrors that, but acknowledges, “The $64 million question is, has the culture changed, and are young people moving away from nature-based recreation?”
It’s a good question. Ten years ago, there was a fear among people who valued public land that visitors were loving those lands to death. Overcrowded parks, limited camping space and face-offs between competitive groups—mountain bikers and hikers, ATV riders and non-motorized recreationists—at times made the outdoor experience trying. Today, tensions among user groups haven’t evaporated (see “Undemocratic Din,”), but the prospect of an overall decline in visitors brings different concerns about the preservation of public lands. If fewer people are interested in visiting national parks and forests, does it mean that these areas are losing their relevance? Without an enthusiastic and stable constituency of outdoor recreationists, funding for preservation of wild spaces could dwindle. This is especially true now, when domestic programs are competing with a very expensive war for shrinking federal budget dollars.
The public’s enthusiasm for outdoor recreation spawned a multi-billion- dollar recreation clothing and equipment industry. It also fueled the development of campsites, hiking trails and recreational amenities in national forests and parks. Considering the relative ease and low cost (until very recently) of camping, hiking and hunting, it seems that visitor trends should be going up, but a number of factors are conspiring to make getting out into the woods a less attractive option than it used to be. In this issue, we explore some of them, from financial impediments to the perception that forests are changing in ways that make them less appealing for recreation.
Enjoying the outdoors used to be the ultimate low-cost getaway, an alternative to expensive European vacations or trips to Disneyland. But with oil now exceeding $100 a barrel—five times what it was five years ago—and pump prices expected to reach $4 a gallon before the end of the summer, there’s no more cheap gas to fuel our outdoor fun. At the same time, the government continues to collect user fees on many sites that were free just over a decade ago. In certain areas, fees are increasing dramatically: this summer, some of California’s campground and trailhead fees will increase as much as 70 percent (see “Fee Demo Challenge,” ). A bill before Congress to eliminate the controversial fee program has drawn protests from land managers facing shrinking budgets. Ed Becker, a former district ranger who initially supported the program, traces its transformation from an amenities-enhancing program to one that land managers depend on for an essential chunk of their operating budgets (p. 44).
Wild landscapes across the country are facing changes that diminish their appeal as destinations. Each summer, massive wildfires burn through thousands of acres, leaving charcoal snags in the place of leafy green forests. And a beetle infestation sweeping Colorado (see “A Change of Scenery,”) is marring the landscape around ski areas and popular scenic trails, leaving swaths of rust-red conifers. The dead and dying trees pose additional hazards to outdoor enthusiasts, and headaches to land managers who are trying to keep trails and campgrounds safe.
But the elephant in the room when it comes to outdoor recreation is global climate change. In forests across the nation, the effects of global warming are being felt. Unpredictable seasonal weather can have a domino effect—warmer temperatures cause shorter snow seasons and decreased snowpacks, leading not only to shorter ski seasons but to lower river flows in the summer—making recreation trips and vacations more difficult to plan. The collision of climate change and outdoor activity is already being felt keenly in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, a destination that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. Jennifer Weeks (see “Hazy Forecast,”) examines how land managers are coping with the effects of changing climate, and how some recreationists are taking up the global fight at a local level.
It would be easy—but erroneous—to conclude that a decline in visitors means that Americans have lost interest in their public lands. Public support for healthy public lands and wilderness comes from diverse segments of the population. Even those who rarely set foot in the woods recognize the importance of the wild—witness the 1999 Roadless Rule, which received more public comments than any other proposed public land policy in history. Tom Stevens, professor of resource economics at University of Massachusetts, says that the decline is troubling if politicians take it as a signal that their constituencies aren’t interested in preserving and protecting public lands.
“I would hate to see us lose national parks and national forests to economic development and find out thirty years from now that people wanted to visit them again, but they are no longer there,” he says. “But I don’t think the day has come when we don’t care about national lands.”