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Visitation is booming in national parks across the country—and while it's a good thing to have more people than ever enjoying the crown jewels of our public lands, overcrowding can damage both parks and visitor experiences.
Visits to national parks this year are already approaching the totals of 2019 (the most recent high, before a decrease last year during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic). As Americans eager to get outdoors travel around the country and visits continue to skyrocket, many are concerned that park staff may not be able to keep up. “There are several thousand less permanent employees in the National Park Service today than they were 10 years ago," said Paul Anderson, president of the Association of National Park Rangers.
While visits are increasing throughout most of the park system, about half of all visits are occurring at only the top 23 most-visited parks. Significant congestion conditions are concentrated in the most popular 12 to 15 destination parks, raising the question of whether we are loving these treasured landscapes to death. Some of these most popular parks have been forced to implement reservation systems. Such systems can help decrease congestion, but come at the cost of limiting access to everyone and potentially disappointing unsuspecting visitors.
While one solution to the issue of overcrowding is encouraging visitors to distribute across a wider range of national park service sites, another may be to look at opportunities for establishing new national parks and public lands destinations near high-concentration areas and population centers. Countless majestic landscapes are out there, and numerous stories remain to be told, if only we can raise them up in the eyes of the public.
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That’s how I feel about the oil companies. They take what they want and leave us to deal with the rest.”
