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HOME  - Land management ParkRemark Getting to the Roots
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ParkRemark Getting to the Roots |
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Written by Scott Silver
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Wednesday, 29 November 2006 |
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ParkRemark is a blog which has gradually been homing in upon some extremely important and sometimes controversial National Park-related topics. Today they take a closer look at an issue that has in recent months been receiving increasing amounts of increasingly superficial media attention.
Appended is today's ParkRemark. I'd like to preface it with two short quotes -- both from Henry David Thoreau.
"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe ... till we come to the hard bottom of rocks in place, which we can call reality."
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
Thank you ParkRemark for your efforts.
Scott
While I was enjoying a little Thanksgiving turkey last week, Julie Cart with the Los Angeles Times wrote another long article about events within the National Park Service.
Her topic this time was about declining visitation to the parks, and
specifically about declining overnight stays within the parks.
The article, "Camp? Outside? Um, no thanks",
examines who is not visiting, and why. During the busy summer months,
parks are filled with a lot of families with kids, a group which
disappear in the fall when school starts. In years past, the off-season
has typically meant a surge in traveling retired folks, but in recent
years says Julie, this group has chosen to go elsewhere.
The article also says that minorities are not well represented among
those visiting the parks. Apparently African-American and Latino
populations as a whole are not visiting the parks. Included among the
reasons given for an unwillingness to visit are: parks are too
dangerous (think spiders, poison oak, and bears), cultural
insensitivities toward large family groups, too expensive, and that
people were just too busy to visit.
The timing and motive of this article are a wonder to me.
The House Subcommittee on National Parks met twice over the summer
to address the question of decreased park visitation. Under the
direction of Steve Peirce. Of the six witnesses called to testify, only
one was from the Park Service. The others were from for-profit tourism
associations (and a rep from the State of New Mexico Tourism Cabinet).
Said Pierce at the time, "If the National Park Service will see its
visitors today as its assets for the future, instead of potential
impacts to the resource, then the future of the parks will be more
secure".
Who has something to lose when park visitation goes down? I can't
imagine that the loss in visitation bothers the bears or the trees very
much. It is the for-profit groups which make money at your expense when
you visit a park that are the ones who are most concerned when you
don't visit. It affects their bottom line. This list includes everyone
from the hospitality associations, to RV dealers, to snowmobile
manufacturers, to recreation gear companies like Coleman, and boat
makers. If you were to put together a list of these folks, it would
probably look a lot like the member organizations of the American Recreation Coalition (ARC).
The ARC is overly
concerned with low park visitation. They have many programs operating
concurrently to get you back in the parks, not a bad goal really, until
you understand their motivation (to make their member organizations
rich). One of these programs is called WOW. Earlier this month they
gave a press release which was picked up directly by the USA Today on
the 22nt (Nature programs' goal: No child left inside). ARC chairman Derrick Crandall sent an email out to his constituency with self congratulations for getting their message out.
... You will also see that the USA Today story gives
visibility to another important ARC message: that visits to public
lands are in decline, and that is not a good nor desirable thing.
I'm not saying that Julie Cart (still my favorite National Park
reporter) is a pawn for the ARC, but her timing seems to fishy. I like
that her article asks why minorities are being under represented as
park visitors. But I wish she had given a nod to who is asking about
low visitation, and why is it concern to their industry.
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