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 Today's post is unusual. It was something I shared earlier in the day with a group of peers who are themselves expert in the field of National Park management. It was a response to a post on the NationalParksTraveler website and it assumes a high level of familiarity with park management and related issues. It was my call to experts to step away from the the trendy, hot, news items now appearing on the topics of declining park visitation, videophillia, Nature Deficit Disorder and to rationally ask the question -- "What the hell is going on?"
For those who do not read past this introduction, please understand that the stories you have been reading about National Parks in the media are largely fabricated spin. To get to the truth, you need to get past the spin. we must, as Thoreau said;
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.
Continue reading if you'd like to try and get closer to reality.
Scott
Things are seldom as they seem;
skim milk masquerades as cream.
- W.S. Gilbert
--- begin quoted ---
National Park Visitation Debate -- Here We Go Again
Posted February 11th, 2008 by Kurt Repanshek
..... But is there a visitation problem?
SCOTT REPLIES:
Of course not and thanks for helping to drive home that point.
Declining park visitation is NOT "the" problem and might not even be "a" problem. It might be a benefit.
Declining visitation provides an opportunity for everyone with a horse
in this race to point to visitation and then spin the issue as they
please.
The entire videophillia story is nothing but spin. Pergams and Zaradic
aren't park researchers or sociologists. They are statisticians hired
by The Nature Conservancy to look at a narrow range of variable and to
use statistics to produce a certain spin.
The real danger, of course, now comes from the American Recreation Coalition and the NPS itself. Their spin will be lethal.
Consider this.
Pergams / Zaradic pinpoint the visitation peak as having occurred in
the 1981 - 1987 time frame. That's a statistical interpretation and
that is where the authors are skilled.
Their interpretation of the cause of this decline is of no consequence
and no relevance. The authors are no more qualified when it comes to
speaking about parks than any other mouse and stream ecology
researchers. So let's move past their spin.
Lets assume that the peak did occur in the time frame identified by the
authors and lets, for the moment, also accept their hypothesis that
visitation to the National Parks has a filter-down affect upon
visitation to other natural settings (a hypothesis they put forth in
their newest publication). It's not critical to accept that hypothesis
-- but it helps to do so.
If we assume that much of the Pergams/Zaradic paper is of value, then
perhaps we who actually know something about the parks should being
asking the question -- "What was going on with National Park Service
management that might have resulted in this decline in visitation?"
Let none of us accept any cockamamie peripheral excuses such as
videophillia or, heaven forbid, the dreaded Richard Louv "Nature
Deficit Disorder". Lets' ask the rational question -- "what was going
on with NPS management/policy"?
Or perhaps, we can rephrase that as "who and what killed the Golden Goose?"
My theory is that the NPS went astray long before this time period. It
went off track under Conrad Wirth and went dreadfully wrong under NPS
Director Hartzog.
My theory is that visitation coasted upward through the late 60s and 70s acting under the force of momentum and demographics.
My theory is that the momentum simply ran out and that in the Carter
era and then strongly under Reagan/Watt/Hodel, (all acting under the
influence of the ARC). Park management/ direction/ policy became the
problem.
My theory is that when the parks became looked upon and MANAGED as if
they were just another form of entertainment little different than
Disneyland -- and when the became subject to comparison with other
forms of commercial entertainment -- the public came to look upon
Parks as no more special than those others forms of entertainment.
Ten or 15 years ago the "PROBLEM", so people said, was that we were
loving our parks to death. If that was the problem, then park managers
and park advocates should feel some relief that visitation pressures
have eased up.
Today the "PROBLEM", so people say, is that fewer people are visiting
the parks. And with that being the problem de jure, the solution will
(OF COURSE) be to further transform the parks and to make them more
like Disneyland -- and, from the ARC's point of view, preferably
motorized Disneylands.
The solution will be bad for parks but it will be good for those who
have long hated the Organic Act and have never thought of the parks as
being particularly special. It will be great for the ARC and the
interests they represent.
AND VERY SADLY -- the conservation community will play right into the
recreation industry's hands. This declining visitation debate is going
to be bad for the parks and I see little possibility of park advocates
speaking out honestly and thoughtfully on this topic.
If anyone would like to offer a different spin than the one I just offered --- I'd welcome hearing it.
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- Land management 
