There are a surprising number of units in the National Park System that are visited by scant few folks. Should visitation be the gauge against which a park's continued existence in the system is justified? Or, should parks be measured by what they protect?
That question arises in light of 2010 visitation data from the National Park System. According to those numbers, 23 units -- nearly 6 percent of the system's 394 units -- attracted fewer than 10,000 visitors last year. The total attendance of this bottom tier was 77,825.
Are such numbers justification for keeping the involved units up and running, or should serious consideration be given to shuttering them?
Comments
Here are examples of two of the most extreme cases:
Muir Woods National Monument: 2010 Budget $463,000. 2010 Visitation: 781,609. Cost per visitor: 59 cents.
Isle Royale National Park: 2010 budget $4,593,000. 2010 Visitation: 14,038. Cost per visitor: $327.18
Perhaps the question isn't should the park exist, its should we be spending $4.6 million on it. Parks can exist without massive expenditures - especially if there is low visitation.
Why is visitation the only criteria given in this discussion? How about significance of the site, fragility of the resources, importance of the story to civic discourse? Perhaps the discussion should be why these sites get low visitation - and what that means.
I would be so sad to see our low visitation parks closed. We've visited a good number of them and they are very special places! We visited Nicodemus last year. The town felt like a ghost town! However, we really took our time in the visitors center, watched all the movies they offered, read all the information, etc and then drove around the town. I left there very touched. I learned so much and can honestly say I loved our visit to Nicodemus. Another time we went to Fort Bowie. We took the mile or so walk in and enjoyed all the ruins. We even had to call the ranger at home to come to the visitor center! Once again, we were so pleasantly surprised at what a neat park this is! Another lonely park we visited was Alibates. We called in advance to arrange a ranger tour. Needless to say, we were the only ones on the tour. But it was great. We had one on one with the ranger and again, learned so much. It's beautiful! We even found a rock store in one of the local towns where we could buy a piece of alibate as it is so pretty. So NO, don't close our lonley parks. I would encourage those who go to Yosemite and Yellowstone and all our other great parks to take the time to visit our lonely parks - you will be in for some special times!
Anonymous is off the mark. "Cost per visitor" is a red herring. The national parks exist for more reasons than to simply be visited by people. There's an Alaska unit that gets very few visitors per year, but I wouldn't say that means we shouldn't protect it. Likewise there's a unit in Texas that has low visitation (and one in Arizona that is off limits) but because neither of these have big staffed visitors centers, you essentially need an appointment to visit. There may be cases though where low visitation might justify decertifying a unit, but I wouldn't make blanket statements about the system as a whole as some would.
Also what defines a visit varies widely from unit to unit, and may not tell the whole story about visitation. Each unit has their own method of determining visitation/usage, which may arguably be accurate/innacurate and under/overcount usage, and of course a "visit" to Big Bend National Park is far from the same thing as a "visit" to the Lincoln Memorial. But you have to wonder whether some parks, because they're so remote, because they're sparsely staffed, or because (in the case of Apostle Islands as I read one time in their log), because the batteries ran out on the device used to track visitation, underreport visitation.
Laura's comment is on the right track.
If you were in the hospital, would you want the decision of whether you lived or dies to be made based on how many freinds you have? That's what this whole story implies.
Admittedly, there are a few national park sites that are of questionable national significance. Mots however, have an intrinsic value. Even if no one ever saw Yellowstone, it would be worth saving, just because it is a "Once in a Planet" place. It has it's own value independent of what we think of it.
Another anaology: I'll bet Shakespeare's works aren't the most popular at the library, but no library would be without them.
Laura said: "Perhaps the discussion should be why these sites get low visitation - and what that means."
Serious consideration should be given to the national park system, yes. Should all low-visitation park automatically be closed? Not necessarily. But there are certainly many parks in the system that get low visitation and are perhaps not on par with the "crown jewel" parks.
Laura's right that we should examine significance. I doubt that River Raisin National Battlefield Park will be as "significant" or "valuable" to visitors as Grand Canyon National Park will be, say. Maybe that's a reason to reevaluate spending money (or even having) some of these "less-valuable" sites.
The parks are not a popularity contest. They were established to protect unique sites - and if Americans cannot be bothered to visit, so be it. Personally, I've been to the least visited sites, some more than once, and they are treasures. Protection is the strategy, not popularity.And since when has a government entity ever been assessed by its cost/benefit ratio anyway? If that was the case, 95% of government would shut down.