By: Robert Oldham
Lines. Overcrowding. Trash. Sound like a typical family vacation to Disney World? Just add unsanitary restrooms and severely overpriced ice cream sandwiches and it might as well be a roller coaster theme park. Few would surmise that this is now a common description of US National Parks. Treasures such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier have become targets of the tourist hoards. They are pouring in at an unprecedented rate with a ten percent increase in visitors each year since 1993, which culminated in 275 million visitors in 2013. Yes, National Parks are more popular than ever, but are they better off because of it?
Packing loads of visitors into a protected area tends to degrade the environment. Some of the negative effects of excessive tourism are “trail erosion, trampled vegetation, litter, noise, smog, and water pollution,” the result of pedestrian and vehicle traffic. To combat these effects, the National Park Service is taking measures to ensure that tourists will still be able to access the parks without significantly impacting the environment. Yosemite National Park consolidates parking at its entrance and schedules shuttle buses to take visitors to major sights instead of allowing them free reign to move about. Additionally, the NPS has implemented first-come, first-serve systems at other parks to control the amount of visitors at any one time and have began distributing trail permits to prevent overuse. However, these measures are reactionary rather than preventative as they are only taking place at a few parks instead of on a larger scale.
Infrastructure development in National Parks has further unsettled some observers. In Yellowstone National Park there are over 300 miles of paved roads including an interchange that closely resembles an interstate highway. Gift shops and hotels adorn all the major sights (which, in this author’s opinion, provides a rather tacky atmosphere to present the miracles of nature). Bright red shuttles in Montana’s Glacier National Park take elderly visitors down the famous Going-Into-the-Sun Road and frequently stop for photo opportunities. Visitor centers along the road sell a plethora of expensive novelty items such as guide books and children’s toys. The amount of infrastructure used to sustain visitor centers, bus stations, and other comfort utilities for tourists is immense as they service remote locations.
Traditional tourist services that one might expect to find in resort areas are also encroaching into park boundaries. The industry’s expansion into the interiors of National Parks has been a work in progress throughout history and has brought in piles of money by providing a level of comfort that the wilderness cannot match for most Americans. An example is the growth of the hotel service industry that charges steep rates and has been able to target a consumer base that is not quite comfortable with the camping scene. A colorful brochure is issued by the Glacier National Park lodging services; it details five different luxurious locales for tourists to lodge in and enjoy the natural beauty (natural beauty with Five Star dining and room service of course). Maintaining luxurious lodging requires large buildings, pipes, and tunnels to provide sewage, water, electrical, and waste services in the midst of a protected environment.
The unfortunate result of the infrastructure buildup and move towards traditional tourist services is an “Americanization” of the park experience. This means that issues typically identified with urban areas such as traffic jams (parking is becoming a rare commodity at Glacier), busted pipes, electrical outages, and incessant background noise (the result of airborne sightseeing tours) are becoming more prevalent in National Parks. In the winter of 2009 a study found that man made noises from snowmobiles and nearby luxury resorts could be heard 100 percent of the time at the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone, often drowning out the sound of the geyser’s hourly eruptions. Studies by the NPS have shown that the development of road for human use is increasing the mortality of wildlife populations.
Man’s never ending attempt to blur the line between nature and civilization is further exemplified in the recent series of drone incidents in National Parks. Radio controlled aircraft have been banned by the NPS due to their overuse in Grand Teton National Park but that did not stop a tourist from illegally flying and crashing his drone into a large hot spring in Yellowstone in a futile attempt to capture photographs of the site. The NPS predicted severe damage to the spring and the negligent tourist has since been arrested. This incident shows the unfortunate consequences of bringing modern innovation into a preserved area where it does not quite fit in.
Despite the negative effects of Americanization, the parks are valuable economic assets for the government and the tourism industry. Investing in the NPS is worthwhile as it reports a $10 return on every $1 spent by the federal government on its operations. The tourist trap communities that lay within 60 miles of the parks’ outer boundaries received $14.6 billion from tourism in 2013. This, in turn, supported nearly 200,000 jobs and contributed over $26 billion to the US economy.
Moreover, many argue that the entire reason National Parks exist is, as President Theodore Roosevelt said “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” These are special areas designed to entertain the American populace and the people have spoken as to how they wish to be entertained. Even if the tourism industry is developing advanced infrastructure at the expense of the environment, who is to say that is wrong? Other protected areas such as National Forests exist to satisfy those with a more rustic vision of nature.
However, both of these points are misleading. The economic benefits are much less attractive than they initially appear in both substance and longevity. The money that tourists drop is a double edged sword as local goods in the communities surrounding parks become much more expensive from this increase in demand; the goods being purchased by businesses to sell are often geared toward their tourist audiences rather than the locals leading to more alcohol and fast food than medical supplies and produce . Additionally, many of the jobs that the parks create are seasonal and pay low wages for long hours rather than career positions. A vicious cycle with an unsustainable future is created by reliance on the tourism industry. The development around parks will beget more development as suburban communities, hotels, and shops continue to pop up and wear down the parks’ ability to support the influx of visitors. Trails, lakes, and mountains that make up park landscapes are ultimately a limited resource that will only be able to support the tourist industry and the economic well being of the local communities if used in a responsible manner.
The transformation of nature into a commercial enterprise is the opposite of what Roosevelt would have wanted. Making the parks accessible to a wider audience that prefers hotels and amenities is simultaneously transforming their rustic essence into a Disney World-like attraction and it is unlikely that the consummate outdoorsman and President who created the parks would approve of what they have become. Roosevelt would not travel to Yellowstone to hear the buzzing of a snowmobile or ride an elevator to the 9th floor of a mountain view penthouse. He believed that “the farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom.” Where is the freedom in room service and helicopter rides? There must exist some level of separation between tourism in resort areas and the tourism we can expect in the midst of preserved forest.
In order to save our National Parks from both degradation and becoming farcical, the expansion of the tourist industry must be stemmed. Regardless of the comfort level it seeks to provide to tourists, further development must fit with the spirit of conservation and preservation upon which the National Parks were founded. This might include expanding the Yosemite parking restrictions, capping the number of visitors per day, making it more costly for businesses to set up in the interior of parks, and requiring new lodging to be developed a certain distance outside of the park areas. The NPS must draw a fine line for the tourism industry’s expansion or else it risks destroying the preserved nature that gives meaning to the classic tune “America the Beautiful.”