Financial woes threaten American parks
Declining interest in the outdoors puts Great Smoky Mountains National Park in danger
Bruce Henderson - McClatchy Newspapers
Issue date: 9/17/09 Section: World News
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The problem passes from one generation to the next: a chronic lack of financial support in the past, declining visits now, and a future shaped by today's children who are spending far less time in the outdoors.
For decades, park advocates say, Congress has starved the national parks of enough money to keep roads, buildings and trails in adequate repair. The maintenance backlog is now $8 billion, including $230 million in the Smokies alone.
Lawmakers have begun to close that gap in the past two years, however, and the Smokies park got a $64 million infusion this spring from the federal stimulus bill.
Still, the Smokies' chronic financial problems have park officials speaking publicly about what up to now has been the unthinkable: an entry fee. It would raise millions but likely set off a firestorm of local opposition from those accustomed to using the park for free.
While it is still the nation's most-visited national park, the number of visitors to the Smokies has dropped for a decade. Last year's count of nine million people was 12 percent smaller than in the peak year of 1999.
As park numbers dropped, tourist spending rose in the park's gateway towns of Cherokee, Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., where attractions such as Harrah's casino and the Splash Country water park beckon.
"Our best guess," park spokesman Bob Miller said, "is that although visitors came to the area, they chose to budget their time differently and spent days at other attractions."
Research published last year found steady declines, compared with population growth, since the 1980s in park visits, hunting, camping and hiking in the United States, Japan and Spain. Researchers Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic found "an ongoing and fundamental shift away from nature-based recreation."
That change is most striking among children.
Kids don't play outdoors - splashing in creeks and chasing fireflies - as they once did, numerous studies and most parents will attest. Increasingly sedentary and overweight, they're more likely to be mesmerized by a Wii than a salamander.
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