In the past 10 years, visits to national parks fluctuated in the 270 million to 280 million range before rising to 292.8 million in 2014 and 307.2 million in 2015.
“The Park Service has been seeing an increase in visitation, and last year was a record-setting year for a lot of parks,” said Cristy Brown, public information officer for Mesa Verde National Park. While Mesa Verde usually attracts between 500,000 and 550,000 visitors per year, it had welcomed 31 percent of its normal number of visitors as of March.
That is significant because winter and early spring are the off-season for Mesa Verde, Brown said. And it could be indicative of the effects of the Park Service’s centennial celebration.
Several other factors could be contributing to the numbers, such as the price of gas, the overall national economy and the push by states to market national parks that fall within their borders, said James Doyle, chief of communication and legislation for the Intermountain Region of the NPS.
The additional tourists, though, bring a need for more staff.
This goes beyond the ubiquitous ranger that is iconic of the Park Service, Brown said. “You have to have people selling tickets, you have to have people taking entrance fees, you have to have people cleaning bathrooms.”
Park staffing levels are lower than they were five years ago, said John Garder, director of budget and appropriation for the National Parks Conservation Association.
That means some visitors are missing out on parts of the park experience because of capacity issues, Doyle said. Once a site reaches capacity, welcoming additional visitors risks damage to the resource people are there to enjoy.
“There’s always that challenge of attracting people to parks to keep them viable and keep them relevant to the American public, but not having them so important to people that they love them to death,” he said. “There’s a fine line there.”
The silver lining is the revenue for the Park Service because of entrance fees at parks where they are charged, Doyle said. As a general rule, individual parks retain 80 percent of the revenue generated by fees, with the remaining going to subsidize free parks.
But it is not enough to make up the budget shortfall to properly staff the parks, Garder said, which “is a growing issue that numerous park superintendents are struggling with and is going to require some focus and resources to address the challenges that come with it.”
