With nearly 4.5 million people having visited Yellowstone so far this year, heading out onto Yellowstone Lake has been a great way to avoid crowds/Kurt Repanshek file
Editor's note: The numbers for September visitation and year-to-date visitation were corrected Thursday by Yellowstone staff to add 9,383 recreational visits to reflect an under-counting at one entrance station.
More than 4 million visitors have entered Yellowstone National Park so far this year, a record for the park and a mark that is challenging staff in managing the crowds.
"Never in Yellowstone's history have we seen such substantial visitation increases in such a short amount of time," said Superintendent Cam Sholly. "We will continue working with our teams and partners to develop and implement appropriate short- and long-term actions for managing increasing visitation across the park. My thanks to our teams here for working through a record visitation year, especially with the continued workforce challenges presented by COVID-19."
Pushing the park past the 4-million-visitor mark was September's visitation of 882,078, a 5 percent increase from a year earlier and a substantial 27 percent increase from September 2019, the park announced Wednesday. That pushed the park's year-to-date visitation total to 4,472,982 recreation visits, up 32 percent from the same period last year, and 17 percent above 2019's talley through September.
The list below shows the year-to-date trend for recreation visits over the last several years (through September):
- 2021 – 4,472,982
- 2020 – 3,393,642*
- 2019 – 3,807,815
- 2018 – 3,860,695
- 2017 – 3,872,775
- 2016 – 3,970,778
Affected areas: developed corridors
Yellowstone's road corridors and parking areas equate to less than 1,750 (0.079%) acres of the park's 2.2 million acres. Most visitors stay within a half mile of these corridors.
Visitor use strategy
Yellowstone's visitor use strategy, developed in 2019, focuses on the impacts of increasing visitation on: 1) park resources; 2) staffing, infrastructure and operations; 3) visitor experience; and 4) gateway communities, including economic and recreational access. The park is concentrating on the most congested areas including Old Faithful, Midway Geyser Basin, Norris, Canyon rims, and Lamar Valley.
Actions
The park has developed a comprehensive resource tool to monitor and respond to impacts on resources. The park piloted an AV shuttle system in 2021, moving over 10,000 visitors at Canyon Village and testing technology that could be used in the future. A major shuttle feasibility study is underway to analyze the viability of a shuttle system in the Midway Geyser Basin corridor. The park is also taking advantage of data derived from recent major visitor surveys and transportation studies to inform future decisions and is working closely with Grand Teton National Park on future solutions since both parks substantially share visitation each year.
Yellowstone has completed more than $100 million in projects over the past two years to improve transportation infrastructure, reduce traffic congestion and enhance visitor experiences. Substantial additional investments will continue in 2022 and 2023 in multiple areas of the park as part of funding received from the Great American Outdoors Act.
Plan your visit
If you plan to travel to Yellowstone this autumn, check the road and weather conditions, plan ahead and recreate responsibly to protect yourself and the park. Stay informed about changes to park operations and services by downloading the NPS Yellowstone app and visiting www.nps.gov/yell or the park’s social media channels.
More data on park visitation, including how we calculate these numbers, is available on the NPS Stats website.
Yellowstone footnote: *The park was closed March 24-May 18, 2020, due to COVID-19. Two entrances were open May 18-31 and the remaining three opened on June 1.
Support Essential Coverage of Essential Places
Comments
Resource extraction doesn't necessarily change when there's a new designation. I recall with the Bears Ears designation, there was an additional statement that new mining/logging claims wouldn't be allowed. However, existing claims are typically still allowed to continue. There are a few dozen active mining claims in Death Valley National Park, and the orphan mine at Grand Canyon NP could theoretically still reopen.
Your assertion that only a small percentage of public lands are receiving increasing visitation goes against all the reporting. That article I linked from High Country News noted that the BLM had to institute a timed reservation system at Red Rock Canyon. Camping is way up around the country.
The Forest Service had record visitation too, even with many closures in the past year.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/news/releases/new-data-shows-visits-soared-acros...
https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/nvum
I totally get that extreme crowds aren't a desirable situation in our most popular national parks. However, I don't really see the answer being to simply add more national parks. That's not going to necessarily help with the budget situation either. And taking areas managed by BLM and the Forest Service is not likely to be well received. When the locals are used to snowmobiling or plinking in the woods, they're not going appreciate being told they can't do that any more. Like I said previously, it's going to take local buy in.
People are visiting "crowded" parks even as many believe the sky is falling. This park isn't whining about visitation numbers going up - they are dealing with it and they also understand that many of these visitors are visiting as "bucket list items". It might be their one shot to see Old Faithful and they can tolerate visitors. Just like the rest of our lives, you adjust to what you want the experience to be for you or your family. The broad brush being spread on overcrowding being all over the place is an interesting thing to see and not accurate. There are plenty of parks that aren't near capacity so let's stop acting like everywhere is being overun.
y_p_w,
Yes, existing valid mining claims remain in new national parks, but they are usually extinguished or acquired in short order. Death Valley and Grand Canyon are unfortunate exceptions that have continued because of pro-industry political pressure. In Bears Ears they have probably not had much funding for this in the past, but I hope they get more money now due to the high-profile controversy regarding Trump's effort to gut the monument.
The writer of the HCN article you cited
https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.7/infographic-public-lands-crowds-swarm-th...
has written other overheated pieces elsewhere on this issue. He is clearly not much of an expert on national parks and public lands. He just cherry-picks a few factoids and then extrapolates them with no broader facts to back him up. This makes for zingy headlines like, "Crowds swarm public lands," but it is mostly generalized and misleading fluff.
For example, the HCN author picks a few popular national parks as proof that the national parks are "swarming" with visitors. Not surprisingly, he ignores the many lightly- or moderately-visited national parks such as Great Basin, Lassen Volcanic, Great Sand Dunes, North Cascades, Guadalupe Mountains, Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns, Theodore Roosevelt, Isle Royale, Congaree, Dry Tortuga, and Biscayne -- not to mention almost all the Alaska parks.
He cites the BLM's Red Rock Canyon Recreation Area, which is close to Las Vegas, to supposedly prove his claim that BLM lands are "inundated" by visitors. He provides no evidence at all to support that claim in the case of national forests, though there are examples. And yes, state parks tend to be crowded because they are accessible to large metro areas, offer a lot of visitor amenities, and are used for a lot of day trips.
The point is while there are obviously hotspots of high visitation in the National Park System and on BLM and national forest lands, the vast acreage of these lands are lightly visited and not at all crowded. I have been to public lands across the country, including most of the national parks and more than half of the other National Park System areas, 86 national forest units, and BLM lands across the West and I can attest to this reality firsthand.
In another op-ed elsewhere, the HCN writer has opposed adding new national parks because he claims this will not relieve visitor pressure on existing national parks. As with his other claims, the "evidence" he provides is sketchy and does not at all make his case.
You are right that entrenched interests will not like the idea of converting BLM lands and national forests to national parks. But that has been the case with almost every national park proposal, beginning with Yellowstone. Local supporters who have a broader vision are the key to overcoming this opposition, as it has been overcome to create our existing national parks.
People have ample opportunities for target shooting across vast amounts of public land. Only a small percentage is protected from these uses. Our public lands are owned by all Americans and it is only fair to expand national parks for the benefit of the majority who want to recreate away from these uses. That is aside from the climate and ecological benefits of protecting lands from resource extraction and intensive recreational uses.
There are places where visitor impacts such as erosion, displacing wildlife, and vandalism are real problems. Increased funding for managing visitation would help a lot there. However, although it is inconvenient for visitors, in most places crowds are far less damaging than resource extraction such as logging, grazing, drilling, and mining.
Mather, you might want to double-check your park contacts. I know folks at Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain and Acadia and Zion and Arches are concerned about the impacts of crowds.
Part of the problem is they haven't seen staff increases to keep up with the visitation boom.
That said, you're correct that there are many parks that aren't seeing similar crowds.
Well - that kind of my contention. Many people visit areas as bucket list items. It's going to be either really special (and I don't know of anyone who won't acknowledge how special Yellowstone or Yosemite are) and/or they are close to heavily visited areas such as Zion which is a short drive from Las Vegas. I was told that the most common visitor to Yellowstone spends just a few hours waiting for Old Faithful to erupt and then leaves. I've been guilty of knocking off items from my national park bucket list, and certainly park rangers have been plenty accomodating in allowing that. I'm pretty sure that many others have done that. And adding national parks to the roster isn't necessarily going to change that unless there's something truly special to attract visitors.
A good example of where expansion would almost certainly relieve visitor pressure is Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee, our most-visited full-fledged National Park. I was just there a couple of weeks ago and the park was experiencing what was apparenty record-breaking visitation. It was definitely crowded, though starting out early in the morning beat most of the worst congestion. Some of the popular trails were hammered, though, and clearly they have to spend much of their budget on crowd control rather than interpretation and education. That is where an increased budget would help.
Contrary to the contention that the most crowded parks have some uniquely special feature, such as Old Faithful, Grand Canyon, or Yosemite Valley, this is simply a beautiful expanse of forested mountains. Few people could name any particular featuer. Yet they come in the millions each year.
While the national park is crowded, there is plenty of space on the adjacent Cherokee, Nantahals, and Pisgah national forests. These forests have numerous features -- including wilderness areas -- that are at least as outstanding as those in the park. Yet the Forest Service is interested primarily in logging and other resource exploitation, so it spends little time and money on preserving these features or on public information, education, and recreation programs.
As a result, most people know little about these national forests. A paper published by the National Academy of Science found that:
Expanding GSMNP to 2 million acres by incorporating most of the land from these national forests, would quadruple the size of the existing national park. This would not only introduce the public to recreational opportunities that would likely draw crowd-weary visitors from the existing park, but also protect the biodiversity and carbon storage values of the current national forest lands from continuing to be squandered by Forest Service mismanagement.
There are many other comparable examples across the country.
You cite a lot of parks where I'd note that visitation is not heavy and never will be. Traveling to remote locations that aren't Yellowstone isn't likely to happen. Going to Alaska is time consuming and expensive. I haven't been to North Cascades, but my immediate family has been to Ross Lake NRA, which is about as close as most people will get anyways. My understanding is that getting into North Cascades NP proper via road is more like going to Mineral King. And you mention this but still claim that somehow more national parks are going to help disperse visitation from existing national parks.
Now I have been to Lassen Volcanic and frankly it was zoo. The prime visitation spot is Bumpass Hell, and there's an extremely limited time when it's clear of snow. When I was there, the parking lot was full and rangers were writing parking tickets for people improperly parking and blocking the roadway. Also, they had record visitation in 2020. But the rest of the park is simply never going to be that heavily visited, especially when there's snow covering the place for much of the year.
As far as mining claims goes, once someone has a valid mining claim, it's nearly impossible to deny it under law. The main reason for the mining in Death Valley stopping was economic factors.
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/energyminerals/mining-claims.htm
That being said, overall visitation to American public lands is at record highs. Recreational visitation of public lands has been rising for years. And like I've being trying to convey, people will visit areas that they want to visit. But certainly there have been reasons for this. I live in California where I've heard radio ads paid for by businesses dependent on Yosemite visitation. The Forest Service and Ad Council's "Discover the Forest" campaign has been quite successful. Then there are the private initiatives like Diverify Outdoors and the Outdoors Alliance that have tried to get more people to spend time in natural areas. It's not hard to understand that the first choices will be to visit what's closer to home or what's already really popular. When we've had visitors come visit us in California, many want to visit Yosemite. When I had a weekend off in Phoenix during a business trip, my coworkers were suggesting I visit Grand Canyon NP. People are already visiting GSMNP in conjunction with a trip to Dollywood.
I suppose it's possible to add a national park somehwere in Georgia, but what's it really going to do? Bob Janiskee used to write a lot here, and he was part of getting Congaree NP designated as such, but visitation never really took off, and has never been terribly high.
And personally I think that there's been a cheapening of what it means to be a national park over the years. I remember when Congressman Sam Farr wanted Pinnacles to be changed - primarily because he believed that it would increase visitation and bring more tourist money to Monterey County. I'd been there before and enjoyed a short visit, but I didn't think it really had enough of what was needed to be considered a national park. And the visitation numbers have been poor.
y_p_w,
To respond to a few of your comments.
Many potential new national parks are more accessible to people, so they do not need to be Yellowstone to attract visitors.
Right. But it is a lot easier to access adjacent national forest lands, many of which have been proposed for addition to the national park.
Sorry to hear that; it was not when I was there. Regardless, expanding the park to include the adjacent national forests, which are being hammered by logging, would offer alternatives.
If it is valid and if the time limit for development has not run out. A lot of them are not valid and time has run out on lots of claims. A lot of others are sheer speculation and the owners will sell them for a relatively low price. And other companies recognize that to develop a mine or oil well in or next to a national park is really bad PR and do nothing until their time is up.
You point out:
and you proceed to talk about how there is a lot of promotion for Yosemite, et al. That makes people want to visit. That kind of promotion is not happening for most national forest or BLM lands and if people do visit, as opposed to national parks, there is little or no information or guidance as to what they can do.
I think not. Lots of people were visiting GSMNP long before Dollywood existed. The reason Dollywood exists and Gatlinberg is a huge tourist attraction is because of GSMNP, not the opposite.
Seriously? The Atlanta metro area has 6 million people. There are no nearby full-fledged National Parks. You point out how
You answer your own question.
This view of national parks has been around since Stephen Mather decided we already had Mount Rainier National Park, so who needed other Cascade volcanoes such as Shasta, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, and Baker? To stay just in the far West and Alaska, would you say designating Gaviota Coast, Klamath-Siskiyou, Hells Canyon, Sawtooth, Salmon-Selway, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, Owyhee Canyonlands, Craters of the Moon, Sonoran Desert, Kauai, Bristol Bay, Tongass, or Arctic national parks would "cheapen what it means to be a national park?"
Luckily, creating new national parks is a democratic process that reflects the broad public vision, not an austerity view that sees national parks as only a few unique and monumental places and ignores all the other reasons for national parks, such as fighting climate change, preserving biodiversity, and offering healty green space to millions of people in underserved urban areas.