Last summer, I visited Rocky Mountain National Park for the first
time and, to be frank, was a little disgusted. Not by the park itself –
the mountains were beautiful, even if the beetle-kill and $20
backcountry permits were disheartening – but by the
salt-water-taffy-munching, airbrushed-tee-shirt-wearing crowd glutting
the park’s gateway community of Estes Park, Colo., turning it into a
kind of Jersey Shore of the Rockies.
Yet by the estimation of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Rocky Mountain
National Park is one of our country’s “real treasures.” Alaska’s
Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve and 133 other little-visited
parks? Not so much.
Coburn’s determination of what constitutes a “real treasure” stems
from his calculation of how much federal money is spent on each park
visitor, leading to the conclusion that less popular parks, like
Yukon-Charley, drain taxpayer resources and siphon money away from
pressing maintenance at world-famous destinations like the Grand Canyon.
Coburn’s report of wasted money and “misplaced priorities” in the Park Service, released last fall, laid out a kind of national-park popularity contest
in which the only good ones are those making the most money. It also
outlined ways to increase profitability, such as by raising senior
citizens’ fees.
Yet two reports released this week by the Interior Department suggest that all parks are economic drivers, even the less popular ones. The first report, a breakdown of the economic impact
of national parks in 2012, found that visitor numbers were up by 3.9
million from the previous year, to a total of 282.8 million. Visitors
spent $14.7 billion in gateway communities like Estes Park, and
supported 243,000 jobs – mostly in hotels, restaurants and bars.
Perhaps more striking, though, is what happens without national parks, as illustrated by the second report’s evaluation of last fall’s government shutdown....
... Read the rest at: http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/even-unpopular-national-parks-are-economic-engines
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