Minorities, Seniors and Youth Turning Away from National Parks

Look around at most of our nation's parks and monuments these days and you might be hard-pressed to find a lot of people.

You'll have an even harder time if you're looking for teens, campers over the age of sixty and anyone who can't check the "Caucasian, not of Hispanic origin" box when identifying their race.

Why? The National Park Service is finding it increasingly difficult to draw seniors, minorities and young people lately, and experts say the three groups are the main reason visitation at the nation's parks and monuments has declined so steeply in the last few years.

"Satisfying a public with different age levels, from teenagers to retirees, and many different ethnic backgrounds is a challenge that the National Park Service recognizes but with which it is struggling," said Michael Cerletti, New Mexico's secretary of tourism and a member of the Western States Tourism Policy Council, at a government hearing on the matter last year.

While seniors are still active visitors to parks - often mountain biking and hiking far longer than past generations - they're stays are becoming shorter and they're no longer camping overnight, experts say.

Overnight tent and backcountry camping in the parks decreased nearly 24 percent between 1995 and 2005. Those numbers are expected to experience an even sharper drop as more baby boomers approach their golden years, trading their tents for fluffy hotel beds.

"Baby boomers want hard adventure by day and soft adventure by night," Frank Hugelmeyer, president of the Outdoor Industry Association, told the L.A. Times. "They want to paddle and rock-climb and also have their Cabernet and almond-crusted salmon with asparagus. And a nice bed."

But seniors are the least of officials' worries when minorities are taken into account. Some of America's fastest growing population segments, Hispanics and African Americans, are hardly visiting the parks.

A survey taken in 2000 found that 36 percent of white respondents had visited a national park within the last two years, while only 27 percents of Hispanics and 13 percent of African Americans had done so. Other surveys have revealed that minorities often feel "uncomfortable" or "unsafe" in national parks.

Parks have started trying to recruit more minority staff members - 80 percent of park employees are white - and making culturally sensitive changes, such as installing more park benches to accomodate larger Latino families. But other challenges, like the fact that many parks are far from urban areas where most minorities live, await.

"Let me assure you that the leadership of the service is talking about this and spending a fair amount of time trying to understand the trends," Jon Jarvis, director of the park service's Pacific West region, told the L.A. Times. "You don't have to have statistics and surveys to recognize that the visitors we are seeing do not reflect the diversity of the United States."

National parks are also failing to attract young kids and teenagers, whatever their race. In the age of MySpace.com, handheld video games and instant messaging, the younger generation is having a hard time getting excited about things like trees, mountains and rivers, experts say.

A Nature Conservancy study released in June even directly connected the drop in national park visitation to the rise in the use of video games, DVDs and other electronic media.

On top of that, parents are encouraging their kids to stay inside. Child abductions, wildlife attacks and other newsmakers have made parents fearful to let their kids play outdoors, says Richard Louv, author of "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder."

"We're talking about a generation that's being raised under virtual house arrest," Louv told the L.A. Times.

And that mentality, combined with the die-off of baby boomers and the growth of minorities apathetic to national parks, could end up having worse consequences than just declining visitation, Louv says.

"You've got a real political problem," he told the Denver Post. "Where does the future constituency for conservation of the national parks come from if they're not going there?"

Other potential causes for declining visitation:

- Shorter vacations. Americans are no longer taking two weeks off at a time to travel. Dual-income families are now more likely to take several long weekend trips a year, limiting how far they're willing to travel.

- Popularity of air travel. Airplane trips have become more affordable for most Americans, allowing them to forgo the traditional road trip. Parks located along interstates and highways but far from major cities say they've suffered as a result.

- Lack of maintenance and marketing. Dwindling funds for the nation's parks and monuments have led to the deterioration of trails and infrastructure and the cancellation of popular nature programs. Less money also means the parks don't have the staff or resources to launch major advertising campaigns.

- Fee increases. Many Americans say they've stopped visiting national parks because fees have made the trips too pricey.

SOURCES:
www.nps.gov
www.latimes.com
www.denverpost.com/search/ci_4391721