Overcrowding of national parks post-pandemic has experts concerned that not only is the visitor experience being ruined, but parks themselves are being damaged.
Listen to your favorite News/Talk station now on Audacy
One such example is Yosemite National Park, where lines and litter have both gone out of control.
Numbers have spiked to millions of visitors a year, "which has just increased amounts of traffic, and air pollution and noise pollution," said Michael Childers, associate professor of History and National Park Expert at Colorado State University on Wednesday. Along with all those issues, visitors bring trash and human waste with them.
And with the increased number of people clambering all over the park, certain areas like Mariposa Grove are being affected, said Childers. "It’s not that they shouldn’t be going under there, I mean there are sensitive places where people shouldn’t walk on," he said. "But just the simple volume of people doing it."
Related
According to Childers, before the walkway was redone at the grove, so many people were walking instead on the root systems of the sequoia trees that it was actually damaging them.
Childers has been looking into overcrowding at Yosemite for about a decade now, he said, and one of the best solutions needed to address the issue is staggering the number of visitors or reservation system. "Just to protect the resource and protect our experience of that resource," he said.
It’s not just Yosemite facing the brunt of tourism. In Colorado, Rocky Mountain National Park went on a timed reservation system to help with COVID-19 and over-tourism last year.
We need to "change our expectations that we can go to these parks any time that we want," he said. "We need to plan ahead and that should be part of the national park experience."
Related
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram