National Parks visits hit a record 249 million

Disgusting.

It's not clear to me the increase is anything more than a continuation of normal growth, adjusted from the Oct '13 shutdown. For example, Arches visitation went up 200,000, but that could easily be explained away by the park being shut for two of the most popular weeks of the year. There are some curious figures (anyone know why vistation to Noatak al but stopped this year?), however.

It'd be nice if NPS funding kept up with increased numbers. As backpackers we see this more than most. Around here backcountry positions keep getting cut, and the seasons of the remaining positions keep getting shorter. Makes it hard to retain or attract qualified folks. Trail maintenance has become increasingly reliant upon volunteer organizations and extra-park fundraising. Small parks get the worst of this; those without foundations to support them and those who tend to get a smaller amount of user fees.

Some of the stats don't show the whole story. For example, check out the precipitous drop off in visitations for North Cascades NP. After a little research, it looks this occurred because they changed how they collected their visitation data.

…which is probably a terrible idea. Like Dave C said, if I was in the park system, i'd want to over report to guarantee as much funding as possible.

Yeah the way they collect their numbers is a little peculiar. For example, Gate of the Arctic NP receives between 400-800 visitors who actually go into and use the park (They say it themselves!). However, you'll notice the stats show that there were around 10,000 backcountry visitors this past year and the years previous, which is simply untrue. The difference is that the park counts visits to the visitors center and the public information center in Fairbanks. Neither are in the park, but both contribute to the visitor count. Along with that, there is no way that any of the parks up in that area receives more than 1,000 visitors in the actual park each year. There is a huge discrepancy between the actual users and those that just visit the visitors center. Its a bit manipulative.

Edit to add: Noatak is pretty weird. It shows there were 0 visitors this year? Did they just decide to stop counting?

You don't want people enjoying the awesome parks system we have here in the US? The same parks system that you yourself enjoy? I understand wanting to be alone in the wilderness, but you can't horde it all for yourself and call it disgusting that other people are using it.

Generally we see a lagging correspondence between how the economy is doing for the average person and national park attendance. It's cheaper to go spend a week camping than it is to spend a week at Disneyland. When the economy is tight, take the kids camping.

So if this is just a general surge in attendance due to people being poor, in theory 2015 should level out or even decline instead of surge.

If nothing else I'd argue that it's reason enough to give some more funding to the NPS and USFS. In 2014 the NPS requested for a total funding of 3.1 billion. Divided by 290 million visitors per year, that equates to 10 dollars spent per visitor. Considering the effort the NPS alone puts in, that's pretty damn efficient I'd say.

As far as it being "disgusting"? Nah. National parks are meant to be visited. If you really have an issue with people reconnecting with nature, push politically to set land aside as wilderness.

By "disgusting," I assume the commenter indicates his displeasure for heavily visited parks. Most of these are big parks with lots of space and plenty of opportunities for solitude and raw,screaming wilderness. There are exceptions, such as the Civil War battlefields like Shiloh and Gettysburg. They are relatively small in acreage and they are frequently visited. But they have always been that way. Imagine how bad it was on Opening Day, when thee historically significant event which resulted in the park transpired.

I don't think there is any yardstick for "intensity of visit." If there were, backpackers would surely rate high on the scale….

Wonder how many are repeat visitors? I account for 25 or so in the California parks each year….

Overuse is a big problem especially within a mile of the road. Whitney and Half Dome are huge draws – how many bucket lists of nonhikers include them? Lots. Yosemite is in the process of altering regulations on permitting due to heavy use of the Sunrise area (within the first segment of the JMT). Mariposa Grove is also closing for a year for renovation of trails and the shuttle is gone forever. Big changes happen with big crowds. Accurate head counts matter.

They actually do include a PDF of the counting techniques used for some parks (Yosemite, for example) and they're pretty broad. This, for example, is the technique for a particular entrance:

"An inductive loop traffic counter (Lane 1, station 4802) is located on
the entrance lane at the Arch Rock entrance. The traffic count is
reduced for non-reportable vehicles (14 percent), non-recreation vehicles
(14 percent), and buses. The reduced traffic count is multiplied by the
persons-per-vehicle (PPV) multiplier of 2.9. If the traffic counter is
inoperative the daily traffic estimates in Table 1 will be used."

They then add back in the other entrances, busses, etc. Either way, they're obviously not going for super accurate counts, as much as a broad pattern based on their estimates from other observations, it looks like.

For the record, I am a non-expert in all things, so if anybody says to think otherwise, trust them unless they're trying to sell you something.

Edit:

Contrast that to one of the methods used in a particular area in Voyageurs National Park.

"4. The number of visitors in runabouts, fishing and parked boats are estimated by conducting aerial over-flights during the month and determining a daily estimate of these boats by both weekend and weekday use. The daily estimate is determined by dividing the number of over-flights with the number of boats observed during over-flights. The daily weekend and weekday estimate is multiplied by their respective number of weekdays and weekend days in that month. A person-per-boat multiplier of 3.1 is applied to the number of boats."

Good point about the lax nature of attendance counts. My mom worked with Channel Islands National Park and she mentioned that they count every ship that passes through the channel islands close enough to the islands as "visitors".

Remember that the boundaries for Channel Islands National Park extend seaward for one nautical mile from the islands, so the counted vessels were inside the park. The values of that park are much more than just the islands themselves. I know – I worked there for 16 years and still volunteer.