Fewer Visit U.S. National Parks in Western Region

As a group, Californians are making good money, traveling like mad, enriching airlines and hoteliers at record rates, skydiving, rock climbing, kayaking and spelunking in ever greater numbers.

So why are visitor figures falling at so many Western national parks?

Look at these new 1998 preliminary attendance figures from the National Park Service:

Grand Canyon National Park--down 12% to 4.2 million.

Death Valley National Park--down about 1% to 1.2 million.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park--down 26% to 1.4 million.

Haleakala National Park (also in Hawaii)--down 12% to 1.5 million.

Yosemite National Park--down less than 1% to 3.66 million.

Taken together, the 56 sites in the National Park Service’s Pacific region ticked down in attendance from 58.6 million to 57.7 million, a 1.5% drop.

A big part of the answer to this riddle, park officials agree, lies in Asia. Though federal officials have no specific figures for Asian visitors in parks, rangers and administrators say they believe the economic recession in Asia is keeping would-be travelers home. State figures show Asian tourism to California overall fell from 2.5 million to 2.2 million in 1998.

“This year, rangers did not see the busloads of Asians,” said Denver-based park service computer specialist Tom Wade, who crunches numbers and collects anecdotes from parks nationwide.

No doubt there are other forces at work too, beginning with weather. It’s even possible, tourism and park officials allow, that parks have also been a kind of odd victim of the American boom, namely that the strong U.S. economy has inspired American travelers to try costlier destinations rather than the more affordable parks. At Amfac, a management company that runs hotels, lodges, restaurants and other concessions in eight national parks from California to Florida, president Andy Todd has theorized that some travelers may be shying away after years of hearing that “we’re loving our national parks to death” by crowding them and not reinvesting in them. (Not surprisingly, Todd wants travelers to know that many improvement campaigns are afoot, including a recently completed renovation of 40 cabins in Zion National Park.)

Entrance fees don’t seem to be a factor. Though the National Park Service doubled entrance fees at scores of popular parks on Jan. 1, 1997, visits were up in 1997. Under the current fees, visitors pay $20 per car at Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite; $10 per car at Death Valley, Haleakala and Hawaii Volcanoes.

Though Yosemite’s 1998 decline doesn’t look dramatic on its face, it’s striking for those close to the park. Visits there had already taken a steep dive from 1996 to 1997, thanks in part to the storms of January 1997, which led to a 52% reduction in campsites in Yosemite Valley and 15% fewer lodging accommodations. Many had expected at least a partial rebound in 1998. Was the Asian absence the difference?

While the park’s rangers don’t keep specific tabs on Asian visitors, they do count tour buses. In 1996, Yosemite’s rangers counted 17,656 incoming buses bearing 457,896 passengers. By 1998, those numbers had fallen to 12,102 buses bearing 314,751 passengers.

“When they stop coming,” said park spokeswoman Kathy Farrier, “you notice.”

For many park visitors, fewer visitors and fewer buses will be welcome news: That means a bit more space in those canyons and meadows. (Tip for bus-dodgers: Tourism officials say Japanese tourism to California peaks during three periods: from Dec. 24 to Jan. 6; throughout August; and during the “golden week” of April 29 to May 5, when Japanese national holidays give workers time off.)

But concessionaires, who make investments on lodgings and restaurants based on prospective returns, won’t be so pleased. And rangers in many parks, managing budgets that are tied to visitor fees, will find themselves with less to spend on services and maintenance projects.

None of this means that our public preserves are empty. In fact, the preliminary count of total visitation to this country’s 375 national park sites last year actually rose 4% to 286 million--in other words, about one visit for every American citizen. But most of that increase can be traced to new bookkeeping practices at sites in Washington, D.C.

Under the new counting method, the tally of visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial last year jumped from 1.7 million to 4.7 million and the count at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial leaped from 953,408 to 2.1 million. Visits to the White House, on the other hand, were down 16% to 1.03 million.

Without the Washington fluctuations, the park service’s Wade calculates, attendance at national parks looks flat from 1997 to 1998. (The busiest site on the park service roster, as in years past, was the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where an estimated 19 million Americans passed through--most of them never stepping out of their automobiles.)

Visitor numbers have also been dipping at the state parks operated by California’s Department of Parks and Recreation (locally operated state parks are not included in these figures), where combined attendance fell from 70.6 million in 1995-96 to 60.5 million in 1996-97 and down to 55.9 million in 1997-98--an overall drop of 21%. Part of that drop, a parks spokesman said, may be attributable to changes in the way rangers count visitors. But he, too, cited the Asian slump as a likely factor.

Christopher Reynolds welcomes comments and suggestions, but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or send e-mail to chris.reynolds@latimes.com.