A California Perspective on Outdoor Recreation Trends

Press Democrat – February 08, 2008
By Derek J. Moore

Americans are spending more time in front of their TVs and computers and less time communing with nature, a worrisome trend that threatens not only their health but future conservation efforts.

Those conclusions, contained in a study released this week by the Nature Conservancy, appear to be true even on the outdoorsy North Coast, where several state parks have had an alarming decline in visitors.

Analyzing data over a period of decades, researchers concluded that fewer Americans are visiting state and national parks for camping, fishing and other outdoor activities.

For Michigan residents Brant and Connie Savander, such trends could mean they will have more days like they had Thursday at Sugarloaf State Park near Santa Rosa, which despite beautiful weather was virtually free of people.

While that makes for a nice hike, it doesn't bode well for the park's overall health.

"People don't seem to appreciate nature," said Connie Savander, who like her husband is a marine engineer.

The number of daily visitors to Sugarloaf was virtually the same in 2006 as it was in 1996. But at Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen and at Santa Rosa's Annadel State Park, daily attendance has plummeted, according to state records.

An estimated 71,836 people visited Jack London in 1996. By 2006, the number had fallen to 45,969.

At Annadel, the number of visitors went from 122,031 in 1996 to 76,659 a decade later.

Angy Nowicki, the supervising ranger for all three parks, offered several possible reasons for the decline, among them an increase in fees, an infestation of sudden oak that closed some camp sites in Sugarloaf in 2004 and a drop-off in the number of school field trips made to Jack London.

But the overarching theme seems clear: Fewer kids and adults are heading outdoors.

Conservation biologist Oliver Pergams of the University of Illinois at Chicago, co-author of the outdoor study, believes the main reason behind the decline is the amount of time people spend connected to technology.

His research found that the beginning of the decline in outdoor activities in the early 1980s coincided with a spike in sales of video games.

From 1981 to 1991, visits to national parks and forests and state parks peaked after 50 years of steady increase and have been declining at roughly 1 percent per year since for an overall drop of as much as 25 percent.

Fishing's popularity peaked in 1981 and had declined 25 percent by 2005. Visits to national parks peaked in 1987 and dropped 23 percent by 2006, while hiking on the Appalachian Trial peaked in 2000 and was down 18 percent by 2005.

With 3.36 million visitors in 2006, Yosemite drew nearly 20 percent fewer people than its peak in attendance 10 years ago. During that span, the state added 5 million people.

Fewer people visited Yosemite in 2006 than at any time in the past 16 years.

A modest increase in the frequency of hiking and backpacking trips did nothing to offset the overall decline in outdoor pursuits, according to Pergams.

"All the time you spend in front of a screen has to come from somewhere," he said.

Others cite the rising cost of gasoline and people leading busier lives at work and at home as possible reasons for fewer outdoor adventures.

Some also reference fears of letting kids wander alone in nature.

"I remember being out all day," said Nowicki. "I was one of those kids that would turn over a rock and go along trails and never have any fears of being molested or kidnapped. It was never a concept in my mind.

"As a parent to a teenager," she continued, "I would never let her do the things I did."

Michele Luna, executive director of Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods, said she's heard parents express reservations about letting their kids visit the coast because of sleeper waves and other dangers.

Despite that, she said, docent-led school tours of tidepools and redwoods are thriving, so much so that the organization is struggling for enough volunteers.

Santa Rosa's Spring Lake park also is thriving, according to city officials, while school visits to the lake's Environmental Discovery Center are as popular as ever.

But aside from organized school tours, anecdotal evidence suggests a disturbing drop in nature pursuits.

Sales of bundled wood at Bodega Dunes and Wright's Beach have significantly declined, for instance, putting a dent in the Stewards' budget and perhaps portending a lessening interest in camping at those locations.

And visiting Armstrong Woods State Reserve or Austin Creek State Recreation Area will become an obvious challenge should Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger succeed in closing them to help shrink the state's budget shortfall.

The irony is that Schwarzenegger last year signed the California Children's Outdoor Bill of Rights, which among other things guarantees every child's right to "splash in the water," "camp under the stars," "follow a trail" and pursue other fun outdoor activities.

Even as they have to consider the possibility of shutting parks and slashing jobs, California State Park officials are launching a major campaign in the spring to encourage more kids to visit parks and combat "nature deficit disorder," a term coined by Richard Louv in his 2005 book, "Last Child in the Woods."

Louv contends that children are suffering a wide range of behavioral problems such as attention deficit disorder as the amount of time they spend in nature decreases.

At the same time, conservationists fear future generations won't be interested in saving nature, either through donations or by passing legislation, if they aren't exposed to the outdoors as kids.

"If kids aren't going into nature, they're not going to care about conservation when they grow up. That's a problem, right?" Pergams said.

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