Visitor access is vital to appreciating, protecting Yosemite
Yosemite has led the National Park System from the beginning. Its core elements of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove of Big Trees were established as a public park in 1864, offering a model for the concept of national parks. Yosemite’s John Muir then used his passion and eloquence to advance the national park idea. And the park instituted an innovative public transit system serving the east end of Yosemite Valley decades ago.
Now it’s time for Yosemite to lead again.
The park is entering the most consequential phase of formulating its historic Visitor Access Plan that will shape public use of the park. Issues associated with rising visitor use are widely shared across the National Park System, so the Yosemite plan is likely to set a national precedent. Given the park’s status as a World Heritage Site, the Yosemite plan may even have international implications. This is a pivotal moment.
The National Park System accommodated more than 300 million visits last year, and Yosemite maintained its perennial place as one of the top 10 national parks, attracting 3.7 million visits. Growing use of Yosemite and the rest of the parks is threatening their sustainability by impacting park resources (e.g., trampling vegetation, disturbing wildlife, polluting the air) and degrading the park experience (e.g., traffic jams, crowding, limits on visitor use).
But the law establishing the National Park Service (NPS) in 1916 is clear about the two-fold mission of the parks: they’re to be both preserved and enjoyed. While these two mandates sometimes conflict, progressive and informed park management can and should pursue both.
The expanding scientific and professional literature on park management suggests several principles that can help inform the Yosemite Visitor Access Plan, including why and how the park can and should accommodate more visits, not fewer.
First, management of Yosemite should focus on the impacts of visitor use, not the amount of use. If managers can reduce the impacts of visitors, then the park can accommodate more visits. Cars are noisy and polluting, kill bears and other wildlife, congest park roads, and gobble up too much prime park land for parking lots. Muir lobbied against cars in Yosemite, writing that these “blunt-nosed mechanical beetles” would “mix their gasbreath with the breath of the pines and waterfalls”. Walking/ hiking and biking have lots fewer impacts. So let’s minimize the number of cars and maximize the number of walkers/hikers and bikers.
Second, parks are increasingly recognized for their contributions to human health and wellbeing. The national parks should play their full potential role in advancing this public good, and this requires maximizing access, not curtailing it.
Third, some Americans, racial and ethnic minorities in particular, have traditionally been underrepresented in the national parks. Maximizing access will be required to meet this latent demand and the foundational democratic ideal of the parks.
Fourth, “smart” transportation, often in the form of public transit, can reduce the number of cars in parks while delivering large numbers of visitors to the right places in the park at the right times, thus minimizing impacts while maximizing use.
Fifth, intensive visitor use requires intensive park management. Bold action is needed to effectively accommodate the high and growing demand to visit Yosemite.
Sixth, there are four strategic options for managing the potential impacts of visitors: limit use (e.g., reservations), increase supply (e.g, more trails), reduce the impacts of use (e.g., educate visitors about low impact practices), and “harden” the park (e.g., pave trails). Given the explicit public use mission of the national parks, limiting use is the least favorable strategy, and increasing the supply of opportunities to visit the parks along with reducing the impacts of visitors are the most favorable.
Seventh, the national parks have benefited by using a concentrated and dispersed visitor management approach. Most use at Yosemite is concentrated in relatively small areas through location of visitor facilities and services, while the vast majority of the park remains largely undeveloped and relatively lightly used.
Eighth, crowding in national parks can be understood as an issue that social scientists call “functional density.” For example, as long as visitors to Yosemite can easily do what the park is designed for (e.g., marvel at the grandeur of Yosemite Valley, photograph its world-famous waterfalls, stroll through the awe-inspiring Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias), without the stress of traffic jams and competing for a parking space, they’re unlikely to consider the park too crowded.
All of these principles argue for increasing the number of visits to Yosemite through a mandatory public transit system serving Yosemite Valley and other key locations. With only a few exceptions (e.g., visitors with reservations at Valley hotels and campsites), cars wouldn’t be allowed in the Valley, but would have to stage elsewhere, possibly outside the park at El Portal and/or other locations. The transit system would operate only during the peak visitor season.
Zion National Park, sometimes called the “desert Yosemite,” offers an appealing alternative model to the current car-centric Yosemite. Just under 150,000 acres — small compared to Yosemite’s nearly three quarters of a million acres — Zion adopted a mandatory shuttle bus system that allowed the park to accommodate 4.7 million visits last year, a million more than Yosemite.
This quiet, clean transit system serves Zion Canyon, the park’s most popular destination. Visitors enjoy the scenic narrated transit ride into the Canyon and then walk park trails and bike the original road, now a grand promenade that was once clogged with cars, their drivers searching frantically for a parking place. Reimagine Yosemite Valley!
Admittedly, the logistics of a public transit system are intimidating, especially because funding and staffing may be the most critically endangered park resources. The entire NPS receives less than one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget and has fewer employees than Disney World. This may sometimes constrain the agency from thinking big. Fortunately, the Yosemite Visitor Access Plan is being led by a group of smart, sincere, and hard-working NPS staff using a state-of-the-art planning framework and lots of public input.
Addressing the national parks, former Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, once said, “The problem isn’t too many people, it’s too many cars,” and this is sage advice. After all, the park shouldn’t be Yosemite National Parking Lot, nor should the management agency be the National Parking Service.
Some may worry that maximizing visitation would threaten opportunities for solitude. But the happy fact is that 95% of the park is designated wilderness, allowing no roads or motorized vehicles, and it’s all managed explicitly for solitude. Of course, this means that visitors who want more of a wilderness experience may have to compete for a permit.
There’s a long history of visits to the national parks sparking legions of inspired park advocates who then demand more, bigger, and better national parks. Venerated national park advocate Freeman Tilden referenced this vital relationship when he famously wrote that “through appreciation, protection.” Limiting visitor use endangers this powerful synergy. Paradoxically, limiting public access to save Yosemite — and the national parks more generally — may, in fact, put them at even greater risk.
Yosemite desperately needs a new Visitor Access Plan, and the park should continue its leadership role by making it as daring and bold as the park itself.
Robert Manning is professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, where he taught the history, philosophy, and management of national parks, and conducted a program of research for the National Park Service. He spent several year-long sabbaticals in the National Park System, including Yosemite. His books include “Studies in Outdoor Recreation” and “Sustainable Transportation in the National Parks.”