Ever since my folks moved to the foothill mountains of Colorado, they've been unable to shake a preternatural fear of predators and wilderness. My dad used to have a situation room dedicated to cougar sightings, and both parents worried that bears lurked on every corner, ready to raid fridges and steal babies. (Never mind that you'll see more Audi SUVs than apex predators in the foothills).They've gotten a little better, but not much — every time they step off a paved road, it's an opportunity for wilderness to swallow you whole. I've always thought a little time spent camping in the wild might help cure them of their phobias, but they've never gone.
But it turns out they're not alone: Recent research shows that backpacking and national park attendance has been steadily on the wane since 1987, and David Biello, of our better-dressed older brother Scientific American, wonders if fear might cause Americans to shy away from recreation in the natural world. When compounded with work and school pressures, the rising cost of park visits and the preponderance of electronic entertainment, the desire to enter and experience the wild falls of sharply.
Patricia Zaradic, of the Environmental Leadership Program and co-author of the report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimates that it would take 80 million park visits this year to bring per-capita attendance numbers to 1987 levels. Zaradic and University of Illinois at Chicago researcher Oliver Pergams analyzed trends in visits to national parks and forests, state parks, surveys on camping and the number of hunting or fishing licenses to determine the extent of the decline. Every single outdoor pursuit they analyzed peaked between 1981 and 1991 and has declined roughly 1 percent per year since for an overall decline of around 25 percent.
