Statistical abstract: 2016

Ziesler, Pamela

In 2016, the National Park Service celebrated its Centennial and set a record for recreation visits for the third year in a row. NPS units received 330,971,689 recreation visits which broke 2015’s record by 23.7 million visits (7.7%). Recreation visitor hours were also up 7% over 2015 for a total of more than 1.4 billion hours spent by visitors in parks. Seventy-seven NPS units set a new record for annual recreation visits. Four units had over 10 million recreation visits and 80 units had over 1 million recreation visits. Several parks passed milestone recreation visit records including Great Smoky Mountains NP (11 million), George Washington Memorial Parkway (10 million), Yosemite NP (5 million), Zion NP (4 million), Bryce Canyon NP (2 million), Fort Point NHS (2 million) and Capitol Reef NP (1 million). By documenting these visits across the National Park System, the NPS Statistical Abstract offers a historical record of visitor use in NPS units and provides NPS staff and partners with a useful tool for effective management and planning. In 2016, 382 of 413 NPS units collected visitor use data; the remainder are unable to do so for a variety of reasons, such as joint administration or nonfederal land ownership. The responsibility for compiling and summarizing visitation records lies with the Social Science Program of the Environmental Quality Division, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate. The Program relies on the conscientious efforts of NPS field staff to count, record, and report visitor use. This system of collecting and analyzing monthly visitor use data is combined with continuous review and assessment of park counting procedures to ensure consistency and accuracy of data. Detailed, unit-specific instructions for the units that collect data are available on the Visitor Use Statistics website (https://irma.nps.gov/Stats). Several changes have been made to the content of this Abstract. There are some new features including additional comparisons and figures that illustrate changes between the current year and the previous year. Also, the Visitation Forecast has been removed from this and future Abstracts while researchers investigate relevancy factors that drive visitation to the parks. In addition to this Statistical Abstract, the Social Science Program produces monthly visitation summaries and in-depth analyses examining current trends in park visitation and changes in visitation over the decades. These reports are available on the Visitor Use Statistics website. Additional reports prepared by the Social Science Program supplement visitor use information by exploring the attitudes, behaviors, and economic impacts of visitors and visitor use in parks (https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/index.htm).

Statistical abstract: 2016

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