Interest in the outdoors not so great
Friday, March 07, 2008
By GREGG HERRINGTON, Columbian editorial writerAre we raising a nation of wimps, couch potatoes and Internet addicts for whom The Great Outdoors and wilderness experiences will be as abstract a notion as world peace and a Chicago Cubs-Seattle Mariners World Series?
A Feb. 18 Newsweek article reported that Americans are less and less likely to engage in traditional outdoor activities such as camping, hunting and fishing.
Here, where the mountains, lakes, streams, campgrounds and trails of the Gifford Pinchot and Mount Hood national forests are less than two hours away, that notion is shocking and troubling. What does an aversion to rugged outdoor experiences portend for future generations and the protection of our forests?
The Newsweek story reported on a study by the National Academy of Sciences and funded by the Nature Conservancy. It said the study’s authors, Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic, “paint a picture of America seriously at odds with our national self-image.” … They “found declines averaging about 1 percent a year in per capita participation in the most significant outdoor activities, notably camping and hunting."
Newsweek said, “A small increase in backpacking did little to offset” the drop.
I tracked down the Pergams and Zaradic report (www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/105/7/2295) and learned that not just camping is declining.
“After 50 years of steady increase, per capita visits to U.S. national parks have declined since 1987,” they write. They checked Japan and Spain as well and report similar trends in those countries.
Most studies, they say, show nature recreation peaked between 1981 and 1991 and numbers have declined about 1.2 percent per year since then. On the other hand, the study didn’t target activities such as rock climbing, skiing, bicycling, windsurfing, sailing, kayaking and scuba diving. So, best case is that those numbers might somewhat offset the decline in the number of people engaged in more traditional outdoor experiences such as camping, fishing and hunting.
Word of the day: videophilia
But the authors did conclude that the increased popularity of day hiking and backpacking is “a very small countertrend. … The large decreases in more popular activities like state park visits far outweigh the small increase in hiking.”
An earlier study by the two suggested a correlation between videophilia (a love of TV, video games, the Internet, etc.) and a decline in visits to national parks: “As the most videophilic societies, the United States, along with Japan, may be the first to experience its consequences.”
Locally, the numbers are mixed but show some dramatic declines:
- In 2001, the Gifford Pinchot National Forest had 1.78 million visitors (280,575 of them age 20 and younger). In 2006 the count was 1.27 million visitors (151,300 age 20 and younger).
- The forest also records hikers in designated wilderness areas such as the Indian Heaven in Skamania County. In 1992, Indian Heaven hikers numbered 6,953. In 2007 the count was 5,327.
- State hunting licenses increased slightly from 207,359 in 2001 to 210,491 in 2006. Fishing licenses went from 706,295 in 2001 to 731,492 in 2006. (The 2007 number was not available.)
- The number of campers at Beacon Rock and Battle Ground Lake state parks increased substantially in recent years, although those, like most state campgrounds, are closer to suburbs and wi-fi cafes than to mountains or backcountry.
You, too, can take a hike
Ingrid Friedman, who is active in Nature Friends Northwest (www.naturefriendsnw.com), is worried about the next generation of hikers. “It’s a shame more people don’t get out and see the outdoors,” she said. Her group’s next hike, open to the public, is March 16 up Aldrich Butte near North Bonneville.
The Outdoors page in Thursday’s Columbian reported on a series of hikes in the Columbia River Gorge starting March 15 (www.gorgefriends.org).
In their study, Pergams and Zaradic make this point: “There’s a pretty direct pathway from exposure to nature, especially as a child, to caring about it.” If our kids don’t walk in the woods, camp in the forest and hike the high backcountry, they won’t much care as adults when those treasures are threatened.
Gregg Herrington’s column of personal opinion appears on the Other Opinions page each Friday. Reach him at gregg.herrington@columbian.com. | 
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