The National Park system of the United States includes 423 unique sites spread across the country’s states and territories. A majority of these public parks border rural areas, resulting in unique opportunities and challenges for many small communities across America.
National parks are often economic and social boons to rural areas. Whitefish is a town in Flathead County, Montana that attracts large crowds during summer months by virtue of its proximity to Glacier National Park. Previous posts involving Glacier can be found here. Despite having a population of roughly 8,000 permanent residents, the town features robust lodging and dining amenities to handle massive crowds, with an extensive downtown area and a ski resort to draw year-round visitation.
With roughly 73 percent of the surrounding Flathead County’s land owned by the federal government, Whitefish is one of the many small cities across the United States experiencing a period of strong economic growth due to its location adjacent to public lands and the natural amenities associated with them.
At the same time, closeness to public lands can strain rural communities past their realistic capacity for population and resources. The resulting gentrification prices locals out of their own communities, in the interests of the tourism industry and wealthy out-of-state residents. Posts from this blog about rural gentrification can be found here.
However, an often overlooked issue facing rural communities comes from the internet. Social media can transform little-known corners of the country into viral sensations in an instant, overwhelming communities that lack the infrastructure to deal with such population surges.
An article posted by The Guardian documents the struggles of Kanarraville, a town of only 350 residents located next to Kanarra Falls, a natural slot canyon river located on the same federal tract of land as Zion National Park. Once a relatively unknown destination, the area now sees an annual influx of 40,000 to 60,000 tourists due to the falls’ online notoriety.
Not only does the overwhelming number of visitors consistently overload the town’s resources, but the river itself is a watershed tapped by the town for drinking water. Tens of thousands of guests trek directly through the river on their hike up the canyon every year, leading to sanitation concerns from local residents.
The town of Estes Park sits at the gateway of Rocky Mountain National Park, with tourists flocking from across the country to visit the mountains (and the hotel from The Shining). The Guardian estimates that Estes Park accommodates up to 3 million people over the course of its peak summer months, despite its population of just 5,366. As a consequence, the area features a higher police funding per capita than 97 percent of departments across the country as it struggles to keep the swells of tourists under control.
In order to find a solution for this ever-growing problem, rural communities may want to turn to other countries for inspiration. A publication in the Journal of Rural Studies documents Norway’s efforts to balance nature conservation on public land with local concerns, opting to adopt a process that brings rural areas into the decision making process. Spurred by concerns over what tourism in the name of conservation efforts may mean for people’s livelihoods, Norway has opted to decentralize traditional land management operations in certain municipalities, giving rural voices more power to decide how these parks will be implemented and maintained.
Breheimen National Park, located on the Skjåk Municipality, is one of the areas receiving this treatment. Breheimen has only been open since 2009, giving locals the unique opportunity to ensure the national park grows in a way that is as responsive to their needs as possible. While the long-term effects of this strategy are yet to be seen, handling such complex situations in this way could work wonders in the United States, giving more agency to rural communities in need.
3 comments:
This is a really interesting perspective, thank you for sharing! I've always tended to take the perspective similar to that of the "Competing for ecotourists" post, which suggests that the more tourists a town can get, the better. This post also discusses Montana advertising its National Parks as a way to attract tourists over the typical destinations like New York, Chicago, etc. It also talks about the state tourist offices, which I have many memories of. Slogans such as, "Pure Michigan," "Find your True North," and "Mile after Magnificent Mile" are all too common on billboards and commercial slots. Tourism slogans and advertisements are so familiar to me that I never thought tourism could have a negative impact (or that it might not be that common everywhere). Would there be a way to use the revenue from tourists to improve the infrastructure of the surrounding towns so that they can be support the influx of visitors? I picture places such as Wall Drug in South Dakota which generates more than $10 million annually right outside the Badlands National Park. Anyone who has been there can tell it runs off tourism, and has been curated to appeal to visitors with a "Wild West" vibe. Yet, tourists do not have to spend a dime to enjoy the area and they offer a famous $0.05 cup of coffee.
An earlier post ("Finding the balance between rural tourism and transforming the rural into urban enclaves") explains a way to reconcile the costs and benefits of rural tourism, but analyzes foreign rurality. Is America the same? Is there a better way to enhance the benefits of rural tourism while lowering the costs?
What a riveting topic to have covered! Do you think that educational programs, whether they be national or local, could be helpful in teaching tourists how to appropriately care for and respect the land and places they visit? A lot of the issues that you bring up, primarily the one of the sanitation of the water source in Kanarraville, seem like issues that could be addressed if tourists were either taught (or reminded) that the places they visit have residents, and the actions they take in those places have consequences. Obviously, this respect is easier to ensure in national parks for many reasons (they’re enclosed, in a way, they have their own care teams, etc.) However, I think, with the right resources (which may be difficult in rural areas) that they same could be done for the neighboring towns.
Thank you for sharing this thoughtful post! I think what is brought to my mind from an international perspective is how often tourism is touted as a way to help countries. We always see small countries that are funded through a tourism economy but how much does that money actually go back into the communities? When people go to these countries they often stay at chain hotels like Hiltons or Marriots. I also think about cruises and how they pollute waters, produce waste, and treat the staff that works on the ship. Also some of the issues that you bring up really do apply broadly. I wonder what would encourage people to be more mindful and considerate while traveling. For example, during the peak of the pandemic, people continued to travel to Hawaii while Native Hawaiians repeatedly told people not to come. Hawaii is also a prime example of an "island getaway" that doesn't take into account the conditions of the actual people that live there and how tourism doesn't help the ecosystem or the people. Thanks for bringing more of these issues to light!
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