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| Above, Bridalveil Fall in Yosemite National Park. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
Our national parks are more popular than ever.
Over the past several years, people have been visiting them in higher numbers. The pandemic made attendance even higher.
This exposed them to overcrowding. This is a problem as it is the National Park Service's duty to protect them and having more people to contend with makes that duty more difficult.
Nine of our national parks are instituting a permanent reservation system to manage the influx of visitors.
From Fox 11 Los Angeles:
The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns resulted in millions of stir-crazy Americans getting out of their houses the first chance they got and actually spending quality time outdoors, including at national parks.
But the sudden influx of visitors at the nation's most historic natural sites caused a huge strain on the entire National Park infrastructure. The requirement of reservations soon became the new norm in order to handle the record-breaking traffic.
Some parks have decided to drop their reservation requirements, but some have decided to the new system maybe should have been in place a long time ago.
Of the 63 major National Parks in the U.S., nine are requiring some type of reservation on top of entrance fees in 2023.
1. Acadia National Park, Maine
2. Arches National Park, Utah
3. Glacier National Park, Montana
4. Haleakala National Park, Hawaii
5. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
6. Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
7. Yosemite National Park, California
8. Zion National Park, Utah
9. Muir Woods National Monument, California
To read more, go here.
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