California's population has grown to 38 million from 31.5 million in 1994. More people are living near national parks but less of those inhabitants are actually visiting nature.
Visitors to national parks peaked in 1987 and the numbers have fallen since. Instead people are going to cleaned-up cities and theme-park like casinos, that have seen a rise in visitors.
Conservationists, according to the magazine, are trying to preserve the environment and thereby limiting the number of visitors let in to national parks:
"Earlier this year a federal court ruled that the National Park Service must limit human use of Yosemite Valley. That may mean a daily cap on visitor numbers. If the park imposes one, the example is likely to spread across America. This will create pressure to solve environmental problems by turning more people away."Read the full story: Out of the wilderness
so have the numbers fallen because of restrictions on the number of visitors allowed in the parks or because Americans would rather go to casinos and cities? It always seems to me that the parks are filled with foreign visitors during the Summer so what are the actual numbers that we're talking about? Are people being turned away at the entry gates?
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