Direct Environmental Consequences of National Parks

I always like to start with the bad and then go to the good stuff. So, I'm going to start off by investigating the environmental damages associated with National Parks and visits to them.

General environmental impacts National Parks have faced include water and air quality issues and wildlife and shoreline degradation associated with visitor use. 

A lot of the wildlife and shoreline degradation problems are associated with visitors not abiding by the Leave No Trace provision and also with outdoorsy nature lovers who want to be active members of nature by participating in hiking, climbing, rafting and other outdoor activities. 84% of National Parks superintendents have reported this as a major problem to their parks natural flora and fauna.

In regards to the pollution problem, most of the air pollution created within the park stems from people driving to get to visitor information centers, trails, or to go on the scenic roads established by the NPS. This has created a huge problem in many of the most popular parks as their popularity has increased congestion and smog. In fact, the Appalachian Voices found that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park had greater air pollution than Atlanta and rivaled Los Angeles in ozone pollution.

The Great SMOKY Mountains on the Left and the Great SMOGGY Mountains on the Right

Thus, our need to travel within the park to get to the scenic viewpoints is detrimentally affecting the scenery and the landscapes' survival.

Moreover, visiting National Parks requires us to emit carbon dioxide to get to the park. What is the effect of our carbon footprint in getting to these parks? Well, there are no reported figures, however, using my two experiences to National Parks, I calculated my carbon footprint and assumed it as an average to formulate a general conclusion about the environmental impact of our travel. Here are the numbers.

1.  Family Roadtrip to various National Parks in the four corner states (referred to as Family Roadtrip in later posts)

Roundtrip flight from Austin, TX to Denver, CO

Roadtrip across the 4 corner states visiting various National Parks along the way

2. Roadtrip with friends up the Western coast of the US (referred to as BL Roadtrip in later posts)

My Flight from Providence to San Francisco to meet up with my friends

Our drive up along the western coast and our visits to various National Parks

My Flight back home

Wow! What makes the biggest difference in carbon dioxide emissions is the air travel, which is the one component of eco-tourism that is almost always necessary. People in the US can drive to US National Parks, but that’s not entirely feasible if you want to visit the Redwoods yet live in Washington D.C. It becomes even more difficult when someone wants to go on an eco-tour in a different continent. I guess boat transportation is possible but what’s the likelihood of that happening?

So, between the 2 numbers, let's assume the average is around 3700 lbs of carbon dioxide emitted per person. The 2010 NPS National Summary Report states that in 2010, 281,303,769 people visited the National Parks. That means that in 1 year,  ~1 trillion lbs of carbon dioxide is emitted by National Park visitors. 


What does this figure mean exactly? Well, the EPA states that 1 trillion lbs of carbon dioxide is the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered by 96,715 acres of pine forest annually. The NPS currently encompasses around 43 million acres of land and while not all of it has forest cover, the Redwoods National Park is almost completely forest cover and encompasses 131,983 acres. So, maybe carbon dioxide emissions don't play a significant role in our environmental impact to these parks after all if the Redwoods can sequester all of the carbon dioxide we'd be emitted to visit these parks...

But just for kicks, what would our carbon emissions be if we had traveled by other means?

According to the Carbon Fund, traveling by plane is the least eco-friendly method. Rail and vehicular transportation emit much less carbon. So, I calculated the carbon dioxide emissions as if I took Amtrak or did a real road trip traveling just by car and got some astonishing results. 

OPTION 1: Driving the Entire Trip

* Here, I assumed that the car had the mph (25.2mph) of an average car in America, which was provided by the Carbon Fund.

OPTION 2: Traveling via Amtrak rather than by Plane

= 3094.471 lbs carbon dioxide/person

= 2329.721 lbs carbon dioxide/person

The most eco-friendly traveling method was definitely by car. Unfortunately, eco-friendly does NOT translate into efficient. They are somewhat inversely related. It would have been perfectly inversely related if the train system in America was better and there was no need for excessive detours. However, the pattern is pretty clear. The more carbon dioxide is emitted, the more efficient transportation tends to becomes. Thus, it becomes a battle over which is more important: time or the environment…

Here’s the ridiculous breakdown.

Traveling Option	Time (BL Roadtrip)	Carbon Dioxide Emissions (BL Roadtrip)	Time (Family Roadtrip)	Carbon Dioxide Emissions (Family Roadtrip)
Plane	15 hrs	4912.738 lbs CO2/person	5 hrs	1702.842 lbs CO2/person
Train	168 hrs	2999.22 lbs CO2/person	86 hrs	1622.88 lbs CO2/ person
Car	86 hrs	991.036 lbs CO2/person	33 hrs	806.961 lbs CO2/person

Here's the even more ridiculous route I would have had to have taken using Amtrak.

For the BL Roadtrip

Providence, RI to San Francisco, CA

Seattle, WA to Austin, TX

For my Family Road trip:

Austin, TX to Denver, CO and back

It's crazy how even with the extremely long route, travel by train still emits less carbon dioxide than a direct flight via plane... If only we had a better train system in the United States... What's wrong with us?

The reason for our sad train system stems from its decline in popularity due to the commercialization of cars as it allowed for people to travel short distances as quickly as trains without having to wait or abide by the train schedule.

However, trains are making a comeback in areas such as Santa Fe, as gas prices and plane tickets continue to steadily increase. Hopefully, soon enough, it will be possible to make a trip across the country via train without having to make unnecessary detours. It would be nice for the US to set up something like the Eurail, so that we could have a more efficient, popular, and fun way to travel throughout the country. Lots of people vacationing in Europe for an extended period of time purchase a Eurail pass to cheaply get from one country to another. With a better networked system, tourists in the US could have the opportunity to travel to a lot more places as it would be a faster and more efficient mode of travel. This could stimulate local economies in areas with train stops, decrease road congestion, and reduce carbon emissions, making our visits to National Parks much more eco-friendly

Take a look at the differences in the rail systems in Europe and the US. When comparing, remember that Europe is slightly bigger than the continental United States. Also, while it makes sense that there aren't rails throughout the Great Plains region of the US, compare the popular destinations in Europe and the US; you'll be able to see that major cities in the US do not have nearly as many routes as in major European cities.

Eurorail System - Sorry the picture cannot be larger without messing up the resolution

Since in the clash between time and the environment, time would win in most cases, I'm going to stick with the numbers I got from my original travel plans. Why do I assume that time beats environmental sustainability? Well, considering the fact that Americans do not get that much vacation time and therefore, every minute counts in one’s vacation, it is unlikely for someone to spend a majority of their time getting to their vacation spot. We could say that driving is a feasible possibility if visitors lived close by, however, a Parks Studies Unit at the University of Idaho revealed through visitor surveys that most visitors (over 85%) come from out of the state.

So  ~1 trillion lbs of carbon dioxide (a little less than what is sequestered by the Redwood trees at the Redwoods National Park) is the number I'll be using when evaluating the environmental sustainability of  National Parks.