Apr 30th, 2008
Deseret News Story Uncovers Funding-Visitor-Inflation Imbalance for National Parks
In a copyrighted story that ran in the Saturday, April 26, 2008 edition of the Deseret News, Lee Davidson and Stephen Speckman detailed what they believe to be “troubling trends” in Utah’s National Parks.
Citing their analysis of “five years of National Park Service data on budgets, visitation and satisfaction surveys, from 2003 through 2007,” the reporters claim that
“visitors may be loving the parks (in Utah) to death while the agency is cutting back on full-time employees and its budgets fall behind inflation.” [Emphasis added by DPolitis/Poppa P.]
Deseret News, 4-26-08, pp. A1 & A4, Davidson and Speckman
During the five-year period they analyzed, the DNews research showed that visitors to Utah-based national parks and monuments increased 4.2 percent while combined staff levels at the venues decreased by 43 full-time employees. This while the average budget increase per venue was 9.0 percent; however, national inflation during the same timeframe was 12.7 percent.
Starting above the fold on A1 (the front page of the paper) and continuing to a full-page of copy, photos and charts on A4, this is a very solid piece of journalism entitled “Fewer funds, more visitors hurt parks?”
Click here read the article in its entirety. It’s well worth the effort.
Good job, Davidson, Speckman and the Deseret News. This is a very good and well-researched piece.
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NOTE: I meant to get this post up sooner, but got bogged down in day-to-day stuff.
