A new report shows that the Alaskans who visit its national preserves and parks paid $1.2 billion in the communities that surround them in the year before.
This investment, the reportsays has created almost 16500 job opportunities in Alaska. The research was peer-reviewed by National Park Service economists.
“It’s great to have economic reports like these to be published each and every so often,” said Jim Stratton who was the former director of Alaska state parks who has pushed for the conservation in national parks. “Because it shows us that the wildernesses of Alaska are more valuable than simply extracting the resources and transform them into the gasoline or gold bars and that Alaska earns a lot of money by utilizing the natural resources that are in place.”
Resources extraction is typically prohibited on national parks. On other federal land the Alaskan congressional delegation promotes drilling for oil and mining. They claim that Alaska needs jobs and that the nation needs fuel and minerals.
More than 2 million people traveled to Alaska areas administered by the National Park Service last year. The spending has decreased from their pre-pandemic peak of $1.5 billion.
Glacier Bay National Park saw more than half a million people visit in the year that it was the most frequented of areas of the Park Service areas in Alaska. However, the majority of visitors were cruise ship passengers, and the report’s authors discovered that they only spent $500 for lodging and other activities related to your Glacier Bay visit. Denali had a smaller number of visitors but they paid two times more.
The other end on the Alaska national park spectrum, Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve located on the Alaska Peninsula, is recorded as having a mere 179 visitors and each spending around $2,000 in total. (The report actually includes “recreation visits” instead of individual visits.)
The report reveals that Alaska is in the sixth spot for spending on park visits and is tied with Arizona. The report, however, was based on different methods to determine Alaska.
“Most people are on long excursions to Alaska and it is difficult to assign expenses to an individual park visit,” the report says.
