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Sandy Baker-Moore doesn't need any study to tell her how much her Oakhurst store depends on nearby Yosemite National Park.
"Yosemite is highly important to our business," the owner of the 41 Trading Post said from behind the counter of her shop. "Let's face it, there are a lot of tourists that go through here to get to Yosemite, and a lot of them stop here."
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Oakhurst, above, is a gateway community to Yosemite National Park. A recent report details the economic impact of national parks on nearby communities. John Walker / The Fresno Bee |
In her 16 years owning her store, which sells Western-themed souvenirs and American Indian handicrafts, families from Germany, England, Australia and other far-flung locales have become regular customers, stopping by her store every other year or so on their regular treks to one of the country's most popular national parks.
It's that type of spending the National Park Service detailed in a recent study about the economic impact the country's parks generate in what it calls gateway communities — towns like Oakhurst, Three Rivers and Mariposa. Yosemite's influence is significant — $371million to nearby communities during fiscal year 2005 — ranking it No. 3 among all national parks, monuments and historic parks. The figures do not include money spent by local residents.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks sent $91million to nearby communities.
National Park Service Director Fran Mainella — who recently announced her resignation but remains in the job — requested the study to heighten awareness of the economic impact of the parks, said Jim Gramann, visiting chief social scientist at the park service who conducted the study.
"Many times, that significance gets lost in debates over other issues," he said.
Some conservation groups said the report could be ammunition in the debate about the proper level of funding for the parks system.
"If you have a study that shows a good return on investment, that could be helpful in garnering more support from Congress and other groups that fund the parks," said Blake Selzer, legislative director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Parks Conservation Association. "We see that as a plus."
Selzer's association says the park system is underfunded to the tune of about $600million per year. Parks officials have responded to such criticism in the past by saying that the system is well-funded, considering the pressures on the federal budget.
The Bush administration has proposed a 2007 budget that calls for a $100million cut in the parks' nearly $2.1billion budget, though the same proposal does call for a $23million increase in operating funds.
But that increase in operations funding doesn't keep up with inflation, Selzer said.
Added Laura Whitehouse, the association's Central Valley program manager: Less money for operations means fewer services for visitors and maintenance left undone.
"They have the lowest number of park rangers in over a decade in our local national parks," Whitehouse said. Operations cuts also lead to interpretive programs being cut or transferred to private concessionaires that charge for the services, or deferred maintenance and upkeep of buildings and restrooms, she said.
Taxpayers spent $2.6 billion on the National Park system in 2005, but got a return of $12 billion, according to parks officials.
That return comes from the meals and rooms visitors pay for outside the park and the salaries paid to park employees who buy their groceries and furniture at stores near the park, Gramann said.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina and Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona ranked first and second, according to the study. Yellowstone — with fewer visitors and more remote location — was fourth.
Spending in Fresno was not included in the Yosemite figures, said Daniel Stynes, a professor emeritus at Michigan State University who was involved in the study. But Sequoia and Kings Canyon's zone of influence stretched from Three Rivers, outside the south entrance of Sequoia, all the way to Fresno for the study's purposes.
Sequoia's impact was obvious to shoppers at Reimer's Candies, which has been operating in Three Rivers for 57 years.
Boxes of chocolates displayed in the front window prominently feature a panoramic photograph of the High Sierra — a built-in souvenir visitors can take back to show friends and family where they went on their vacation long after the candy is gone.
Lynn Bretz, who with his wife, Mary Anne, has owned the business for two years, said visitors to the park account for at least half of his customers.
"With the park, we see customers from all over the world," he said. "We definitely benefit from the park being at our back door."
The volume of international visitors to the park, Bretz added, also increases opportunities for Internet commerce. "People may visit Sequoia one time in their life," he said. "But with our Web site, they can become a lifelong customer."
Other communities — a little farther from the park's entrances — want to get in on the action, too. Starting next year, the city of Visalia will begin operating a "gateway shuttle," hauling tourists to the park's Giant Forest. The goal is to make Visalia a jumping off point for visitors making day trips to the park while lodging, eating and shopping in Visalia.
The city and the National Park Service also are working on an agreement in which Visalia would operate an internal park shuttle that would ferry visitors among the sights and services in the Giant Forest area.
The benefit of developments like these is additional visitor spending. But measuring exactly what it means to each community is difficult. The study itself is conservative and excludes spending on airfare to get to the parks and equipment such as boats or recreational vehicles that can't be tied to one park visit.
But it would include cash spent by Lise Dufort and Michel Beland. They stopped at the 41 Trading Post on their way back from a trip to Yosemite to catch a flight from Oakland International Airport to their home city of Montreal. They estimate their contribution to the local economy added up to about $800.
"We've been two nights in Yosemite, and we spent maybe $600, U.S., at the Tenaya Lodge," Dufort said.
"Plus souvenirs, lunches, the park entrance fee," Beland added.
The study found that visitors to the national parks spent an average $236 per night when staying inside the parks and an average $193 when lodging in communities surrounding the parks.
Lois Bergeron, general manager of the 81-room Shilo Inn Suites in Oakhurst, said she had no doubt that almost all of her guests are headed to or from Yosemite.
"Our business starts on April 1 and ends when the first snow falls," she said. While the opening of the Chukchansi Gold Resort and Casino near Coarsegold has brought some visitors to her hotel, they're still only a small portion of her overall business, she said.
Both parks have what are called gateway partnerships with surrounding communities. The Yosemite partnership meets quarterly to discuss topics such as advertising.
Sequoia park spokeswoman Alexandra Picavet said she plans to hold workshops with representatives from gateway communities this winter to "see what we can do to help them and what they can do to help themselves."
The park isn't allowed to spend taxpayer dollars on advertising, but business owners can band together and market themselves, she said.
Yosemite supports 8,948 jobs, including in the park service and those like Bergeron's, according to the study. Those jobs pay $156million.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon support 2,135 jobs, generating $51million in personal income.
Many of these jobs probably wouldn't exist without the parks, Gramann said.
The Sierra Lodge in Three Rivers relies on the park for nearly all of its customers, said Ozzy Abdalla, the former owner who continues to work the front desk.
"Now and then there will be a big wedding in town, and almost all of the motels are filled with guests. But that's the exception," he said. "There's nothing else in this town; people are going to the park and that's it."
The study includes the effect on suppliers such as Lee Green of Sanger, a former pizza restaurant manager who makes a living selling baseball cards, silver coins and stone arrowheads to shops in well-visited areas across several Western states.
Much of the American Indian bead jewelry and the skin drums hanging from the store's roof beams at 41 Trading Post are made by local residents, Glen Moore said.
Although the park service has tracked total spending in past years, this is the first year the organization has studied the effect of salaries of park employees on gateway communities, Gramann said.
About 81% of park employee spending stays in gateway communities, Gramann said.
Many employees who work at Sequoia's Ash Mountain headquarters live in communities from Three Rivers to Visalia, Picavet said.
They play golf in Exeter, dine at restaurants in Woodlake and contribute to the economies of those cities by sending their high school students to school there, she said.
The same goes for the Yosemite area.
"When I go Christmas shopping, I buy my Christmas presents in Mariposa," park spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman said.
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Tourists window shop along Highway 49 in Mariposa on Friday. Tourists visiting national parks such as Yosemite spend millions of dollars each year that benefit nearby communities. John Walker / The Fresno Bee |
About half the customers at 41 Trading Post are local — and a lot of them depend on the national park for a living.
"We do have a lot of park employees who shop with us," Baker-Moore said.
While gateway communities receive the economic benefits of the parks, they also must bear some expenses, such as maintaining roads for the millions of people traveling to the parks, and medical and law-enforcement services, Gramann said.
When a rockslide buried the road to Yosemite through Mariposa, it was a state agency, the California Department of Transportation, that hurriedly created detours.
Both parks have their own medical and law-enforcement services, but like many police entities, the Tulare County Sheriff's Department has a mutual-aid relationship to assist rangers if needed, media officer Eric Coyne said.
Tulare County is unique in that federal public lands — national parks and forest — make up half its territory.
"You only have tourists and a few officials charged with preserving the wilderness," he said, "so it becomes a target of opportunity for people growing marijuana."
The county Sheriff's Department joins up with federal and state drug-enforcement agents to make occasional raids on sophisticated marijuana-growing operations in the national park every year.
Despite those expenses, many continue to focus on the economic positives.
Without the park, Reimer's Candies in Three Rivers — which over the years has expanded from its handmade boutique chocolates to offer ice cream and gifts — would be little more than a neighborhood candy shop, Bretz said.
"People are purchasing items that give them a remembrance of the area," he said of shops selling T-shirts, collectibles and other souvenirs, including his scenic candy boxes. "I don't think you'd see that if it was only the local economy."
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