Opening the parks

There is a huge effort being put into opening up professional sports during the Covid19 crisis. Many of the arguments in favor of opening up the games center around the many employees of the stadiums, and how they depend on revenue from the games.

So. I did a little research. About 17 million fans attend NFL games each year. Another 22 million attend NBA games. And Major League Baseball attracts nearly 70 million fans to the stadiums each year.

Wow, you must be thinking. That’s a lot.

Do you know many people visit our national parks each year? Over 300 million—about three times the number that attend NFL, MLB and NBA games combined each year. Another 800 million visit the various state parks throughout the country. Between state and national parks, ten times as many people visit those as attend all professional sports games in the USA.

Of course, our president doesn’t watch our national parks on television, so that must explain why our parks don’t get as much attention…sigh.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2020 07:32PM by balzaccom.

Sadly, as Aramark just demonstrated, in the eyes of some employees, especially seasonal employees, are expendable.

Of course opening the parks without controls would endanger both staff and local residents. Not a good plan. But I would like to see more people in this country acknowledge those numbers. We love our national parks...and they deserve far more support than they get. Maybe we need to sign some big name rangers to multi-million dollar contracts...

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Check our our website: http://www.backpackthesierra.com/
Or just read a good mystery novel set in the Sierra; https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Falling-Rocks-Paul-Wagner/dp/0984884963