That’s according to a study recently released by outdoor recreation researchers at the University of Montana. They found the federal government’s online campground reservation system grappling with the surging popularity of outdoor recreation and not adequately finding ways to provide equitable access to all.
Because making a highly sought-after online reservation requires high-speed internet and also requires institutional knowledge on how the system works, fewer novice and low-income campers may be landing coveted sites. Also, studies have found that fewer minorities have jobs that allow them to plan a vacation six months in advance, which is often the time required by the federal system.
Will Rice, an assistant professor at the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation in Missoula, worked with colleagues on a novel way to figure who was winning coveted national park, monument and recreation area online reservations, which are extremely competitive.
Using cellphone location-tracking data that’s sold by companies who operate apps on your phone, the researchers were able to trace reserved campground visitors back to the ZIP codes where they live and then associate that with U.S. Census data on ethnicity and income. Campsites that require reservations see higher numbers of visitors coming from areas with significantly higher portions of white residency and higher annual incomes.
“Two-thirds of North American residents camp at least once a year, so this is really affecting the majority of U.S. residents,” Rice explained.
He noted that studies have found that camping’s popularity boomed during the pandemic, with a five-fold increase in first-time campers. Rice also noted that unlike outdoor activities like skiing and hiking, non-white people are highly represented in camping.
“Camping is something that is pretty representative of the U.S. population, in terms of who is doing it,” Rice said. “So to see the opposite trend potentially in national parks, that means we’re seeing camping becoming more exclusive through this one reservation system. This is stuff that affects everyone, all social groups across all incomes.”
The federal campground and cabin reservation system, located online at Recreation.gov, can be daunting and complicated to someone who hasn’t used it before or doesn’t have someone to teach them the ropes. For one thing, reservations for certain dates open at an exact time, depending on your time zone. Then, Rice said, you might be competing with 19,000 other users for a campsite with 57 spots, according to federal statistics.
A study from the Pew Research Center in 2021 found that “Black people and Latino people remain less likely than White adults to say they own a traditional computer or have high-speed internet at home.
“To use these systems you need high-speed internet, which can be a problem for some campers, particularly in remote places like we have in Montana,” he explained. “You also need flexibility to plan your trip for six months from now. People with lower-income jobs often don’t have the ability to set vacations that far in advance.”
Rice said the disparities that allow whiter, richer people to nab those spots have been exacerbated in recent years by the rise of tech companies that can, for a fee, alert customers the moment a campsite becomes available.
He believes that one solution, now used in some Yosemite campgrounds, might be a lottery system for long-term reservations and on a daily basis.
“We’re hoping for funding at UM to look deeper into the lottery system to see if it works,” Rice said.
The study for UM was done in collaboration with associate professor Jennifer Thomsen and graduate students Jaclyn Rushing and Peter Whitney, with funding from UM’s Center for Population Health Research.
Rice said they got the cellphone data for over 3,000 users and looked at five campgrounds across the country, including sites in Colorado, Utah and Oklahoma.
The study can be found online at bit.ly/3LPc7eK.
Rice said that campgrounds in America were originally “conceptualized by the leisure class to emulate the suburbs.”
“There has always been an aspect of exclusivity to the national parks,” Rice said. “And to a large degree they remain exclusionary.”
© 2022 Ravalli Republic, Hamilton, Mont. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
