Impact of budget cuts on Natl parks..Yosemite visitor numbers explode as park does away with reservation system

https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/yosemite-visitor-numbers-22237252.php

Yosemite National Park’s monthly visitation numbers for March grew by over two-thirds this year, according to recent data. The rise in visitors comes as the park approaches a reservation-free and potentially chaotic summer season.


According to a monthly public use report published by the National Park Service, Yosemite recorded 225,817 recreational visitors in March. That’s up about 45% from the 155,758 visitors recorded in March of last year, and the highest number of visitors the park has seen in March since 2016.

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“Especially on Saturdays and sometimes also on Fridays and Sundays, the amount of crowding in the Park exceeds capacity of the parking lots, results in vehicles parked inappropriately wherever they can squeeze in along roads, and results in a crammed-together visitor experience,” John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, told SFGATE in an email.

According to Buckley, one visitor described a recent trip to Yosemite as being punctuated by hour-long wait times to enter the park, cars parked dangerously along roadsides and “wall to wall” crowds of people that were “tripping over each other.” The visitor told a CSERC staff member that being in Yosemite “felt like a day at Disneyland,” and that “John Muir would have been horrified” by the state of the park, Buckley wrote.