Especially noteworthy has been recent media attention to a paper written by Pergams and Zaradic (2008). Looking at national and state park visitation, at hunting and fishing license
sales, and at camping, the authors concluded that nature-based recreation is seeing steep pervasive slides in participation, and that this slide has been underway since the 1980s. It occurred to us that this highly important dimension of demand for nature warranted closer examination to see if nature-based recreation really is in steep decline in the United States. A fairly recent national trends report, Outdoor Recreation for 21st Century America (Cordell et al. 2004), made a big point that the nature-based recreation activities tracked by the U.S.
National Survey on Recreation and the Environment (NSRE) were still growing as recently as the first part of this decade. For example, almost 70 million people 16 or older reported then
that they had visited a wilderness or other wildland area or went hiking in the last year. Furthermore, approximately 70 to 130 million people reported that they viewed or photographed birds or natural scenery, respectively, in the last year. Hence, wewonder if these levels
have changed as we move further through this decade and into the 21st century.
The following paragraphs summarize an analysis of several sources of data describing Americans’ participation in nature-based outdoor recreation. The focus,in particular, is on wildland activities. The data sources used are widely viewed as the nation’s most authoritative