Park officials fear trend toward The Great Indoors

WELLFLEET -- Geoff Swyka, 16, took in a gray but majestic vista from atop the towering sand cliffs at the Cape Cod National Seashore. Despite a spitting rain, the Westtown, N.Y., native seemed impressed.

``I really enjoy this, just being around the ocean and the scenery," said Swyka, who visited windswept Marconi Station this week with his parents and two siblings.

Although the Swyka family shrugged off the poor weather to visit this rugged Atlantic outpost, the Cape Cod National Seashore counted just 3.7 million visitors last year, its lowest number since 1968. Numbers have rebounded in the first part of this year, but officials worry that a downward trend in recent years will continue. After decades of thriving popularity, national parks across the country are experiencing serious declines, falling 14 million since a high of 287 million in 1999.

The drop has park superintendents worried, asking questions, and groping for answers. As more and more children seem out of touch with nature, park officials say, finding a way to reverse the decline could prove to be frustratingly elusive.

``It's hit me between the eyes," said George Price, superintendent of the National Seashore. ``We're at the confluence of a lot of societal things."

Factors such as higher gas prices, frenzied family schedules, and fewer field trips could be at fault, Price said. Another factor could be the ballooning amount of time spent on the Internet and with electronic games, according to The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit conservation and advocacy group.

``Reading a good book, going to the movies -- there's always been indoor activities," said Stephen Prokop, chief ranger at the National Seashore. ``It just seems like the list keeps growing."

The starkly divergent trends in increased indoor entertainment and declining park attendance might be related. A study funded by the conservancy found that the average person in the United States spent 174 hours on the Internet in 2003, compared with zero time in 1987. In that period, the average annual time playing video games in the United States rose from zero to 90 hours, according to the study, which appeared last month in the Journal of Environmental Management.

``Maybe there is a cause-and-effect relationship," said Bruce Kidman, spokesman for The Nature Conservancy in Maine. ``If we are saying that society is relying on these electronic tools to occupy their time to the exclusion of going to nature, then we have a lot to worry about."

Maine also is seeing a dramatic falloff in park attendance. At Acadia National Park, the boundaries of which contain the highest peak on the Atlantic coast, attendance plummeted to 2.05 million last year from 2.56 million in 2002. At Baxter State Park, which contains magnificent Mount Katahdin, the numbers took a free fall to 56,000 last year from 75,000 in 2000.

``Kids today just aren't raised the same; they're kept on a closer leash," said Jensen Bissell, director of Baxter State Park, which relies on an endowment and user fees for funding. ``It's different, and we think that's extending into an older generation."

Charlie Jacobi, a resource specialist at Acadia who tracks the number of visitors, said the reasons for the decline in attendance are a combination of factors that are difficult to quantify. ``Everybody's got their explanations for it; I don't really know," he said.

Although the data raise concerns, both Bissell and Jacobi said the statistics also contain some good news. ``It's not necessarily a totally bad thing for Acadia, because it gives the land a little bit of a breather," Jacobi said.

But keeping the public interested in the nation's parks clearly is a priority for superintendents like Price, who spent nine years at the Boston Harbor islands and 15 years at Lowell National Historical Park.

``I'm concerned about the relevancy of parks, especially to future generations and especially as their recreational options change," Price said. ``I'd like to think that the fundamental values that national parks have to offer are still basically important to the citizens of the United States and Massachusetts."

The Cape Cod National Seashore has seen an 18 percent increase in visitors through July this year, but Price said he is not ready to celebrate. Instead, he is left with many questions and few answers.

However, Price isn't afraid to speculate. In his view, the decline in visitors could be linked to the changing nature of families, the focus on standardized testing in the schools, and the changing uses of Cape Cod real estate. More households have two working parents, which means that vacations are tough to schedule; schools are dropping field trips; and tiny rental cottages once favored by Cape Cod vacationers seem to be vanishing in favor of second homes and condominiums.

Despite these changes, Price said he is wary of expanding virtual Internet visits to national parks, in lieu of walking the Cape Cod beaches where Henry David Thoreau once wrote that a man could stand ``and put all America behind him."

``There's a whole school of thought that if you don't go whiz and bang, you're not going to tap the interest of the kids," Price said. ``I believe in my heart of hearts that we don't need to dramatically change what we're doing."

At Baxter State Park, Bissell said he remains hopeful that the park will not be forced to shorten its season, which runs from May 15 to Oct. 15. But, Bissell added, he is unsure where the bottom lies for park attendance.

What Bissell does believe, he said, is that a bottom exists. ``The resources that we have at the park, the natural wild resources, are fundamental to us as people," Bissell said. ``There may be times when we become less interested in them, but over time these are fundamentally important."

Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at b_macquarrie@globe.com.