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Tourism

Surge in Outdoor Tourism Renews Equity and Inclusion Challenges in American West

Madhu Unnikrishnan

Photo Credit: Moab, Utah is among the places seeing an influx of visitors during the pandemic. Unsplash / Andrey Grinkevich

Skift Take

With international travel largely shuttered and an exodus from cities of remote workers seeking more bucolic settings, hordes of people are flocking to federal lands in the American West. But how to balance the need for tourist dollars with protecting fragile ecosystems and sacred sites remains a challenge.

Since the pandemic began, travelers have flocked to the tens of millions of acres of land the U.S. federal government owns in the American West. But the challenge of how to balance the influx of visitors with managing these often-fragile ecosystems remains daunting, panelists at the Skift Short-Term & Outdoor Summit said Thursday. These lands, much of which is overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, are separate from those managed by the National Park Service. They lack some of the infrastructure of Park Service-managed territories, with fewer law enforcement resources, trail markings, and restroom facilities. Overtourism can threaten desert ecosystems and can expose sacred Indigenous sites to i

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