Computer Monitors To Blame For Fewer Visits To National Parks

Jeff Osgood writes for the Salt Lake City Tribune that fewer people are venturing outside into nature.
Why? What's going on? What's the scoop? Well, the quality of virtual images is now so good, people aren't struggling as hard for the real thing (in many different areas of life).
I know that after I got back from two days at Yosemite in May of 2007, I checked out a bunch of books and videos on Yosemite and relived my experience vicariously through them.

According to a Nature Conservancy study, the number of visitors to state and national parks is declining, and fewer people are hunting, fishing or camping.
The study's authors, Oliver Pergams of the University of Illinois-Chicago and Patricia Zaradic of the Environmental Leadership Program, say the culprits are high oil prices and a newly coined word, "videophilia," which translates to a love of electronic media, namely the Internet, television and movies.
The two researchers say that high gas prices and the siren's call of the computer and television can account for 97.5 percent of the decline in visits to national parks.
Apparently, any yearning to visit a wild place or national park can be assuaged by watching a steady stream of television shows - especially now that entire networks devote themselves to wildlife and outdoor recreation.
Why go searching the Rocky Mountains for the sight of a bighorn sheep, marmot or a pika when you can tune into an episode of Animal Planet's "Meerkat Manor" to get your critter fix? There's even something for the homebound survivalist: Discovery Channel's "Survivor Man" and "Man vs. Wild" offer dueling treks into the perilous wild.
Take a peek at any computer screen saver or desktop image, and you'll likely find a serene waterfall, a reclining cougar or an Ansel Adams photograph of a snowcapped mountain range.
Forget mountaineering: Web sites offer 24-hour, live streaming images of Everest Base Camp. And for animal voyeurs, there's everything from Yellowstone wolf cams to manatee cams.
When millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett's plane went missing in September 2007, friends and family decided to employ the public in the search. Web-surfers could pull up satellite images of the Nevada-California wilderness search area, scan the terrain for wreckage of Fossett's plane and report any findings via e-mail.
Reportedly, thousands enjoyed the thrill of the hunt while basking in the warm glow of their computer monitors. It combined getting "out" in nature with a good cause.
Safety is key, since wild places can be scary. Hurricanes, wildfires, mudslides, volcanoes, earthquakes and avalanches rage out of the television set from all over the world, and a week doesn't go by without a hapless hiker going missing or some man-eating predator out marauding.
This live-video, flashy-graphic, full-color manipulation must be convincing, as more and more of us conclude that we'd be better off staying home. The manipulation is more subtle but no less pervasive in the print media, too.
A typical story about the search for Fossett describes the Nevada mountains as "desolate" and "jagged," the landscape "savage" and "inhospitable." Over time, the media construct a reality for us that's so dangerous we'd best leave these places alone.