BUSHKILL TWP., Pa. — Sitting in her office at the Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center, Lauren Forster can see visitors walking the trails through her window — and she’s noticed something new.
“There's just a lot more working-age adults here during the typical work day than there were before,” said Forster, the center’s education supervisor. “I haven't talked to any of those visitors in particular, but I think part of it is probably that people have more flexible work schedules, or they're working from home.
“They're able to go take a walk on their break or their lunch break. I don't have anything to prove that, but, since the pandemic, I think we definitely have been seeing more working-age folks here during hours we didn't see them before.”
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, state parks across Pennsylvania, and the country, were inundated with visitors as residents searched for outdoor spaces to recreate amid sweeping, stringent guidelines aimed at stopping the spread of the disease. As restrictions began to fall away, attendance trends dipped.
However, while the crowds may have thinned, officials and outdoor enthusiasts said it’s clear some residents have picked up a new appreciation for these spaces because of the pandemic, and continue to use them.
“I hear anecdotally from visitors, ‘Well, I haven’t been here in years, but I needed somewhere to go.’ So they kind of rediscovered us, or some people never heard about us and discovered us.”Lauren Forster, education supervisor at Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center
“While [attendance] has corrected a little bit post-COVID, it's still higher than it was,” Forster said. “People noticed us more and they sought us out.
“I hear anecdotally from visitors, ‘Well, I haven’t been here in years, but I needed somewhere to go.’ So they kind of rediscovered us, or some people never heard about us and discovered us.”
‘We were made essential’
While Pennsylvanians were under a stay-at-home order for several months during the start of the pandemic, local and state parks soon became popular recreation spots — even as facilities remained shuttered with a skeleton crew, if any, workers on site.
“We were sent home for an entire month,” Forster said. “That meant the only person here on site taking care of and maintaining the 1,168-acre facility was our manager.”
That one person was responsible for cleaning litter, interacting with visitors and clearing trails as an unprecedented number of people sought out green spaces.
“And that's when the state said, ‘You know, people are flocking to the parks. We need our parks staff back because that's essential.’
“So, we were made essential employees and we came back.”
In 2019, the commonwealth’s state parks saw 37 million visitors, according to data provided by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). Attendance jumped to 46.9 million the following year, before decreasing in 2021 and 2022.
Comparatively, Jacobsburg had 228,233 visitors in 2019, according to DCNR data. The following two years, attendance increased to 289,369 and 306,949, respectively, before dipping back down to 272,923 in 2022.
In March of 2020, trail count numbers statewide show a 52% increase over 2019 numbers, and a 97% increase over 2018, according to Pennsylvania Environmental Council report, “The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on Pennsylvania’s Non-Motorized Trails.”
A survey of trail managers at the time found both positive and negative impacts to the influx of people. The former included increased awareness and interest in trails and a change in trail user demographics. However, the most mentioned negative impacts were delays in season maintenance, overuse and overcrowding, and increased litter and illegal dumping.
“State forests are experiencing higher incidences of vandalism and illegal activity, such as ATV riding on state forest roads, graffiti, dumping of trash and waste, and removal and damage of gates,” state officials said in an April 2020 newsletter. “These illegal activities damage the environment and take away from the natural experience and natural beauty that all forest users have the right to enjoy.”
Jacobsburg officials also worked to mold programming to meet the needs of the community, including schools and students who weren’t making field trips to the center.
“We were producing virtual content and sending that out to support our teachers online,” Forster said. “We were teaching over Zoom in the classrooms, or to kids who are at home.
“And we were doing more after school programming. After school hours we were providing in-person programming that students could sign up for and do outside of the school day.”
The students needed social interactions, parents told her.
“That was super, super important for them — just having a space where they could socialize safely outdoors was really great,” she said. “That's something that we pivoted to providing since we couldn't serve schools.”
‘Reconnect with the natural space’
A lack of diversity in outdoor groups is what catalyzed Melanie Lino and others to form Afros in Nature in 2020, said Dwight Holloway, the organization’s outdoor recreation coordinator.
“We promote a safe place for BIPOC individuals to come into nature, and reconnect with the natural space,” he said.
The Valley-based group organizes excursions like paddle boarding and hiking — they’ve also been to Jacobsburg twice for birding events.
“Most of our hikes are local,” Holloway said. “We want to make sure that when we do events, accessibility is one of our big things. We want to make sure that people have the means to get to our events, and a lot of times that looks like doing things at South Mountain or some of the city parks.”
An environmental scientist with a passion for the outdoors, Holloway has hiked all around the region and beyond — experiencing the pandemic crush firsthand.
“You just saw more people out in general,” he said. “I'd go places where I would only see like one or two people usually and the parking lots would be overrun with vehicles, which took adjusting to find out when we're good time to go.
“Because if you went on the weekend, you were almost guaranteed to be inundated with people on the trails.”
It’s a stark difference compared to a recent trip to Jacobsburg, he said.
“I definitely noticed now that the parks have kind of thinned out,” he said. “Last month, I went maybe two or three times, and I think I saw maybe two people.”
There are several variables, Holloway said, that can explain fewer people.
“The economy's not the best right now,” he said. “People are struggling to make ends meet. And during the pandemic, people had a lot more free time — there were flexible work hours, or work from home.
“I think we were in a place where mentally people needed an escape, and the only thing that seemed safe to people was being promoted as ‘Hey, if you want to do something, it needs to be in an open air space.’”
While many of the programs at Jacobsburg have returned to pre-pandemic normals, officials said there were lessons learned they plan to keep in mind moving forward, including reaching multiple demographics.
“We have family programming, we have programming for little kids, programming for seniors during the daytime,” Forster said. “We're utilizing volunteers more to lead programs for us because they're more flexible.
“Now that people are more flexible with their time if they're working from home, we can offer programs and fill them at odd hours that we wouldn't have offered up before.”
