Word: canyoning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DIFFERENT VIEWS OF THE CANYON...
...FIVE-YEAR RESIDENT OF THE GRAND Canyon, I would have found your story "Crunch Time at the Canyon" [Environment, July 3] almost laughable if it weren't for the distortions that will hurt our tourism-based economy and probably cost some locals their jobs. The people who are trying to scare visitors away from their national parks are the same ones who told us that if we shut down our logging, mining and ranching, we would benefit from tourism. The environmental alite are spreading stories designed to keep average Americans out of their playgrounds this summer. Perhaps people should show...
EVERYONE SEEMS TO AGREE THAT REDUCED budgets, overflow crowds concentrated in small pockets and old facilities are having a significant impact on visitors to the national parks, particularly the Grand Canyon. However, your report spoke of air tours of the area as being part of the problem. We think they are part of the solution. Last year more than 2 million people visited national parks and other federal lands by air. More than 40% took flights over the Grand Canyon. These visitors left no footprints and no debris behind. They simply flew over, enjoyed and left the area without touching...
...Federal Aviation Administration established a special federal air regulation to help restore the "natural quiet" to the Grand Canyon. This was done with the support of the air-tour industry. The new requirements confine aircraft to strictly defined and narrow flight corridors. Today 92% of park visitors report that they are not adversely affected by aircraft sound in the Grand Canyon, and backcountry park visitors report seeing or hearing only one or two aircraft a day. The contention that visitors can't enjoy the park because of the "noisy aerial onslaught" is without factual basis. DAN ANDERSON, President National...
...idea that tourism inevitably strips off some holiness of place, some magic, may be descended from the primitive conceit that a camera steals the soul of the person photographed. The sacred place (Mount Sinai, Mount Fuji, the Grand Canyon) is an onion, and each new wave of Visigoths with video cameras peels away a layer of mystique, until the magic that drew the stranger in the first place is gone, and instead the tourist finds--other tourists. And with them, the hotels and fast foods and souvenirs and globally identical amenities. A real traveler hates all that...