Wisconsin Residents Still Using State Parks at Higher Rates Than Before the Start of the Pandemic

Friday, August 16th, 2024 -- 10:01 AM

(Evan Casey, Wisconsin Public Radio) When businesses shuttered and schools went remote during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Wisconsin residents flocked to parks and nature trails across the state.

According to Evan Casey with Wisconsin Public Radio, now, a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found that Wisconsinites are still using state parks at higher rates than before the start of the pandemic.

The report found there were 518,848 state park sticker sales recorded in 2023, up from 346,491 in 2019, a nearly 50 percent increase. Tyler Byrnes, the lead researcher on the report, said there were massive increases in outdoor recreation seen across the state in 2020.

Even though state park sticker purchases for nonresidents of the state last year were 36.7 percent lower than what they were in 2020, they’re still 53 percent higher than what they were in 2019, the report found.

The report also said data from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources found that “reported visits” to state parks have increased by more than 21 percent from 2019 to 2023. Outdoor recreation in Wisconsin generated $9.8 billion to the state’s gross domestic product in 2022, according to a federal report.

Fees for hunting or fishing licenses also help pay for “habitat management, fish stocking, trail maintenance, public land acquisition, and the state’s game wardens,” the Wisconsin Policy Forum report found. But the report found that a those license sales have slowed down since 2020.

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