VISITATION TO BC PARKS, by most estimation, has grown in recent years.
But that's not what was borne out in the agency's most recent statistics report, which covers from March 2017 to March 2018.
It found a slight decrease in total park attendance from the previous year: from 24,815,157 to 23,562,482.
Moreover, it noted a dramatic drop in visitation to South Coast parks, saying visitation decreased by about 2 million visitors between 2016-17 and 2017-18.
Most glaringly, the report said that Mount Seymour Park went from 930,650 to 487,085 visitors (a drop of almost 50 per cent), and busy Cypress Provincial Park went from 1,712,879 visitors to 208,453 visitors (a drop of nearly 90 per cent).
The discrepancies—which fly in the face of anecdotal evidence—were pointed out by local outdoor recreation advocate Steve Jones, and BC Parks responded quickly by taking the report off of its website and pledging to review the report and correct any errors, but not before some media outlets reported the faulty data.
Full Article: https://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/whistler-news/bc-parks-pulls-statistical-report-after-significant-errors-are-identified-2507583